Cranking across the Nullarbor

Setting off from Esperance, ready to take on the Eyre Highway along the Nullarbor with our mission faces on.  We were in wheat country and it was harvest time.  We passed through seemingly endless fields of wheat, many already shorn in patchwork patterns.  The roads were very busy with trucks and harvest machinery, including trucks dragging portable silos along the road - look out, wide load!  A train line also ran the entire length of our journey, presumably to move ore to the port at Esperance from Kalgoorlie.  We stopped for lunch at a tiny town called Norseman, it's only real claim to fame being the camel sculptures decorating its roundabout.

Although it was Saturday it seemed that everything was closed.  Spent a little time at the park, briefly chatting with another family that was on the road, predicting that we would see them again over the next few days. 

Eventually the trucks started to thin out and we got into drier country.  Still, there were plenty of trees around.  After driving as far as we could, we stopped at a lovely free camp called Newman's Rock.  There were no facilities here, but the bush was serene and the campers all had plenty of space.

We had to do an emergency abort on our mission to have a campfire - the wind followed us even here and had flames licking at our ankles and the ground.  Waking up in the bush has been one of our favourite parts of this holiday.  So we packed up in leisurely fashion (last ones out again!) and set off for the next leg of the crossing.

After leaving Newman Rock, we filled up with fuel at the Balladonia Roadhouse, a surprisingly busy little place with its own museum.  We learned about the local history including the crash landing of skylab.  Rich was surveying some beer coasters with some very dodgy 'art' and after asking "what do naked ladies have to do with the Nullarbor?" we also learned about the legend of the Nullarbor Nymph.

Back on the road, we shortly came to a tourist site that only an engineer could love.  Australia's straightest piece of road - 147km or so of it - yawn.... To be honest it was pretty hard to tell it apart from the other 900km.  Still the trees are hanging in there, so by now we are a little perplexed by the name Nullarbor.

For lunch we made a stop at Caiguna, a cheerful little roadhouse and clearly a truckies favourite.  After making sandwiches, we bought ice-creams and ambled around in the air-conditioning for a while, reading the jokes and other interesting info plastered around the walls.

There was a 'blowhole' just near to here, but of course we screamed past it in the van, and found we didn't have the energy to go backwards so gave it a miss.  In general, we were a little disappointed that there is not much in the way of signage.  We had come to know that the Nullarbor is riddled with 'sinkholes'.  We read about them, but were unable to locate any.  Apparently most are closed to the public because they are so dangerous.  Abandoned settlements and other sites were also not marked and difficult to identify.  Oh well, maybe next time.

The Nullarbor surprised us again on the next stretch, when we rounded a corner and found that we were going down, down, down a large escarpment.  The view out to the cliff edges of the continent, across the flat plain, was spectacular (but try stopping for a photo!).

We ended up stopping at a free camp called Jilah Rockhole, where we made ourselves at home and had a lovely family campfire under a full moon after dinner.

Early next morning, we think we may have spotted the Nullarbor Nymph...see for yourself...  

Packed up whilst doing jerky robot-dance moves to try and dodge the swarms of bitie may-flies and carried on up the road.  We climbed back up an escarpment and made a stop for gas and diesel at a roadhouse at Eucla.  Another big (small) whale was there to greet us. 

The roadhouse was more appealing than most from the outside - someone had put some effort into design - so Kel and kids ventured out the back.  We were a little gobsmacked to see not only a fantastic deck, garden and pool, but an awesome view from the edge of the escarpment over the 30km or so of lowland to the Great Australian Bite.  The view was magnificent and we vaguely regretted not staying in the caravan park here.

We hit the WA/SA border and tried somewhat unsuccessfully to form a human 'SA'. Probably succeeded more in re-creating various karma-sutra positions. Hmmmmm - not sure what the customs guys looking out their windows would have made of it...

After many tries and much gravel rash on Rich's knees - we kinda got it.


Take 1



Take 6

Finally!

 Kel was also very excited to spot and take a photo of a big kangaroo - another one off the list.

Someone shot the camel!

Pretty soon after the border we started coming to lookouts where we could see the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. We ran out to one - a swarm of flies chasing us all the way to the lookout and back. At one point, Rich passed another tourist whose face was absolutely covered in flies. The tourist smiled and summed it up with a broad Aussie accent "Gees - these flies are unreal aren't they".

We hit the Nullarbor Plain where there were finally no trees to see at all, but it only lasted for about 20km or so as far as we could tell.  It didn't at all look like the visions of red sand dunes, broken down cars and shoes and signs that we had in our heads.

 

Had to borrow this photo - we screamed past it!

In the next section of road, we nearly took out a Japanese guy walking along the Nullarbor pushing a cart of somekind. The guy nearly became a statistic when we had to screech to a halt due to the fact that a Japanese guy pushing a cart, a car pulling a caravan, and an oncoming road train will not all fit width-ways on the same section of road. He gave us a friendly wave as we passed - probably considering changing his undies at his next stop.

Down the road a bit on the way to the Yalata Roadhouse, we had promised the kids that we would have a toilet and ice-cream stop. We were all a bit disappointed to find that the Yalata Roadhouse was closed - really closed - with wooden boards nailed to all the doors and windows. Unhappy kids squirming around in the back, we pushed on to the Nundroo Roadhouse 50km or so down the road.

We pulled off the Nullarbor here and headed 25km out to the coast, past farms and salt lakes to Fowlers Bay. To get to the town we had to cross a causeway over a salt lake, ringed by towering sand-dunes.  It was such an alien landscape it took our breath away - almost a little creepy.

Fowlers Bay itself is a tiny fishing village and looks like it is completely made out of corrugated iron, with a long Jetty stretching out into the water, and huge sand dunes looming behind.

We set up in the modest caravan park and the kids tried their best to make themselves dizzy in the park.

Rich had a quick chat to some of the other campers, who said that they came here often from Adelaide as this place was renowned for its fishing. They said that they drove over the dunes, chasing schools of salmon across the bay and stopping to throw in a line when the schools came close into the shore. It must work as some of the photos of people holding their catch in the camp kitchen were pretty impressive. The camp kitchen also had a signed photo of Kelly Slater, who had visited this place a few months before, probably to surf at Cactus a few kilometres down the road.  The caravan park itself was interesting too - entirely powered by off-grid solar, watered by sand aquifers and with a communal herb garden.

We had all had a shower and were in heaven as we had not showered for (an undisclosed number) of days so and were therefore 'a bit on the nose'.

That night, Rich and Kel didn't really get much sleep because a huge wind-storm swept through the village, making the caravan rock and bounce around - the canvas pop out bits were bulging in and out with every blow. We wondered just how much wind it would take to blow a 2 tonne piece of aluminium over.  We decided to hang out at Fowlers Bay for another day - but we really just sat around and watched movies, blogged and did some schoolwork as it was still quite windy and the rain had also blown in.

Next morning we packed up the van, borrowed a sandboard and went up the dunes on the far side of town for some sandboarding fun, before saying goodbye to this funny little out-of-the-way place and setting off again.