Driving across the Nullarbor

The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur of bushland, flies, road trains (big articulated trucks) and heat haze.

We left Perth in mid-thirties heat on January 10th, and it never got below 25, even at night until we met my parents on the far side of the Nullarbor on January 14th. At one point as we entered South Australia on the far side of the treeless plain that is the Nullarbor the mercury hit 44 C, although Steve's watch, sitting next to the gear stick actually read 49 C at one point! As the air conditioning doesn't work in the car we had to drive along with the windows open which felt like someone was blowing a hairdryer on us! Every time we stopped we'd hang out in an air-conditioned roadhouse, gulp down 2 litres of icy-cold overpriced pop and then still feel thirsty.

The Receival Point Operators at CBH Metro Grain Centre, Perth 08/09: Bruce, Stuart, Murray and me.











After a hasty pack-up and clean-up in our house, we managed to leave Perth at about 11am on Saturday January 10th. The scheduled stop was Kalgoorlie, some 600km east of Perth, reached by following the water pipeline from Perth to the dry eastern area of WA. Gradually wheatbelt gave way to cattle farms and finally mines. We made it for around 6pm and were amazed to see traffic lights and a substantial town centre after 600km of tiny towns with no more than a roadhouse and post office. Pitching our tent in the overpriced “family” campsite ($34 – we couldn't find anything cheaper) we discarded the flysheet as the ground was too hard to put pegs in and rain in WA was a distant memory anyway. The superpit gold mine in Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a sight to behold with the monster trucks looking like toys until you spot the normal size vans next to them looking like ants! The tyres are twice as tall as us to give you an idea.
The Superpit at Kalgoorlie. You can just see a normal sized van next to one of the Monster Trucks on the road.











From Kalgoorlie the road heads south to Norseman, the last town before the Eyre Highway, and the last chance to get water before Ceduna, some 1500 km distant. A scary sign at the start states 1986km to Adelaide. We jumped out to take pictures of the signage and within moments a truckie had stopped to make sure we were ok. This was reassuring as we were facing nearly 2000 km of virtual nothingness in case of a breakdown with not even mobile signal to help us out.

Our first night stop on the Eyre Highway was at a permitted overnight rest area along the 149km straight section of the Eyre Highway. The landscape was surprisingly wooded and we understand there are cattle stations in this area. We pitched up along with several other travellers and cooked our BBQ meat on a wood BBQ (illegally we gather, due to the fire ban – but we were extra careful).

One of the intimidating signs along the way, note the bullet holes!












There are roadhouses scattered along the Eyre Highway providing overpriced food, drinks, fuel, and a range of accommodations – though free camping is permitted along the road. The biggest gap between roadhouses being 180km. Our car's range seemed to be at least 700km where we could cruise along at 100kph steadily so we weren't too worried about this. There is plenty of traffic along the way, particularly during the day – driving at night is very risky for cars with kangaroos, emus, cattle and even wombats crossing the road but the truckies drive all night at frightening speeds, squashing anything that crosses their path. The Eyre Highway is one of the few places I have driven where car traffic is still sufficiently rare that drivers all give each other a friendly wave as they pass. You feel a kind of matey camaradery driving around that justifies the "I crossed the Nullarbor" fridge magnet Steve bought.

At the border of SA and WA is the small village of Eucla, seemingly in place purely for the through traffic. There are some interesting dunes there and we went to see them, spotting a stump-tailed lizard on the way. We crossed the border into SA after stopping there and were relieved to see we had another day to eat up our fruit and veggies (you have to surrender them on the borders) as the checkpoint was at Ceduna, at the end of the isolated section of the Eyre Highway. 20km further on Steve realised he'd dropped his phone at the sand dunes while we were running to escape some aggressive flies. So back we went and 4km down the gravel track found the phone again. But as we crossed back into WA were were forced to surrender an apple, an onion, a lettuce and a pot of honey to the fruit fly police.


The stump-tailed lizard tries to scare me off













That night we camped again at a restpoint, this one had no toilets or BBQs and all we had to eat was fruitcake. But it was quiet, apart from hordes of flies. They retreat at night but when we got up in the morning the swarm was unbearable and we packed up and left within about 5 minutes, not even stopping for brekky. I can well believe they would drive you insane, flying into your ears, eyes, nose, mouth simultaneously. By this point after two nights of wild camping we were pretty smelly so stopped at the next roadhouse (Nullarbor – the most isolated on the road and one of the nicest ones) for a shower ($1). The Nullarbor Plain proper only just skirts the edge of the Eyre Highway but the treeless section is around this area – just low scrub as far as the eye can see.

We made it to Ceduna, the town which marks the start of some kind of civilization in SA and stopped in blazing heat for a swim in the sea. When we returned to the car we spotted we had a flat tyre. This was in some ways incredibly lucky as we were in a town with tyre change facilities after over 1000km of no-mans land and it only cost $26 to fix the flat, we didn't even have to put on the spare which was lucky as neither of us were confident we could do it.

An uneventful (but pretty) drive to Tailem Bend (SE of Adelaide) followed to meet up with my parents, after stopping at Kimba overnight. The minute we arrived the wind got up and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees – and would stay hovering around 20 C for the next three days. You can imagine the shock after 44 C.
With Mum and Dad we travelled in convoy following their campervan east along the coast. The coastline here is very attractive and at Robe we stopped to buy wine and have lunch on the blustery beach. Our overnight stop was at Mount Gambier, where the startling sight of a bright blue crater lake awaited us. Port Fairy, the next overnight stop is host to a massive folk festival but while we were there it just hosted loads of noisy Shearwaters.


With Mum and Dad on the Great Ocean Road

Along the Great Ocean Road west of Port Fairy is one of the world's great drives. The coastline is pretty spectacular and the number of shipwrecks on the disintegrating sandstone stacks frightening. We stopped at Cape Otway in a campsite in the gum trees beneath some very noisy koalas. They spend 22 hours a day asleep and Mum was keen to spot one, although I think shoving a teddy bear into a crook of a gum tree would probably fool all but the most dedicated koala-spotter. That night was icy cold – below 10 C and none of us slept well, especially us in our $35 tent and cobbled together charity shop bedding.

A very photogenic koala conveniently hanging out over the road

The road east of Cape Otway is probably a motorcyclist's dream, with endless switchbacks, inclines and declines. Steve and I agreed it would be much more fun in a manual car, after all you'd never catch Bond in an automatic Aston Martin, would you? At Apollo Bay I bought a kilo of scallops for $35 and we cooked them up at Lorne. Dad even ate some for the first time in his life! There wasn't much time to mess around after our pilgrimage to Bell's Beach (the final scene of Point Break was filmed here) but skedaddled to Melbourne asap where we had a very pleasant dinner with my aunt Jane and her partner Michael and my brother Sam who were all there with us. It felt strange to be in civilization again after the virtual desert of the Nullarbor.

Michael, Jane, Dad, Mum, Sam, and Steve enjoy a few bevvies on Melbourne's South Bank

The next day was the tennis! It was blazing hot again, 35 plus and everyone was there! Mum, Dad, Steve, me, Sam, Steve's sister Jo, her friend Bethany and our ex-housemate Caro. It would be impossible to have a bad day out on a sunny day at the Australian Open and we had a great time supporting Wawrinka, Erakovic (Kiwi player) and of course Roger who we watched on the big screen.

Sam, Mum, Steve, Dad, Bethany and Caro (Jo off on the phone somewhere) all trying to endure the blazing heat at the Australian Open

The next day it was time to say goodbye to Mum and Dad and after spending a pleasant couple of hours in the gorgeous Melbourne Botanic Gardens we headed out to join Steve's sister Jo in Stawell. Unfortunately right on the outskirts of Melbourne the car started making a funny noise and we pulled into someone's drive to investigate, only to find we couldn't move off again. It took us 24 hours and $560 to get moving again, but we were fortunate to have broken down in the house of Brenton and Max who very kindly put us up in one of their caravans for the night (which was great once the Huntsman spider was disposed of!) The coil and distributor had gone, for those who are interested.

The moment we hoped would never come! The car on the back of a tow truck looked on by Brenton and Max

I will end War and Peace here as we are finally safely being looked after by Jo in Stawell. We haven't been so clean for weeks!