Lap Around Australia: Nullarbor crossing

Crossing the Nullarbor from Norseman to Ceduna

We left Norseman very early; that's the beauty of staying hitched overnight.

We made very good progress to our first stop at Balladonia Roadhouse. It really is just a roadhouse, but this place made the most of its claim to fame, being the place where pieces of Skylab fell to Earth back in the 70s. There's bits of space-junk proudly displayed and I think it's probably the only time Balladonia has ever made the international news. Good for them!

 

Just after Balladonia along the Eyre Highway is a straight stretch of highway that is 146.6 kilometres long. The sign says it's the longest straight stretch in Australia but there were some others we've done over the last few days that must run close. The interesting thing is that there are several places on these straight stretches that double up as airstrips for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Presumably police are sent to make roadblocks so unsuspecting motorists don't have planes land on top of them. It's different!

We had intended to stop at Caiguna overnight, but time permitted us to push on to Cocklebiddy. We thought the name was rather charming. There are caves near here and also an inland blowhole near Caiguna. We didn't stop to tour either of these. We're on a mission to get home!

A mission to get home? That night we could have flown home on the wind in no time at all. When we turned in it was a calm end to a pleasant day, but at 10pm we were woken by a shrieking gale and the caravan rocking so much we thought we might take off or be blown over. It was really quite scary.  Another couple in a roof top tent drove - with the tent still rigged - into the lee of the servo. The shower block was shaking fit to bust and dust and grit were flying in the air, and it seemed a miracle that's all there was flying.  In the light of day, by which time the wind had subsided somewhat, it could be seen that all the wheelie bins were very securely held in place. That's what happened when a cold front goes through, Nullarbor style.

After our night at Cocklebiddy we were once again able to leave very early in the morning. We found ourselves heading upwards through the Madura Pass where we stopped at the servo for fuel and some coffee. We reached Eucla which is just shy of the South Australian border around lunch time.

We pulled up in the forecourt of the only servo and were waiting patiently for a white Jeep Patriot to move away from the pump to allow us access. We recognised the car as the one that had flown past us and another caravanner some kilometres back, and then we'd subsequently seen them pulled up by the Highway Police. They'd flown past us a second time and beaten us to the servo.

Well, we waited and we waited. What could be taking them so long? Maybe a loo stop? Still no-one appeared to move the car away from the pump where it was blocking all comers. Barb went in to ask what the problem was. The man at the desk went next door to the restaurant and found the driver in the middle of a hot lunch!! He was quite miffed to be asked to move his car so others could purchase fuel, even though there were several spare parking spaces for cars. Incredible rudeness, and he glared at us as if we were being unreasonable!

We had been attempting to eat up all our fruit and veggies in anticipation of crossing the quarantine checkpoint at the South Australian border. Bum! We overdosed on health giving fruit and then they didn't even check our stuff. Apparently that doesn't happen going in this direction until Ceduna. Hrrmmph.

Just after crossing the border you actually enter the Nullarbor National Park and the landscape really does live up to its name of "No Trees". The road stays close to the coastline along here and there are several viewing points along the road that are not far off the highway. We detoured down all of them. The coastline views are simply stunning! Breathtaking! It reminded us of the wonderful views on the Great Ocean Road except here there were hardly any tourists. There's a turning circle and enough parking for several cars towing vans at each spot, and we kept running into the same people doing the same trip as ourselves. It was fun to chat and compare trip stories.

 

 

The wind had started to pick up as the afternoon progressed, so we were happy to stay overnight at Nullarbor Roadhouse and campground. We're so glad we weren't staying on an exposed cliff overnight it was bad enough where we were. We did notice that there were some campers playing a hole of golf the next morning, despite the fact that the tee sign had a warning of dangerous snakes seen in the area. Somewhat off-putting to putt we imagine.

The next morning everyone packed up and moved on pretty smartly. More wind was forecast and we wanted to get somewhere sheltered for the night. Our only diversion today was to drive 12 kilometres down a dirt road to see the Head of  Bight (Great Australian Bight that is). Even though we'd been warned that we were too late in the season to view the whales that migrate past here very close to the shoreline, we thought it was worth seeing for the magnificent coastal views anyway. Wow! Wow! Wow!

 

The rest of the trip to Ceduna flew by. We managed to chomp our way through most of our leftover fruit and by the time we reached the quarantine checkpoint we had hardly any contraband to hand over. Yay! We've done the Nullarbor....and survived to tell the tale.

Lap Around Australia: Norseman

Perth to Norseman

Getting out of Perth during morning peak hour is not fun, especially if you happen to miss the exit to the Great Eastern Highway (as we did) and can't find a way to get off one highway and get back to the other easily (with a van in tow). We did eventually make it but not without some angst. Once we were on our way we did enjoy the scenery and pootled down the highway heading east towards Kalgoorlie.

Our first stop for the morning was the rather delightful little town of Meckering. We'd never heard of Meckering before, but its claim to fame is an earthquake that happened back in the sixties and was of such magnitude that the railway lines warped into an S shape and a big fault line appeared in the earth, still visible today. The town makes a very good attempt to attract RV traffic by offering low cost overnight parking in town with good clean facilities.

We had a lot further to go and we pushed on eastwards. Following most of the way beside the highway is a large water pipeline that carries water to Kalgoorlie and beyond. We arrived at Southern Cross mid afternoon and called a halt to travel for the day. Barb is still heavy with cold and coughing miserably so we parked up in a drive-through spot and spent a restful night.

We were able to get away early from Southern Cross, being still hitched., and the drive through to the old gold mining town of Coolgardie was uneventful. We stopped in Coolgardie intending to have lunch, but after walking around the town we didn't find anyway that really appealed. The town does have some beautiful old buildings and was obviously once prosperous, but now it's sad and tired.

 

 

We drove on towards Norseman, by-passing Kalgoorlie. We'd already done an open cut mine tour at Tom Price some weeks back and at this point our aim is to just get back home asap, and the sight-seeing will be secondary to that. That said, we arrived at Norseman in the early afternoon, so there was time to have a look around the town here. We got another drive-through spot at the Gateway Caravan Park, which pleased us immensely, then we drove into town.

Norseman features a roundabout with a big camel sculpture.....and not a lot else. We did a little shopping in town at the supermarket and then noticed a sign to a viewing lookout some 2 kilometres out of town. It's actually worth doing! There are great views over town and the surrounding saltpan lakes and the big line of lode slag heap. We even went to the lookout over a gold mine entrance.

Our final destination was the golf course. We had heard about the Nullarbor Links Golf Course which is the longest golf course in the world. It's an 18 hole par 73 course that spans the Eyre Highway for some 1,365 kilometres! It starts in Kalgoorlie and ends in Ceduna. We had already decided that we weren't going to play, as not only is the cost a bit prohibitive (and we don't have golf clubs or balls) there is the small matter that neither of us can actually play golf. Duh! We wanted to take a little look at the tee shot in Norseman, but it was not too impressive. The fairway looked a bit ordinary too. Not for us .... but might be fun if you're a keen golfer.