As we left Ceduna there was a roundabout sign with our first sign to Perth! As we are thousands of Kms away that was pretty exciting. At the next roundabout there was no sign to Perth, just signs for local traffic, which stumped us a bit, and we had to go back to the previous roundabout to see which local towns would point the way to the Nullarbor. We had gone 1 km in 2 minutes, and already got lost on a 1673 km, 3 day journey!
The first stop was to be the Nullarbor roadhouse, 304 kms from Ceduna (190 miles)
There are a few things to see along this part of the road, especially during the whale migration season – which this isn’t; so we didn’t do anything, but drive, till we got to the roadhouse. The vegetation at first is quite abundant but as we went on it reduced to low lying scrub and nothing else. A tree was an event.
Usually all cars pass us, due to the fact our max for speed is a heady 90 kms an hour (56 miles an hour!). One of the biggest excitements of the journey was us passing a real 70’s VW van tootling along at 60Km an hour. We passed it quite near the Nullarbor roadhouse, and after we had had a couple of drinks there, the VW came in, all windows open, no aircon, even the door to the engine open to keep it as cool as possible, and a lovely couple and their dog in it. She, an American, had got a job in Perth and he, an Australian, was driving her there in the van. I recon they were early 30’s, and I just thought that was so romantic and cute! Of course the fact that they also had a beautiful Labrador with them, didn’t sway me a bit.
As soon as we went in for a drink at the bar, the only other person in there started talking to us. He was travelling from Melbourne to Perth for a wedding (these Aussies will drive anywhere for a party). He had left Melbourne on Monday, after meaning to leave on Sunday, but being too worse for wear. Today was Wednesday afternoon and he needed to travel another 1620 kms (1110 miles) to get to Perth for Friday afternoon for a suit fitting – and he was stopping here for the night. He was optimistic of his chances. By the time Darren had gone off to the loo and back, I had heard his views on marriage (he wasn’t), the story of his ‘lady friend’ in Perth, and his itinerary for 2 days celebrations at the wedding. I recon he was going to have a great time. I often wonder if he got there on time.
This is what the drive does to you. If you travel alone, as soon as you stop it seems you need to talk non stop till you fall asleep. It is all those hours of silent travelling. I found when I once drove the 12 hours from Sydney to Brisbane, what worked for me was singing at the TOP of my voice most of the way, then the urge to talk when I stopped was minimal - a happy result for all!
Singing at the top of my voice is not something I would inflict on Darren, however. So, to pass the time, we decided to go through the ipod and listen to every artist alphabetically, and cull the stuff we didn’t like. A kindly friend had put a lot of his music onto our hard drive, and we had transferred it to the ipod – MISTAKE! Trance music is simply not the thing for the Nullarbor Plain.
The rules of the ipod game were that we had to listen to all of the songs on each album, and then decide if it was to be deleted or not. Needless to say we cheated a few times, the albums being so awful we couldn’t bear to listen to all the tracks. Yes, this was a long game. So long, that after the first day we were only up to ‘B’, and almost everything was going to be deleted. A long game is a bad game. We gave up.
After the Nullabor roadhouse we decided to press on towards the Border Village where WA meets SA. That would be another 182Kms, so we agreed we would go as far as we could. Looking at the map there are camp spots overlooking the cliffs. From the roadhouse to the border is the Nullarbor National Park on land, and the Great Australian Bight Marine Park, on water, with spectacular cliffs dividing the two. The vegetation is neutral scrub with low bush like trees on it. Occasionally the road goes near the edge of the cliffs, making the horizon fall away to the sky suddenly to the South, when it is far away in the distance to the North.
The cliffs did not disappoint, we stopped a couple of times on headlands that allowed us to look East and West along the edge of the cliffs as they disappeared into the distance. I had been looking forward to these scenes for a long time of my life. I could not help but think of all those ancient ships trying to navigate these waters and needing a safe harbour, which are few and far between in this rugged landscape. Unfortuntely the cliffs did not afford us a safe harbour to rest either, as the wind was far too strong for our little pop top caravan, and we were forced to backtrack a few kms to another camp spot on the Northern side of the road with some tree shelter, where our caravan would not sway in the wind all night.
We had travelled 523Kms (326 miles) that day, and were 81kms from Western Australia.
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