West of Balladonia to Nullarbor, South Australia
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Our second attempt at camping outside a caravan park worked out just fine. No ant infestation this time, although there were ant hills and other small holes in the ground, no doubt containing some kind of insect, rodent or snake. Luckily we didn’t find out what. As for the ants from Pemberton, they appear to have given up the ghost. We have not seen them for over a day. Jumped ship when they saw we were headed east maybe.
We got an early start since there were no facilities for showering and we didn’t cook breakfast. Just some cereal. The plan was to spend all day driving and that’s pretty much what we did. A couple of short stops for road pictures and a few viewpoints.
Overcast, windy and rainy all day. Very unusual for this time of year so we’re told. We’re glad it’s not sunny and hot but we were hoping for clear skies so we could see the stars. Even in Perth the air was very clear and we could see a lot of stars. We figured out in the middle of nowhere it would be really great. But I guess we won’t find out. Tonight is overcast too. Maybe tomorrow night.
For the first couple of hundred kilometers, we saw plenty of trees and couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. It’s certainly remote, but there’s a fuel stop about every 200km with a caravan park. In fact it turned out Balladonia had a caravan park, with a shower, had we made it that far. But I liked our rest stop. We saw one or two dwellings, or at least mailboxes and a road. But no power lines or fences.
The big excitement for the morning was crossing the longest straight stretch of road in Australia — 146 kilometers (90 miles). It’s about as exciting as it sounds but kind of cool to have traveled on it. Actually, the bigger excitement was when we switched drivers with about 40 kilometers to go so that Les could drive it too and he noticed that the fuel light was on. I’d been driving pretty much foot to the floor and it was sucking up gas faster than expected. We still had about 30km to go to the next fuel stop and it made us a little nervous. Les slowed it way down to 80km/h (from the 130 I was doing) and we limped in with 4 liters to spare. That’s 4 liters out of the total tank capacity of 70 and I suspect there are a few liters you can’t get to so we were pretty close. We don’t let it get below half a tank anymore.
For the next leg we hooked up the laptop to the radio and played “The Princess Bride” on DVD while we were driving. We had both seen it enough times and the dialog is pretty continuous so it was sort of like watching it. Kind of fun. So we “watched” Caddyshack too. It helped pass the time and keep us awake.
There were signs after each fuel stop warning about animals in the road — emus, kangaroos and camels. Camels? Turns out we saw 3 or 4 emus and a couple of kangaroos. But no camels. At least so far. A bit disappointing. We also saw a goose-sized bird we mistook for a baby emu but figured out our mistake when it flew away.
It wasn’t until about 500 kilometers in that the trees really started disappearing. But finally they did and we really noticed it as we entered South Australia, the next state to the east. We passed a sign for the Eyre Bird Sanctuary which sounded very cool but was 35km to the south, 15km of which requires a 4WD. Based on the part that didn’t, we weren’t willing to risk it. But for $80 a night you can stay in an old telegraph house, help the scientist tag birds, hike, etc. We wanted to go.
There were occasional signs with an airplane on them marked “R.F.D.S. Airstrip” that we couldn’t figure out at first. We didn’t see any airstrips and we didn’t know what R.F.D.S stood for. But then we worked it out. The *road* is the airstrip. RFDS is the Royal Flying Doctor Service. If you need medical attention, they fly a plane out and land it on the road and take you somewhere that isn’t the middle of nowhere. Makes you pay a bit more attention as you drive along those stretches.
We stopped at a couple of viewpoints. The Nullarbor plain is a giant limestone cliff and at the water’s edge, it just drops off into the ocean about 200 feet above the water. Being relatively soft, the water carves it out creating some pretty dramatic formations. We of course dubbed them the “Cliffs of Insanity” having just watched Princess Bride. Too bad the weather was so lousy but the pictures still came out pretty well.
We made it as far as the “town” of Nullarbor which is 1600 km from Perth and 1087 from Adelaide so we’re about halfway there. It’s another 1600 km to Sydney so we’re going to have some major driving days ahead. But the scenery should improve. The sign just before Nullarbor claims it’s the west end of the treeless plain. It’s been treeless for some time so they appear a bit confused. But it does suggest there will be much more of the same tomorrow.
All in all we did 765 kilometers today. A new record by far. And we completed our 4000th kilometer. But we’ll need to do at least that again tomorrow. Dinner tonight is agglutinated mass, a Les specialty: eggs, hamburger, potatoes and cheese. An old favorite.
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