Nullarbor, here we come.

We drove from West Beach, Adelaide to Port Augusta on a stinking hot 40 degree day.  We didn’t stop for much sightseeing but definitely had to drop into the general store at Kimba, the halfway point between the East and West coasts of Australia.  The store has an impressive array of knick knacks, magnets, ‘precious’ stone fragments, Jesus related tea towels, dream catchers, mood rings and random skull candle.  It also charges $4 for a cup of Nescafe Blend 43 and has a magnificent 7 metre high fibreglass pink galah out the front.

Ben with the Galah and Blake's undies

The Big 4 at Port Augusta is fairly simple and utterly devoid of grass.  The ground is crunchy stone and dry dust, which says a lot about the climate here.  We pulled up, plugged into the power and got the aircon blasting in the van as soon as we could.  Outside was 41 degrees, inside the van was 39.  We were very pleased to see that there was a pool so we got changed and took our sweaty selves over there. 

The three of us each rate very differently on the water wimp scale.  Ben is a zero, as he will jump into anything bigger than a glass of water and general stay there until we drag him out or until his lean body begins shaking uncontrollably and turning blue from cold.  Jenny is about a 6 on the water wimp scale but is able to reduce that by at least 3 points by way of a ‘dedicated parent’ rebate.  If water is cool she would rather not go in but does so because Ben wants to go in (or he has already jumped in and she has no choice).  Lou scores a pathetic 9 on the scale.  Unless the water is bath temperature, getting her in is hard, hard work.

So, there we were in the searing, oppressive heat heading towards the shaded blue, almost empty pool.  Ben was first to jump right in and gave a little shriek.  Jenny was second in and instantly regretted it.  The pool was freezing!  We couldn’t work out how it was possible in such heat but it was so cold that Jenny lasted 5 minutes and Ben only lasted 10 because he kept getting out to do running bombs and those momentary forays back into the stifling heat thawed him out slightly.  Cold-water phobic Lou saw both their reactions and never ventured in more than dangling legs in whilst sitting on the side.

There were a few Grey Nomads there who gave us some good tips.  Apparently Coober Pedy is terrible at the moment and when they checked into the caravan park the manager handed them a card with the number for the Police on it.  They recommended avoiding it and we are glad we are bypassing it anyway.

We had a BBQ dinner with some giant ants and went to bed just as a wind was starting to stir.  At 1am we awoke to a thumping and rattling and realised that the wind had picked up significantly.  We had rolled out the awning but because the ground was so hard, hadn’t put the guy ropes out to give it some extra stability so while Ben slept soundly through the whole thing, we hurried outside to roll the awning back in again.  We have heard too many tales of awnings blowing off to risk ours.

From Port Augusta we drove to Ceduna on another 40 degree day.  There was a lot of driving, a fair number of signs warning us of wildlife we didn’t see and a giant granite farmer in the South Australian town of Widunna.  ‘The Australian Farmer’ (also known as the Big Farmer) stands at 8 metres (26 ft) in height, and weighs around 70 tonnes.

Ceduna was lovely and had a great beach right next to the caravan park.  We walked up over the sand dunes and down onto the beach, which was deserted except for a couple of 4WDs, a young dreadlocked couple with a Chihuahua and 2 horseback riders.  The water was knee deep for at least 200 metres and was beautifully warm like a bath.  This meant of course that Lou was more than happy to go in, so we all walked and waded and walked out until we hit a wall of seaweed and since it was still only hip deep we sat down and Ben played on his boogie board.

Endless shallow warm water.

 Ceduna was also very windy that night and we had another middle of the night outing to stow the awning and rescue some washing that we had hung on it to dry.

We went into the town of Ceduna the next morning to get some supplies as Ceduna is the last sizeable town before you start across the Nullarbor.  While we were there we met some Grey Nomads who gave us some UHF tips (Truckies use CH 40 and Caravaners use CH18) and recommended that we stay a bit further along the highway than we were originally planning.  We have the Camps 8 book and the WikiCamps app so there are generally several options to choose from.   We found a free camp at the entrance to the Head of the Bight whale watching centre and since we were planning on stopping by there the next day anyway, we headed for that one instead.

On the way through we stopped at Nundroo Roadhouse and chatted to the girl working there who is from Arizona.  You meet some interesting people in the middle of nowhere.

The world’s longest golf course stretches across the Nullarbor.  It is an 18-hole par 72 golf course spanning 1,365 kilometres with one hole in each participating town or roadhouse along the Eyre Highway, from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to Ceduna in South Australia.  There is a hole at Nundroo and Ben took a putt with rock and stick.

We stopped at the Head of the Bight free camp which is essentially in the carpark next to the gates across the road down to the visitor centre.  The camp is a few kms off the highway and on the way down there we saw a sandy coloured dingo in the shrubs next to the road.  Ben called it a ‘Bingo’ for at least an hour before he corrected himself and then it became ‘Bingo’ the dingo.  By the time we arrived, the centre was closed, the gates were all locked up and the place was deserted.  We were the only ones there so we parked behind an old empty building and made dinner.  

People we meet give us lots of advice and tell us lots of stories.  Most advice is exceptionally valuable and we are really grateful for it but we have noticed a thread of what we suspect fits the definition of caravaning ‘urban myths’. One piece of advice that we have been given several times is that when free camping, you should park with a tree or your car in front of your caravan door because if people want to rob you, they will drive their own car up against your door, essentially locking you in and will then empty or steal your car at their leisure.  Nobody we have spoken to has actually had this happen to them, nor do any of them know anyone to whom this has happened but it is seriously and sagely given counsel.  Needless to say, we follow this advice because it sounds like a very sensible precaution, but we are interested to know if this does really happen often or if it happened once and the grey nomad telegraph has spread the story like wildfire.  Another precaution we were advised to take is to put locks on our water intake openings to prevent people sneaking up overnight and weeing in our water tanks!  Who does that??  Again, nobody has ever actually had that done (despite one man strongly claiming it happened to ‘someone’)  but apparently we need to be careful.  Luckily, locks came already installed on the van so we can sleep easy knowing our water is pee free.

With these stories in mind, we parked the door side of the van close to the corner of the building with no room for anything bigger than a couple of people to get through.

We didn’t put the awning out that night as we were leaving again first thing in the morning (and there was a building in the way!) and this turned out to be a good move.  The Nullarbor threw a whopper of a storm at us with heavy rain and wild winds pounding us all night.  It was really noisy and we were very glad to be in a 3 tonne metal box with a 3 tonne car attached to it rather than a tent.  Next morning we would continue along the long road to WA.