The Nullarbor. Not at all like Mad Max.

The Nullarbor.  Hot, dry, dusty, empty.  Car wrecks lying rusty and broken in ditches along the roadside.  Gigantic road trains looming up from behind you and threatening to run you and your poor bulky caravan off the road, or flying past you at high speed, showering you with rocks and red dust, leaving you choking and coughing as you try to hold the wheel straight.  Kangaroos, camels, emus and livestock wandering across your path randomly causing you to brake and swerve like you are playing Sonic the Hedgehog.  That’s the Nullarbor right?  Null–arbor, meaning no trees.  A wasteland between states that you just have to survive, right?

Not so much.

I was expecting this:

And was totally blown away by how different the Nullarbor is to what I had imagined.  It looked like this: 

So  much green!

There are trees for a start.  Certain sections of the highway have lots of them.  And they are green.  There are shrubs (also very green) and areas of grassland.  Yes, there are several car wrecks along the way but that’s not surprising given the mind numbingly long distances and straight stretches.  It would be very easy to fall asleep and slide off the bitumen.  Luckily, we had the regular mental stimulation of coming up with interesting and original responses to “are we there yet Mummy?” and “look Mummy, I beat Eggman with Sonic!” 

The trucks weren’t a problem either.   We found the truckies to be quite pleasant (we can talk to them on the UHF radio) and not at all inclined to run us off the road.  The highway is in good condition and is well sealed so oncoming truck traffic is no problem at all either.  We saw a few roos and some camels but none ran on the road and although there were a few carcasses here and there, we saw far more roadkill on the highways through SA. 

So, all in all the Nullarbor was a very pleasant surprise.  Another surprise was that there are 3 Royal Flying Doctor Service emergency runways painted on the highway at various locations.   If needed, the road is closed temporarily and the Flying Doctor swoops down to provide care where needed.  There is no way urgent medical assistance could get to remote outback locations otherwise.  

After our free camp in the carpark at the Head of the Bight, we drove down the road to the visitor centre where they have whale watching platforms.  Unfortunately it is not whale migration season so we didn’t see any sea life but the views of the Bight, ocean and Bunda Cliffs are spectacular nonetheless.  Thankfully, Jenny had brought our head nets to keep the flies away because there were LOADS of the little blighters.  Millions of them in fact.  We counted.  Jenny theorised that even if every person in Australia killed 20 flies at the same time, it would make no difference to the overall fly population.

Fly nets. Daggy but functional.

After Head of the Bight, there are many cliff viewing areas along the highway and we stopped at several to look at the stretch of the Bunda Cliffs.  They are stunning.  

Amazing cliffs and a funny boy.

Ben saw a car with Tassie plates at one stop and asked “How did they fit that car in the plane to get it here?”

From there, we drove through to Eucla which is in WA and we had to go through quarantine as we crossed the border.  It’s the usual restriction on fruit and veg so we had a very healthy eating morning.  I ate 2 huge carrots (raw) just before we got there (wait for it, there is a reason I’m telling you this).

Quarantine involved an extremely thorough inspection of the car and van but was no problem and we made our way into WA. 

We stopped for the night at Eucla, which has a simple caravan park, a great bistro, a pool with a real live frog in it, a giant plastic whale and the steepest slide I have seen in many years.  It was double the height and twice as steep as any slide these days.  It reminded me of the playgrounds of my childhood and made me realise how over-safe we now make everything for our kids.  Then Ben went down it head first, nearly falling off the side halfway down and made me realise why we now make everything over-safe for our kids.

Blake's undies in Eucla

I didn't get a head first shot. I was busy having a heart attack.  At least he wore his helmet.

We also met a couple who were stuck in Eucla waiting for a replacement windscreen for their bus (yes, they have a full size bus). Due to the remote location, it was going to cost them $10,000 to get the windscreen replaced and their insurance company was giving them a hard time. Lucky we're not in a bus!

Back to those carrots.

I (Lou) started to get stomach pains just after dinner but knew it wasn’t from my meal.  Jenny and I had ordered different meals, eaten half each then swapped plates, and she was feeling fine.  I went to bed and it got worse.  I had sharp, stitch like pains up under my ribs and cuddling a hot wheat bag wasn’t helping.  At one point I thought seriously about those RFDS emergency airstrips on the highway, almost hoping that Peter O’Brien, Lenore Smith and Robert Grubb would come to my rescue. 

My daggy TV obsession.  Robert Grubb lived around the corner from us and I used to stake out his house hoping to see him.

Instead of calling for my 90's heroes, I asked Dr Google what was wrong and found that large amounts of raw carrot cause many, many people to have horrendous stomach pains.  The treatment is pretty much to wait it out.  So I took some Panadol, had a glass of milk and eventually went to sleep.  In the morning I was magically better.  No more raw carrot for me…

The next day we drove from Eucla to a free camp just past Caiguna.  Along the way we started on the 90 Mile Straight, which is 146.6km of dead straight road, the longest straight road in Australia. 

The campsite was about half way along and there were about 10 other vans/campers there.  We parked towards the back to get away from a pesky person running their generator.  For their sake we hoped they had a medical reason for it to be going until 9.45pm (and starting at 7am the next morning!) because it wasn’t hot enough to need air conditioning and it was really loud.  

We saw a beautiful sunset that evening and Ben started a photo journal, taking some great shots on his camera (he has one of those waterproof, shock proof cameras that he is just starting to really use properly)

Tree photo by Ben.

We decided to do a big drive the following day so that we could get through to Esperance.  It’s a bit annoying packing up and moving every single day and we just wanted to stay in one spot for a while.  Along the way, we drove past an overturned wreck with broken windows and debris, water containers, a mattress and table strewn in the dirt beside it.  It looked recent but we were travelling at 90kmph so it flew by quickly and we couldn’t tell if anyone was inside or not.  Jenny happened to get a photo of it as she was collecting photos of landmarks for a bingo game.  We felt uncomfortable about not knowing if anyone was hurt so decided to go back to check on it.  It took us a few kms to find somewhere to turn around and then we drove back and pulled up opposite.  Before we could get out, a truck coming up behind us asked over the UHF if we were ok and we told him that we were checking on the wreck.  He said that it looked old, had no plates and he was sure it had been there a while.  We took a look anyway but he was correct, it was deserted so we resumed our journey. 

Freaky to drive by this.  Had to stop.

The roadhouse at Balladonia has expensive coffee and a museum that is largely dedicated to Skylab.  When it crashed to earth in the late 70’s, large chunks landed throughout the area and NASA offered rewards for pieces of wreckage.  Several locals made big bucks after finding chunks of space station and for a while the area was flooded with people fossicking for scraps.  There is a large segment in the museum and we wondered if it was real until we noticed the BBQ grill screwed onto it next to a drawer handle that was far to shiny to have been through re-entry and then a high speed collision with a planet.

It was lovely to reach Esperance that evening and we looked forward to a week of stability.