Yes, we do feel like we are heading home now! I don't know if it is anything to do with our homesickness, missing our community, the fact that we are now travelling East again,or all of those, but even though we are still more than 3000km away, we are feeling like we are on our way home! We need to make a consious effort now not to rush on, but to continue to stop and take things in.
Today, we drove through Norseman, where we stopped for lunch. Norseman is named after a horse that was tied to a tree overnight and when fetched in the morning was found to have pawed a hole in the ground revealing a huge gold nugget! I love some of these stories! The town also boasts of tin camels standing in the main street, a symbol of its past, when camel trains were common in the area. Thats about all there is to the Western gateway town to the Nullarbor. From there, we drove on to our first camp spot for the night, cooked on the fire and roasted marshmellows again under a near full moon.
Once you have come across the Fraser Ranges, the landscape is low scrub and dry, thin trees in sandy, gravelly soil. The road is flat and straight. Some emus ran beside us today (and nearly in front of us!) just after the 'Watch out for camels, emus and kangaroos' sign, just so we know those signs aren't for nothing!
We head off again on Thursday for more of the same after a rough night with Reuben getting bad croop and waking in panic trying to get breath! After ventolin and steaming up the van with a saucepan of water, he settled thank goodness, and we didn't need to find a flying doctor! (At least there are emergency landing strips on the highway here for them.)
Its overcast and windy, and the landscape hasn't changed. After a short stop at Balladonia (where part of the sky lab satellite crashed to Earth and is displayed in the Roadhouse Cafe), we hit the 90 mile straight (longest straight bit of road in Australia) where the trip couldn't get any more monotonous! We did see three kangaroos drinking the rainwater on the road in front of us though, and managed to miss all three! Maduna pass was the one high spot where we got a good view of the Nullarbor Plains and if it wasn't overcast, we would have been able to see the Great Australian Bight Coastline...but we really had to use our imaginations today. We stopped at our next freecamp near Maduna soon after with lots of other Nullarbor travellers for the night. Hopefully a more relaxed one! And off we go again tomorrow...we are still only about half way!
Okay, the Nullarbor freecamp loos are revolting! Unmaintained and well-used and gross! I am not fussy, but I would rather dig a hole than use what they call toilets! Today we drive as far as Eucla where once we stopped for lunch and a toilet (that you could call a toilet), we decide to stay in the van park attached to the roadhouse for the night, as the SA side of the Nullarbor decides to eliminate the stinky, gross toilet problem by just not providing any other than at roadhouses! Eucla is the last WA town and was a nice stop though after lots of driving, with nice gardens and ocean views of the Bight, our first different views for a while. Thats where the travellers cross is too, a monument for Christians crossing the Nullarbor. It felt good to know we were more than half way!
On Saturday morning we started out by crossing the next border and driving into South Australia. Our 5th Border crossing! The scenery changes dramatically with the Nullarbor Limestone Cliffs of the Great Australian Bight on one side and the Treeless Plains of the Nullarbor Desert on the other. If you are lucky, you get to see whales here, and the magnificence of the longest strip of Limestone Cliffs in the world, which are breathtaking and something different to look at for a bit!
The Nullarbor lives up to its name though, with kilometres and kilometres of saltbush and sand, and not a single tree! This can make it pretty difficult to do a roadside pee, as Reuben found, hunting for the largest saltbush he could find before doing the deed! We stopped at the infamous Nullarbor Roadhouse, for lunch (and not fuel at over $2/litre), and then onto Nundroo for the night again.
When I say the names of these places, you need to know that they are a roadhouse...thats it, usually with some sort of motor inn/van park attached and no more. Eucla was the largest with a population of 80, most others being about 8! It is amazing to think about those 8 that live there! At Nundroo, the Roadhouse is next door to the 4th hole of the Nullarbor Golf Links (longest Golf Course in the world) so the kids got out their minigolf clubs and had a go at 'Wombat Hole', a little fake patch of green in a landscape of brown, which was pretty funny!
On Sunday, we summons up just enough motivation to drive the last leg of the Nullarbor and head to Ceduna, going through Penong, a really tiny farm town with over a hundred windmills. We reach Ceduna where we stop and breathe a big sigh of relief! We made it...over 1200km of not much! We are officially Nullarbored!
Next stop...a little beachside spot on the Ayre Penninsula somewhere to stop with no driving for a few days...
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