Our journey across the Nullarbor & Great Australian Bight – part one

Wow – what an amazing country Ozzie is……….

We left Fowlers Bay this morning, leaving via another dirt road which apparently used to be worse than the one we drove in on, but was much much better than that thank goodness!  Its funny when you are driving on rough road, you seem to tense up your whole body so when you finally hit something nice and smooth its so relaxing…………….

We had the perfect day for hitting the Nullarbor – almost a tail wind pushing us in the right direction, and a clear beautiful blue sky.  We made good time and hit the Nullarbor Roadhouse in time to have some lunch – though expensive she was!  For a 500ml carton of milk we paid over $4, and a hamburger was $14, with takeaway coffee $9 – they were however doing an absolutely roaring trade!!  The Telstra service was awesome (5/5 on my meter) as we parked right next to the tower, so while we ate we caught up on a TV program we had missed and downloaded a couple more movies!!

Now the Nullarbor is pretty boring countryside and not dead flat which was a surprise for us,  however there are highlights along the route…..

 

This was outside the Nullarbor Roadhouse

Just disgusting the rubbish in stop off points along the way….the toilet paper was horrible! We actually passed a guy in a caravan who was walking along the side of the road picking up rubbish, he had huge plastic bags full of it tied on to his roof rack – dunno if he gets paid to do it, or does it for love…but what a shit of a job!!!

We have passed 3 of these huge grader fronts on our journey – they basically take up the whole road but although there is a front car, they aren’t actually telling you to pull right over on the shoulder…

One of the RFDS landing strips…..and below one of the photo stops showing the Bunda Cliffs looking out across the Great Australian Bight – just beautiful….that’s our caravan in the distance….unfortunately we didn’t see any whales :(

 

Below is the second photo stop along the Nullarbor looking out across the sea

We then hit the WA border…and as usual had our vegies confiscated at the quarantine station along with our delicious honey from Berri SA!!  We had taken the time to peel our onions and potatoes as the little quarantine guide book said to do, however the rules have since changed and unless they are cooked…they are gone!  So pasta for dinner tonight again….we were going to not tell the lady about our honey, but she was so nice and friendly we weren’t able to look in to her eyes and tell her we didn’t have anything else (the Dublin accent was pretty alluring too)

 

On the other side of the border it was like the road kill increased exponentially…the number of dead kangaroos' and wombats on the road was amazing, and we saw the hugest hawk eating one – no wonder they say to keep little dogs like our Chip on a leash as the hawks think they are lambs, swoop down and pick them up, then drop them from a height to kill them and then eat them…….eek makes my skin crawl thinking about it! The crows seem extra huge here too…..

We drove on through to just this side of Madura and stopped in a rest area which is actually better than the last few places we have camped!  There were already a few others camped here and more have arrived since we set up, but its huge and we all have our own little areas.  We all sat down for a well earned drink and a rest

Tomorrow we are going to head through to Norseman which is the cross roads to either head up to Kalgoorlie (about 2 hours) or down to Esperance (about 2 hours).  We will stay there for the night, then head to Esperance where we have booked in to a camp from Monday through to Thursday night.