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Eyre Highway: Crossing the Nullarbor
Posted by daveb on January 29th, 2009
We left Kalgoorlie and pointed Don, our car, towards Adelaide in the adjoining state of South Australia; over two thousand kilometres away. It took us four days to get to Adelaide and I’ll spare you four fairly uninteresting journal entries by writing one fairly uninteresting one instead. As in Western Australia, the roads here are long, straight and allow for great speeds. Unlike in Western Australia, there were relatively few dead kangaroos on the roadside and much more traffic — we passed at least a couple of cars each hour!
Surprisingly, there are people living out here. Every now and again (and I mean only now and again) we spotted houses from the road and there were a number of gravel track turn-offs with modified oil can letterboxes indicating some form of human presence. The handy Nullarbor tourist map highlights each township and roadhouse along the way, listing the top tourist picks at each one. Our favourite was Yalata which, as listed in the brochure, has two tourist attractions: the “lookout for camels, wombats and kangaroos” road sign and a second one informing of the “Eastern End of Treeless Plain”.
Squiffy hit her boredom threshold on day one and slept most of the way when she wasn’t behind the wheel. On the other hand, I found the drive quite invigorating. At most points the roads were nearly completely flat and straight. The asphalt disappeared on the horizon at its vanishing point. In absence of the same quantity of road kill that we saw along the western coast, we could travel more quickly without the same level of worry about bruising our car and reducing local wildlife numbers. Seldom does one get such a long time to think, without distraction. In hindsight, I just wish that my brain could have pondered something more useful than “bloody ‘ell, this is a long road”.
Notable moments included:
- The somewhat regular Royal Flying Doctor Service “Emergency Airstrip” signs at the side of the road, indicating that we might have to share the tarmac with a landing plane.
- The Nullarbor Plain (translates as “No Trees” in Aborigine) is the focal point of this trip as it’s about halfway between Perth and Adelaide. A driver has already travelled a long, long way to get to it and has a long, long way to go after crossing it. The whole journey between the two cities is commonly referred to as “crossing the Nullarbor”.
- The density of stars in the night sky from the camp site of the roadhouse in the middle of the Plain.
We’ve deemed it too much effort to put up our tent for single-night stays. Instead, we sleep in the car. Usually on the air bed in the boot, but if we really can’t be bothered with moving all of our kit to the front two seats, we’ll recline the front passenger seat and sleep as we can (see pics). We spent two nights like this at noisy roadhouses in which, even though they’re in the middle of nowhere, invariably have a disproportionate amount of noisy drunks in their camp site. Avoiding a third night of similar disturbance, we headed for the solitude of a sheep station that also offers “heritage accommodation” and stayed in the shearers quarters.
Cruise control is a wonderful thing.
Filed under Australia |
36 comments »
Comments
Comment from fraser n leonora murray
Time: January 29, 2009, 11:51 pm
Wow,well done ,it looks great,we are driving from Perth to Adelaide in Sept 2009.We intend taking 10/12 days but going South when we leave Perth and going alone the West and South coasts then up to Kalgoorlie/Leonora/Norseman and on to Adelaide.
Any advise/tips would be most welcome,best places to stay etc.
Looking forward to replies.
PS.
Love your little country.We are from Scotland and just love your vast distances.
Comment from daveb
Time: January 30, 2009, 1:02 am
@fraser n leonora: Great to hear from you again. I’ve dropped you an e-mail with some discoveries that we made — hope you find something useful. Feel free to get back in touch if there’s anything else you want to know.
Comment from bill Milner
Time: March 22, 2009, 10:25 am
Fun to read your entries. Nice pix. Nullarbor is not an aboriginal word. It’s two words combined: Latin. Null and arbor. No trees. I traveled the Nullarbor in the 70’s. No trees, no vehicles either. Try a nice visit north of Adelaide, Andamooka. Mine some opals.
Comment from bill Milner
Time: March 22, 2009, 10:30 am
Interesting side note, hamburgers across Australia: Sydney, hamburgers come with a large slice of beet root (pickled beet… yuk!) Adelaide, hamburgers are made with ham, Perth, hamburgers don’t come with meat unless you ask.
Comment from daveb
Time: March 22, 2009, 11:49 pm
@bill Milner: Quite right, quite right — I made a ‘thinko’ when documenting the origins of the word ‘Nullarbor’. Thanks for correcting me on this. Love your note on hamburgers — as it happens, I absolutely *love* beetroot! Just goes to show that for everyone that hates it, somewhere in the world another loves it to balance out the world. Without balance, we’d all fall off the side of our planet…
Comment from Papibryn
Time: April 13, 2009, 9:45 am
found this site on a google search, very helpful as am planning a campervan trip Sept next, perth up to broome then down to port augusta and back across the nullarbor to perth via the south west.
did Perth to Broome back in 76 just after a wet, the dirt was interesting to say the least.
Comment from daveb
Time: April 20, 2009, 2:05 am
@Papibryn: We know somebody who crossed the Nullarbor in a Land Rover and Mini(!) in 1968… I gather the road surfaces have been improved several times since then. Good luck with your road trip — let us know how it goes.
Comment from Lisa McMaster
Time: April 6, 2012, 12:49 pm
Hi guys, fun to read your account, especially as I went west on the Eyre Highway in 2002. I was advised to ring some of the car hire companies and see if any wanted a vehicle relocated and struck gold on the third attempt – I had the use of a camper van for 1 Aussie dollar a day to cover insurance plus petrol (not inconsiderable in cost due to the distance!), I was given 2900 km and 6 days to do the journey. The good part was that I did not have to stay at any roadhouses, just camp the van in the bush somewhere and drive to the roadhouse to get showered in the morning. I woke up surrounded by emus and kangaroos on a couple of days. It was also possible to dive off to a fantastic viewpoint to see the Southern Wright whales and their calves in the Bight and the abandoned telegraph station at Eucla.
The real stunner of course was the night sky – no sodium or indeed other lighting to disrupt the view. I can strongly recommend taking this journey, although of course I don’t know how much things have changed since 2002!
Comment from william adams
Time: May 13, 2012, 9:54 am
Hi
We traveled the same route, @ the same, it’s a wonder we did’nt bump into each other, lol
pics here…
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.186794560196.125217.673230196&type=3
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we drove it in 1967 when it was about 800 miles of dirt road…in a short wheel base land rover…talk about a loooong drive!
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