The end of The Nullabor

Right now we are about 100km from the considered end of the Nullabor crossing at Norseman, where we can collect our certificate of achievement. We’ve stopped a little earlier at a caravan park that soooo many people recommended to us. Its called Fraser Range, is on a working sheep station and is so lovely that we have extended our stay to 2 nights. When we booked in, the manager asked how many nights. “Just the one” “Yeah. They all say that the first night” was the reply. We really only wanted to charge the batteries a bit, but then discovered that they cook dinner and last night’s was lamb shanks. Dunc can’t go past lamb, Lexie was ecstatic at the prospect of mashed potato and we were ALL rather keen on the pavalova for dessert.

It’s just beautiful here. Someone has a lovely sense of aesthetic and an endless supply of old machinery, so there are wonderful gates, archways and displays all over the place. Dinner was great – it was served in a covered and somewhat-walled camp area with a toasty warm pot-belly stove. There was a guy playing guitar and singing songs and the tables were large and communal which encourages conversation. It was so nice that we have just been convinced to go back again for dinner tonight! Its not cheap ($25 per head for an adult) but it was so nice to sit down over dinner with adult conversation. The kids flaked out completely at 7.30pm  (which was 9pm once you accounted for jet lag) so I was able to tuck them into bed and return for some quality me time.

Yesterday we completed the long straight stretch of the Nullabor. Its 145 km then a bend or two and another stretch of about the same. Dunc has been playing with his GoPro, but the resulting movies might be too big to get online. Certainly waaay too big until we have our Telstra wifi back.

We also stopped at the Balladonia Roadhouse, which has a great little museum in there. Its by far the best of all the roadhouses, and actually has a coffee machine for real coffee (Mundrabilla Roadhouse will charge you $4 for a spoon of Nescafe!) The museum has info on all the local stations and the outback camels and, to Duncan’s great delight, a big chunk of the Skylab US Space Station which fell to Earth quite nearby.

We have been incredibly fortunate with the weather as we have crossed the Nullabor. There has been a high pressure system in the bight almost the whole time, which has resulted in a tail wind for us. This has made Dunc’s job driving much easier. The short 80km drive into Ceduna was straight into a head wind and Dunc looked like he was wrestling with the steering wheel the entire time. Bertha’s temp was higher and we were anxiously watching the gauges the whole time. Thank goodness it was such a short trip, or we would have been pulling over to stop regardless. We’ve had NOTHING like that on our crossing. Tail winds have resulted in a happy Bertha and she’s been purring along at about 90 – 100km/h the entire time. She really does love highway cruising and it is very obvious that she was built for that sort of travel. Just quietly, Dunc loves highway cruising as much as Bertha!

Tomorrow we head towards Esperance and make our way slowly around to Perth. We are all quite excited as we will be catching up with Hilly and Pop and meeting up with Rene and Christobel. Some family time will be good for Lexie, as she had a little bout of homesickness at Easter. We are very much looking forward to some grandparent kisses and hugs.

The start of The Nullabor

I’m writing this entry, perched on the top of one of the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. I was hoping for a gorgeous sunrise, but the weather closed in overnight and its all overcast. The views are still amazing though! I woke up to the rain bucketing down last night. Its so wonderful feeling all snug and warm in our home. I’m glad we ended up with Bertha though. Having a coach instead of a bus means we are insulated a lot from the noise as well. There are a LOT of road trains that pass in the night and they would be very annoying if we were living in a camper or under canvas. In Bertha we can kind-of hear them. I went to bed with the curtains open and watched them pass by. They each have so many various coloured lights I call them horizontal moving Christmas trees!

We are travelling the Nullabor in what must be slow motion when compared to everyone else. It will end up taking us about 4 days to get across. We stopped the first night at the Head of the Great Australian Bight. There’s a whale watching centre there which is open all year, even though the whales are only there from May to September – Doh! We were a few weeks too early… The centre is open until 4pm and we got there just after 3.30 so we were worried we might have to rush. The couple running it were so lovely and let us back in the next morning to take some more photos in a better light. We repaid them with a couple of slices of freshly baked banana cake, baked to use up all our South Australian fruit.

The Nullabor is quite boring, but actually not as boring as we expected. We learnt today that it was named from the latin term Nullis Arbor - No Trees - but there are actually a lot of trees, and the coast line is stunning!

We stayed the second night just before the state border of South and Western Australia. Dunc had always said he wanted to pull up just before the border and have a beer overlooking the cliffs. Fortunately, we found the PERFECT free camp and he was able to do just that.

Ceduna

We were excited to get from the Flinders Hwy back to Highway 1 (cue the Waifs' song for Lexie and I...) and had a lovely 2 night ‘rest’ in a caravan park in Ceduna. Our big rig wouldn’t fit at the one everyone at Haslam recommended, which was a good thing, as we ended up at a wonderful one a little bit out of town at Shelley Beach. We were right in the sand dunes, and able to walk up and over them to the beach - which did have lots of shells on it. 

We didn’t do much at Ceduna. Dunc argued with Telstra. Our issue is STILL ongoing and he has now raised a TIO dispute. He rings, gets put on hold for an hour, put through to someone who can’t help, then the next level of support ring back a day later when we are out of range. Its insane. It would be fine if we were in a house or office all day, happy to be at their beck and call. It was funny hearing one guy list all the towers we had tried to access them from. He thought it was a tower issue until he realized we had used towers from Adelaide to Ceduna with the same damn problem. Really we will have traversed half the bloody country before they get it sorted.

So Dunc did that and the kids played in the shells and rode hire quad bikes and watched telly since we had both power AND reception - they don’t take either for granted anymore! I did the washing. LOL. I also walked the beach a few times.

We DID go to the Bureau of Meteorology station and have a tour. We were hoping to see a weather balloon go up, but the afternoon balloons are only let off when the weather gets nasty and that day was just a normal old boring day. We did have a tour of the facility and the meteorologist showed us all the equipment. Dunc and I were fascinated, the kids not so much. It was a little over their heads. We did all enjoy seeing the piece of equipment which measures sunlight though. It’s a crystal ball which focuses sunlight onto a piece of card. Very impressive.

 

Streaky Bay and Haslam

We are well and truly into the Great Australian Bight now. From Coffin Bay we headed East, intending to stay at Perlubie Beach, a beach-based free camp which looked just gorgeous. Of course it had to be Easter weekend, and Good Friday already so the place was choc-a-block full of caravans. L Bloody weekenders! So we hit the books in addition to Wiki Camps and looked for somewhere/ANYwhere else we could stop. The highway rest areas were all free, but had no shade and no company so they were our last choices. We ended up in the teeny tiny town of Haslam at another beach ‘free’ camp ($5 per night) with about 15 other groups, mainly caravans. When we arrived, everyone was already here, and Dunc had to reverse through the entire campground to get around into the spot that would fit Bertha. He did a wonderful job (as always) and got a standing round of applause from two big groups. It’s been lovely and we ended up at another group’s campfire for ‘happy hour’ yesterday. The two guys actually knew Dunc’s father and uncle – what a small world!

We are only a half hour drive from Streaky Bay, and we’ve actually ended up back there 3 times now! We went to fish off the jetty. Angus caught a trumpeter, much to Lexie’s disgust. She thinks its “her turn” to catch a fish! We also went to do some shopping, to jump off the jetty in the Shark Net and to check out the Easter Craft Market. It is the most beautiful town and reminds me a bit of a South Australian Sorrento. Its very pretty and has some lovely houses and hotels, but in a sleepy small town way.

We had to drive back past Streaky Bay to check our Murphy’s Haystacks, which Dunc drove past while I was napping. He didn’t realize what they were – obviously has NO recollection of Alison Lester’s book! I am soooo glad we went back. We timed it for late afternoon, and the sun was behind the wispiest of clouds for a while but came out in time to make some beautiful shadows.

We’ve had a lovely 3 days here, using our little campfire pot each night. Angus has gone from being rather scared and silly around the flames to lighting a perfect fire last night.

We did some Easter baking. I was really disappointed as my favourite biscuit recipe wasn’t photographed. I don’t have it on Bertha! And Larissa (who gave it to me and would know it) is in Germany, and right then it was midnight. Bugger! I had one recipe I didn’t like, so Lexie and I consulted the 3 cookbooks on board. Stephanie, who is usually my font of all knowledge, has NO recipe for cookies or biscuits that can be rolled and cut into shapes! She’s failed me!! My other go-to book, the green Nursing Home recipe book also had NO biscuit dough recipe. It was looking like a failure… until we read the Blackylakealicious Book and found the Christmas Cookies recipe! Yayyyyy! Thank you Lily Hammond from Grade 4! We now have a new favourite recipe, and no need to disturb Larissa in Germany.

The children delivered biscuits to everyone here. They were well received apart from 2 grumpy gutses who were both camped “up the back”.  I think its rather sad that everyone expected to pay for a cookie though – they were most surprised that the kids were giving them away! The children made a nest for the Easter Bunny in the bushes beside Bertha, but it seems this is also the spot for the local fox’s den and he got to eat their eggs from the Bunny before them! Luckily there were lots in the bus, it was only the outside trail eggs that were gone. Well… the wrappers were left, only the chocolate was gone! And that’s about the same state of the children’s Easter eggs now too!