We knew it would come round….. the big drive along the Nullarbor Plain – the main route from West Australia to South Australia along one of the loneliest places on earth and one of the windiest places on earth as well! Great! It also has the longest straight road in Australia stretching 145km ( known as 90 Mile Stretch) part of the Eyre Highway on the western side of West Australia before you get to the border with South Australia. A total distance between Esperance (WA) to Ceduna (SA) of 1397km. With two time zone changes with clocks going forward 45 minutes at Caiguna still in WA, and another hour and a half as we cross into SA. That added to our time driving challenge!
The Nullabor is literally interpreted as the treeless plain so we expected a Nullarboring drive ahead, so got the ipod ready to hand to get some music blasting out along the way.
We planned to hit it in two days with one night stopover. Stocked up with plenty of trail bars, fruit, water and sandwiches, we set off at 5.30am on the Sunday morning from Esperance and headed up to Norseman before the right turn to the Nullarbor.
Day One:
Our first day’s drive between us notched up over 930km reaching Eucla Roadhouse camp site at gone 4pm. The 90 Mile Straight was indeed straight with endless horizon of road but there were still alot of trees up to Eucla so we did wonder about the treeless bit. We saw alot of the Aussie wildlife warning signs about kangaroos, wombats, emus and camels on the loose but only saw a few roadkill (not camels) and hundreds of dead green budgies on the road on one particular section. That was strange we could only assume they died catching insects off the road as the roadtrains come blasting through…nothing survives if a roadtrain hits it here. Even when they zap past Hilda she gets shaken around. The wind was luckily behind us so helped to keep the petrol consumption down and was’nt too strong either so Hilda’s lack of aerodynamics were’nt too tested apart from the odd thermal blast in the side that seems to come from nowhere!
Metal camels at Norseman
Start of 90 Mile Straight
Roadtrain approaching
Heck its a bit Nullaboring flat!
At Eucla roadhouse the halfway point of our journey
We've come this far!
Day 2:
We set off at 6.15am the next day ready for another long drive (luckily not as long as yesterday) as we wanted to get to Streaky Bay about 693km away. We crossed the SA border at about 6.30am (now really 8am ish) Today’s drive took us closer to the coast and some spectacular cliffs called Bunda Cliffs – they reminded us of the White Cliffs of Dover. The sun was low over these cliffs as it was early in the morning and they stretched away stacked like massive silver wedges looking out over an endless big ocean…..The Great Australian Bight. Amazing!
We the hit the real treeless plain section at Yulata and boy was it treeless!! It went on for miles and we could count about half a dozen windswept trees the whole length! We also came across hundreds of Harley Davison Motorbike Club riders all going west in various groups to a convention at Margaret River, WA the next weekend. We saw a few of them the day before and some of them must have been at Albany too.
No more dead budgies but swarms of small locusts featured highly along the section of treeless plain as there was nothing else but grass to attract them. We had to drive a bit slower so that they would’nt splatter the windscreen. Yuck!
We reached civilisation again at Ceduna and then turned south into the Eyre Peninsula arriving at Streaky (Bacon) Bay at 3pm. What a welcome relief a beautiful peaceful beach and we got a camp space right on the beach. Heaven!
Bunda Cliffs
Don't go near the edge its a long drop!
It really is a treeless plain!
Wildlife on the loose!
Sign at the end of the Nullarbor