Friday...9 October 2015

Nullabor Crossing.
Day One.
Esperance to Norseman and out along the road to a free camp called Baxter which is about half way along the 90 mile straight. This is the longest straight stretch of road in Australia and runs for 90 mile or 144.8 kilometres without a bend. It goes on and on and bloody on and on! Taking an overnight break in the middle is a good idea, it helps with the safe driving factor and stops some of the boredom. Just before we stopped for the night we saw a herd of wild camels near our camp area. I decided there and then that if I  heard noises outside overnight I was NOT going out to see what was making the noise!
Day Two.
More long and boring travel to another free camp, this one was called the 81k peg camp, probably because it is 81 kilometres in from the border, having crossed into South Australia at Border Village. We did see the usual push bike riders. All the way across the Nullabor at various places the road has been made into emergency airstrips for the RFDS.  It is rather comforting to know that help is never too far away in this vast land of ours. There seemed to be a lot more traffic going west than we usually see out there. We put it down to people returning from the football grand final in Melbourne and also there was a large number of motor homes heading to the CMCA rally later this month in Albany WA.

Day Three.
Up late, well it was not late late but because we had crossed a couple of time zones and because South Australia is also on daylight saving time, we lost two and a half hours along the way so while the clock in the car said we were on the road at 8.00am it was in actual fact 10.30am. Ah well, it just meant happy hour came quicker yesterday! We stopped during the day to refuel the ute out of the extra jerry cans we carry and Himself was engulfed in huge flies and had to resort to spraying with the Aeroguard as they were biting him and drawing blood! The other thing to happen was passing push bike riders but this lot had modified their bikes and were in fact lying down to pedal. Looks odd. We only had to drive for four hours before arriving in Ceduna where we have now parked up for a couple of days to allow our bodies to catch up to the clocks.