Friday 28 February 2014 - on the way to Port Augusta, SA
Well, we finally crossed the border and made it to another state! Funny though, within a few days of getting into SA we’re already making plans to leave it. We had a pretty good run across the Nullarbor. After about four hours of a dirt road ‘shortcut’ (from Cape Le Grand out to the Eyre Highway) that avoided a return back to Esperance and took Norseman out of the equation as well, we totalled about 750km on Wednesday and finally pulled up at Eucla around 6:30pm. This is the last stop before crossing the border and we went forward in time by 45 minutes. If we were too weary to set up the camper, we were considering getting a motel room/cabin, but we weren’t too bad. Plus there was a heavy due that morning so the camper needed to air out that night anyway.
Eucla has a pretty cool view (it’s perched up high) out over the ocean and is also the location of the old telegraph station, but we were a little too preoccupied to take in the view or go exploring. In the morning it was cloudy and dull so we couldn’t really appreciate the vista then either. Oh well, next time. We met a fella (named Ian) who was travelling right around Australia with a horse and cart (well, two horses) raising money for cancer. He’s been going for four months, left from Boyup Brook in southwest WA and has raised about $16,000 already. The girls went and donated some money to him and we got chatting as he was very friendly (plus he seemed a bit lonely). He’s an interesting character, Glenn had even heard him on ABC radio. He does about 25km a day and the horses eat six times a day. One pulls, the other walks behind and then they rotate. He hasn’t had to pay for accommodation yet but it’s still cost him $40k already!
He’s doing better than the other bloke we passed earlier in the day though. He’s walking from Melbourne to Fremantle and back and apparently he’s only raised about $1,000. We donated money to him too. We didn’t talk to him, Glenn just spoke to the guy who’s accompanying him in a caravan and apparently they do about 55km a day. He only left Melbourne on 10 January this year, so he’s making good ground. You’d think you’d make more money than that in six weeks though – bloody tight grey nomads! I guess they’re saving all their coins for the washing machines... and even showers! It was $20 for a site (unpowered) at Eucla but you had to put a dollar coin in for five minutes of shower water (hot or cold)! Still, Yasmin found $1 in our bathroom so that did us hehehe.
After a quick and relatively painless pack-up (apart from Ian chewing our ear off), we said goodbye to WA and crossed through to SA, changing the clock another hour and 45 minutes forward. Hmmm, time zone changes and kids... not a good mix. Fortunately we were travelling far enough east to absorb some of the discrepancy and they’ve adjusted fairly well. I think it’s us who are bothered more – the sun comes up at 7am and it’s setting around 8:30pm! We didn’t have to do a quarantine check here, it’s only when you get to Ceduna that you can actually infect anything so that’s where you have to throw out any fruit and veg you haven’t eaten/cooked.
The rest of the Nullarbor crossing wasn’t too bad, although we did have one Sienna meltdown which we turned into a wee stop/jerry can fuel-up. Nullarbor Roadhouse was exorbitantly (and since talking to friends we discovered notoriously expensive. Diesel was $2.09 per litre and after we were told it was $18 for a coffee, hot chocolate and Red Bull can (the small one!) Glenn forewent his caffeine hit and we paid $6 each for our hot drinks! Luckily we’d put the jerry can of diesel in prior so didn’t need much. The previous day we’d only put $40 and $50 at the roadhouses (about $2 a litre) because we’d been told Nundroo was heaps cheaper (under $1.70 a litre).
I was a bit disappointed because I ended up missing a lot of the scenery of the drive. Camper Trailer Touring magazine had asked me to submit a story on Kalbarri the previous week, so I’d rushed through it and got it all in by Friday, not knowing how reliable our internet service would be over the next few days. On Monday, as soon as we got into range after our rough dirt road, I received some emails from the editors asking me to resubmit a lot of the photos because they hadn’t worked, send more photos of camping and driving and rewrite the story. So much fun when I can hardly see the screen from the glare, the kids are making their usual demands for iPads, iPhones, water, food, sunglasses etc (interspersed with whingeing), plus the internet was dropping in and out disrupting uploads. And I had to keep everything charged up so there were cables going everywhere. The joys of travel writing! Unfortunately we didn’t do any sightseeing either, as we just wanted to get to the other side and weren’t in the right frame of mind, but there are a few things I’d like to check out, some of which don’t require much of a detour either.
We finally made it into Ceduna, where we caught up with our friends Bruce and Sharon, who are also fellow north Queenslanders (from Innisfail). We met them at Cape Range and they’ve moved a lot quicker than us, but we’ve finally caught them up and of course will be overtaking them now. It was great to see some familiar faces, especially east coasters and we enjoyed sharing stories and learning what the other people we’d met at Cape Range were up to. We bumped into them again yesterday, on the way back from a bit of sightseeing but they’re heading inland soon and we’re off to Port Augusta, so we won’t see them again for quite a while.
After a grocery re-stock at Ceduna on Wednesday morning, we drove south to Speeds Point, one of the many little coastal cheap/free camps south-west of Streaky Bay. Our friends Mel and Nathan, who we’d been in contact with since we met them at Kalumburu, had spent the previous night there and said it was a nice enough spot. We set up and once again, enjoyed catching up with some of the nicest people we’ve met on the road.
Yesterday we went for a walk around the coastal cliffs, which are rough and rugged and dramatic. Contrasting against the dry, low scrub the whole area is very reminiscent of the Quobba region, but still different. Another common point was the wind. We have sand everywhere. In the kitchen, in the car, even in our bed! It’s not a hot wind either, we had the fire going for the last two nights but it was pretty ineffective in warming us up the gusts were so strong. The other highlight for us yesterday was a drive out to Point Labatt, where a sea lion colony lives. Apparently over 1500 of them live there and we saw plenty on the rocks, but you’re up so high it’s a bit hard to see. The views are fairly spectacular there too. The area isn’t ‘pretty’ but its harshness still has its own unique appeal. Sadly, we just aren’t in the mood to appreciate nature at her fiercest. We’re over wind. We’re over cold. We’re over camping. We’re ready to come home.
