Ceduna to Nullarbor

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So, we purchased extra supplies for our breakfasts across the Nullarbor and, wouldn’t you know it? – this morning we had a voucher for complimentary continental breakfasts! Oh well everything is processed and packaged and will keep for another morning.

We decided that we would find the bakery in town for rolls/sandwiches for lunch again today. Bernie Googled and was told that one bakery is permanently closed and the one that remains in business is a little out of the town centre. Google guided us there and there was precisely nothing when we reached the pin drop on the map. Google strikes again. I suggested cruising down the main street to see what we could see but, no, Bernie asked Google again. At least on the second attempt she did guide us to the Ceduna Bakery and Coffee Lounge (on the main street!) where we purchased two beef paninis to go.

Speaking of Google Maps, it indicates that we are just fine to drive across the Nullarbor. Despite this assurance AND further confirmation from the WA Emergency website we still popped into the Visitor Information Centre right on 9.00am to check that there was no additional local knowledge that would encourage or require us to change our plans.

We are good to go! The staff in the information centre were very helpful confirming that the road reopened on Saturday afternoon and traffic is getting back to normal with backlogs of trucks, cars and caravans clearing and supplies being delivered to the roadhouses across the Nullarbor. Hopefully the Nullarbor Roadhouse will be able to feed us tonight. She also reinforced that we should not take any notice of Google for information about road conditions and to only rely on the WA Emergency and Main Roads websites for accurate and up-to-date info.

We were given a detailed map to use for our crossing. It has lots of useful tourist information about things to see and do from the Eyre Highway.

Our first stop was at Penong, 75 kilometres west of Ceduna. Penong is the Town of Windmills and is home to the Windmill Museum. As we approached from the east there were several working windmills in paddocks adjacent to the highway. The museum is off the road a little bit but was easy to find because their biggest exhibit ‘Bruce’ has a massive 35-foot fan that is visible from everywhere in Penola! You have to love a windmill so much more character than the solar panels that are replacing them to power electric pumps to bring water from underground.

On the western side of Penong we found the well signposted turnoff for Point Sinclair and Lake MacDonnell (the Pink Lake). We had been a bit concerned about whether it would be difficult to find the Pink Lake, but the signposts were excellent, and we could not have missed the turnoff even if we’d tried.

Before long the bitumen ended and we were driving on gravel behind a driver with little experience of dirt road driving if the very low speed was anything to go by? For a while Bernie just sat behind not wanting to be rude and overtake in a cloud of dust. Eventually it got too much for him and we overtook the slow-moving vehicle, but on a section of road that was more like packed clay than loose sand/gravel. Not as much dust kicking up anyway.

We arrived at Lake MacDonnell and parked on the causeway that separates the pink lake from the grey lake. In the summer months the particular combination of algae, bacteria and salt make it a vivid shade of pink. At the Visitor Information Centre, they had a photo taken last month that featured very pink water. Today, at ground level, it was … pinkish. Bernie put the drone up and it will be interesting to see how the colour (pinkness) in the drone photos compares with the hand-held photos as Fran warned that the intensity of the colour really varies with sun/cloud conditions and the height and angle of viewing! Drone launched, used and landed without mishap!

We continued to the end of the road at Port Le Hunte/Point Sinclair. Despite this being a bumpy unmade road, I was dozing off by the time we were 23 kilometres in! The geographical feature is named Point Sinclair and the jetty was once the site of a very busy port known at Port Le Hunte.

It looked like a couple of people might have been using the shelter beside the beach to work remotely with a couple of office chairs featuring amongst the picnic tables and benches?? Much more likely that these random pieces of furniture have been dumped in this otherwise pristine location. Why do people do things like that? Grrrr. The beach is nestled in a sheltered bay and is netted during summer. It was a little too cool to contemplate a swim this morning … even if we didn’t have to worry about being taken by a Great White Shark.

This was an in and out side trip so we had to take the same road back to the highway. On the return journey we pulled into Cactus Beach, a popular camping and surfing destination. From the visitor car park a boardwalk provides easy access to a beautiful beach. The beach was discovered by surfers in the early 60s and is renowned for its left and right breaks.

The map we were given this morning alerted us to the existence of The Big Wombat at Scotesco west of Penong. Hmmn the first problem was that the map has been printed with a spelling mistake. It took a while to find it on Google Maps because the Big Wombat is at Scotdesco. We took note of how many kilometres west we needed to travel and had our eyes peeled for the Big Womabat at that point. Nothing!!

A few more kilometres west and we thought it was looking promising when we spied a small sign with a wombat on it advertising the Scotdesco Community. Then, as we flew past at 110km/hour, Tracey noticed the same wombat sign beside a gate set well off the highway that must have been the entrance to the Scotdesco Community. So, the Big Wombat was a total bust for this morning. However, now we know the lay of the land and the fact that we need to turn off into the site owned/operated by the Scotdesco Community perhaps we might think about that for the return trip??

The next turn off was for Fowlers Bay another 20 (or so) kilometres west. Fran told us that the road is unmade, but well-maintained because there is a caravan park out there and they want to be able to attract caravaners with a decent access road. As we’d been advised the bitumen finished not far from the highway and the rest of our journey was on gravel.

We timed our arrival in Fowlers Bay perfectly for our lunch break. Despite a brisk onshore breeze, we were able to enjoy the beef paninis we purchased this morning. I opened a can of kombucha from our car fridge and it was not happy after the bouncy ride into Fowlers Bay. The ants will be feasting on spilled kombucha for days!

It was a very educational lunch stop with info boards mounted along the foreshore. We were able to read all about the early days of the settlement when it was a thriving port and an important entry/supply point for the exploration and settlement of South Australia’s ‘far west’. The story that struck a chord was of Edward John Eyre who set up a base camp at Fowlers Bay in 1840 and made several forays westward before embarking on his epic 1841 journey of exploration which took him from Fowlers Bay all the way to King Georges Sound (Albany) in WA. These days it takes about 18 hours to complete that journey. It took Eyre and his companions four months and three weeks! Until we reach Norseman in WA, we will be travelling on the Eyre Highway named after him.

We returned to the highway via Coorabie. Not that it made much difference to Tracey whether it was out and back on the same road or two sides of a triangle because she was asleep again. Well, more asleep than awake!! There wasn’t enough travel diary to type up to keep her alert. This morning there was some conversation about whether chewing tobacco would stimulate wakefulness?? I think this came out of Bernie relating to Cathy and Steve that Peter (as in Peter’s Humpy at Poochera Districts Museum yesterday) was a tobacco chewer who died from cancer of the lip at age 83. Nope, don’t think that’s an option, but may I should try some Red Bull????

Back on the Eyre Highway we topped up with diesel at the Yalata Roadhouse. We only needed a quarter of a tank (20 litres), but Fran suggested that we top up before Nullarbor because we will pay top dollar at the points furthest from Perth and Adelaide. The price in Yalata was ‘only’ $205.9/litre. We will know later how much that saved us.

Our next stop was about five kilometers before the turn off for the Head of Bight where there is a signpost - Nullarbor Plain, The Eastern End of the Treeless Plain. Thank goodness there is a rest area there for crazy tourists to stop to take the obligatory photo of the start of their journey across this legendary piece of Oz.

Shortly thereafter we turned left onto the road out to the Head of Bight Visitors Centre. And we just made it in the gate at about 3.20pm with the visitor centre due to close at 4.00pm. In fact, as we were driving in, we passed a ute driving out which it turned out was the staff member tasked with closing the gates at 3.30pm today! None of our research had prepared us for the fact that the centre closes so early at this time of the year. Technically the centre is a whale watching site and peak season for viewing Southern Right Whales is from mid-May until late October, so February is very much off season for the centre. Of course, the ocean and the cliffs are not seasonal, so we took a brisk half hour walk along the boardwalks to view the Bunda Cliffs and the Great Australian Bight before exiting at 4.00pm.

Back out to the highway again and just a short 14-kilometre leg to arrive at the Nullarbor Roadhouse where we will be spending the night. The accommodation is not 4-star, but it is clean and tidy and better than we expected it might be. We had set our expectations low for our accommodation across the Nullarbor, so I guess we were prepared for it to be much more basic than it is.

We checked in and unpacked the cars and noted numerous signs up about snakes being sighted. Ugh! Tracey’s snake paranoia was further fed by the full colour, laminated A4 notice in our room titled Nullarbor Roadhouse Snake Identification. Oh wow, we could encounter a Desert Death Adder, King Brown (Mulga), Western Brown (Gwardar) or a Dugite (Spotted Brown). Aaargh!! Aside from the Death Adder which is striped they ALL look like brown snakes. Hoping not to actually see one around the roadhouse.

Gear installed in our rooms we headed back out to drive to the Murrawijinie Caves that can be found on an unmade track about 10 kilometres north of the roadhouse. It was a bumpy ride with very few signposts, but we made it without straying onto any private property in the process. Although called caves, we wondered if they are more like sinkholes? We are not geologists and, unfortunately, there is no interpretative information at the caves to learn more about their formation. Quite picturesque though and great to explore more than just the highway. The swifts certainly favour the caves to make their homes. There were dozens of swifts flying in and out of and around the caves.

On our way back to the roadhouse we very nearly took the wrong turn onto private property, but noticed at the last moment that their Keep Out Private Property sign was laying down. We thought we should prop it back up to help Cathy and Steve (and others) to avoid straying down the private road. Tracey was way too scared to lift a metal sheet off the ground in case one of those bloody snakes was hiding under it. Bernie was brave, flipping it up with his boot to ensure it was all clear underneath and then propping it back up … until the wind blows it over again.

Back at the roadhouse we topped up the tank ready for tomorrow but this time at an eye-watering $299.9/litre. So, instead of needing 35 litres at that price we only needed 15 litres. That is money in our pockets to put towards our next tank of fuel.

Still, go, go, go with dinner next on the agenda. The only choice is the roadhouse, but it had a good selection of pub-style meals. We had all thought it would be hamburgers or hamburgers tonight, but we had much more to choose from. So, we all ordered hamburgers anyway, ha, ha, ha!



Steps: 11,421 (7.84kms)

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