Advertisement
We have crossed the Nullarbor and arrived at Norseman. It's 4.30pm - 2 hours behind Sydney - and at last we have computer service (no phone service for me, though Doug has with his 3G, thank you Telstra).
It has taken us three days to cross the Nullarbor. The first day seemed endless with the very sparse terrain, lots of rain and a bit of wind - the front we'd been staying at Ceduna to avoid! Our first night was at the Nullarbor Roadhouse, on a flat, barren part of the Plain, where there was a motel behind the roadhouse and a patch of bare ground next door - the 'caravan park'. Power but no water, $1 for a shower (Doug was brave but said it wasn't the best, I stayed in the motor home and had a sponge). We went to sleep to the sound of wind, rain, roadtrains and howling dingos.
Yesterday was better, the sun shone and we kept turning off the highway to see the Southern Ocean and the Great Australian Bight. I mentioned how lonely it looked out to sea and remembered when I'd crossed the Bight with my family by ship 48 years
Sign to watch for Kangaroos, emus and camels
We could see the occasional shower we got yesterday coming for miles. There are also signs about every 50 or so kilometres that this was 'an emergency RFDS airfield' and the road would become wider so the Flying Doctor could land in an emergency. earlier! We viewed it over steep cliffs and then over gentler sandhills to beaches below. The scenery went from flat plain with blue or green small round bushes, once in awhile a tree, and endless road, wedge-tail eagles, one emu, several road-kill kangaroos.
We stayed last night at Madura, another roadhouse/motel/caravan park, this time we were parked amongst lovely gum trees with electricity, no water, no service. I braved the community shower and it wasn't too bad.
Our trip today to Norseman has been long, 550 kms. We been on the road about an hour when we saw a car smashed and off the road - three young Japanese boys got out, they'd hit a kangaroo...in the middle of nowhere. We told them we'd get help at the next place - no phone service out there - although there was more traffic, including road trains, going the other way. We finally got to the next roadhouse about an hour later, the owner said he couldn't do leave his place and someone coming on the road would help them. When other vans pulled in we asked and were told someone had been on the CB radio and a tow
truck would be coming from Norseman to tow them (a long trip and a $1600 bill for the tow).
Signs on the road warn to be on the lookout for camels, emus and kangaroos. I did see an emu, kangaroos come out dusk and sunset when we're off the road so only see the roadkill and today we saw one dead camel. We had been talking to two young girls - one from Italy,the other from France, who had met in Adelaide and were driving to Perth. We came across them a few times today and they were thrilled to see - and did a U turn to photograph the camel - even if it was dead.
As we got closer to Norseman the terrain changed again, many gum trees with lovely bronze trunks like those at Broken Hill and leaves shining in the sunlight. Norseman looks like at outback town but is quite civilised and considered 'big' compared to what we've been to ... at least we have water and computer service. I think we can get two channel 9s too, although the channels often change sometime during the evening. Looxury indeed!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.139s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 11; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0769s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb