Western Australia 2009

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Geelong to Kalgoorlie

We are free camping 128 kms north of the Nullarbor Roadhouse, 100 meters from the edge of the Bundra cliffs overlooking the Great Australia Bight. We arrived in the dark having stopped at the Roadhouse for 3 hours where we had television reception for the big game between Geelong and St Kilda (for ORs - overseas readers - both football teams were unbeaten 14-zip, the first time in AFL history this has occurred). It was a great game, it went down to the wire, but Geelong was beaten by a single goal.

En route to Adelaide we drove through fierce storms, high winds and driving rain but since Port Augusta we have been greeted by sunny weather and moonlit nights.

We free camped at Dimboola, but spent the second night with the old Adelaide friends (Lou and David Hills) on their retirement farm at Mt Pleasant in the Adelaide Hills, and the second with Anna Muller in Adelaide itself. Wonderful company and gracious hosts. Thanks once again Lou and David, and Anna.

We replaced our TV antennae in Adelaide (I pranged it into the phone line in the lane behind our house before we left) then spent the next few nights free camping at Redhill and Kyancutta. We enjoyed a free day in Ceduna, unhooking the Suzuki and took in the local sights. The wheat country between Kimba (home of Cory Enright) and Ceduna was a real surprise for us. We expected to see desert country. The good local rain ensured the crops got up to a good start. Like Victoria and the Riverina, this region too has endured 5 years of drought. The countryside was emerald green for hundreds of kilometers.

Now that we are on the Nullarbor Plain itself, we haven’t seen a tree for 200 kms. We are both very excited by the possibility of seeing whales in the morning. Apart from sharing this roadside stop with a couple of German backpackers in a Wicked van we are alone. No TV or radio reception. It’s a bit spooky. Luckily, we have Noah the ‘guard cat’ with us.

The following morning we stood on the edge of 300 ft cliffs overlooking the Bight, to see the sun rise. Alas, there wasn’t a whale to be seen. The 300ft cliffs though are a magnificent vista and the southern ocean was at its bluest. There are at least half a dozen such viewing points between the Nullarbor Roadhouse and Eucla, on the WA border. We never stopped at any and were later disappointed to learn that at one of them there were about 40 whales to be seen less than 100 meters from the cliffs; one was an albino calf. We were compensated by seeing a herd of eight wild camels about 500 meters from the edge of the road. One, a bull, came to grief during the night. A road-train hit it (if it had been a car there would have been wreckage) and it was largely in one piece but its four legs were splayed in all the wrong directions.

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