Blogs from Nullarbor Plain, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania

“We’ve done it twenty-six times,” the grey-haired retiree next door told me matter-of-factly. “Kids and grandkids in WA,” he added by way of explanation. “People ask us, ‘What do you see out there?’ ‘Australia,’ I tell ’em, ‘we see Australia.’” I’d encountered a similar reaction when I first started talking of driving the Nullarbor, that 1,200 km (745 miles) expanse of barely inhabited country in the middle of the 3,940 km (2,450 miles) between Perth and Sydney. “But why would you wanna do that? There’s nothing there.” “Jeez, have you got enough music?” “Well, I guess, if it’s a ‘bucket list’ kind of a thing…” Yet, since joining some friends in a couple of self-drive trips out of Johannesburg and into Botswana and Zambia in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I’ve had a yen for crossing countries ... read more

It doesn't seem to matter how much you prepare before you leave home, something always goes wrong at the last minute. Sylvia and I (well mostly Sylvia) had spent five weeks cleaning the house in preparation for our house-sitter's arrival. We had carpenters to repair the rail on the back deck. A handyman repaired the kitchen drawers. An electrician installed a new fan in the lounge room. All of the carpets were cleaned. We even got someone to come and clean all our windows, inside and out. The house had never looked better, even when it was new. We were all packed up and ready to leave. Our friend Gary had arrived to drive us to the train station. I went into the guest bedroom to turn off the main light. As I did so, there ... read more

Another pack up, another long day in the car and we pull into a road side stop on the Nullarbor Plains to set up for the night. We light our camp fire and then launch into masterchef mode doing a big cook up to use up all of our fruit and veg before the dreaded border quarantine check point.... read more

Approaching Norseman we scored another passing manoeuvre. This time Joan managed to capture the evidence. This makes five vehicles passed in 14,000 km. Joan suspects this will be our last, but Greg lives in hope. The Nullarbor has a reputation so when we stopped at Norseman we decided to get the 4WD wheels balanced as we had noticed a vibration at 70kph. It seems that the Wolf Creek Crater road had also caused us to throw off some wheel weights. We crossed the Nullarbor in two very long days, both days starting at 5:30am. Initially we planned to stop at Cocklebiddy but the cave has been closed to the public so that killed that plan. Joan was delighted – Greg much less so. The last time we crossed the Nullarbor we saw vast areas of beautifully ... read more

ESPERANCE TO NORSEMAN AND ACROSS THE NULLARBOR to Border Village. An overview of the Nullarbor: Nullarbor means no trees. The plain is a great limestone plain which is porous and does not hold water, making vegetation difficult to grow and people to live. Crossing the southern part of Australia means crossing the Nullarbor just above the Great Australian Bite. The Nullarbor drive is generally considered to be the 1200km drive between Norseman in the west and Ceduna in the east. Preparations included a fully serviced car that we had faith in, lots and lots of water, space blankets for shelter if we broke down, etc. (One of the water container leaked, so we had a wet car boot and some wet clothes. – Agh!). Confidence in the car was important as distances between civilisation ... read more