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Published: March 9th 2013
On Fri 1st March we left Venus Bay and continued around the coast along Flinders Highway towards a place called Ceduna which marks the place where the Nullarbor starts.
The Nullarbor is an infamous stretch of straight road from Ceduna in South Australia towards Perth in WA.
It is nearly 2000km's long through a flat wilderness and crosses vast expanses of desert, bush and real dangerous terroritory including Aboriginal land where tourists and white people are not allowed to leave their vehicles. It means 'no trees' in Aborigini or Latin or something.
Numerous people have gone missing in this area over the years. Statisitics show that 30,000 people a year go missing in Australia! It is a legendary stretch of road that most Aussies know about it but have never crossed it themselves.
The night before we picked up the campervan 'Axle' and Loui made us watch a film called Wolf Creek which is about backpackers who go missing and are then tortured and it is based on a true story!
They spent ages scaring us with other tales of 'The Nullabor'!! Its reputation across Australia is immense... every time we mentioned to Aussies that we were driving from
Brissie to Perth they would say 'so you're doing the Nullabor!' with a look of horror in their eyes!!!
'Why not fly'???? Until recently travellers had to complete a form at the start of the Nullabor and they were then checked off at the other end.
So .... we set off and stopped at a small seaside town called Streaky Bay to stock up on food, fuel, water and cash (in case we were taken hostage!) and moved on towards Ceduna. Lots of people had told us not to stop in Ceduna as it has a reputaition of being full of thieving, ferral, drunken idiginous locals.....ie, aboriginal's .... but they weren't allowed to say that! I explained that were we were from Coventry and were well used to such an environment!!
We turned off yhe main road to see a world famous surfers beach called 'Cactus Beach' which was a complete waste of time and effort as it wasn't nice at all and we had had to travel 20km along a dirt track to get there.
We were onky 100km or so onto the Nullabor but we decided to stop at a place called Fowlers Bay Caravan
Park which had been recommended to us by other travellers. We checked in for two nights thinking that it would be good to be properly rested before the mammoth journey ahead (people had advised the drive would be 2 days / 3 days+) and we could pre-cook food.
It was a very small place with a nice beach, ( It was weird seeing a swimmming area surrounded by a net to keep the sharks away)
It had huge mountainous sand dunes and was absolutely miles from anywhere. We'd had no mobile signal for a week now.
That night we ate our dinner and joined the 10 or so other travellers around a camp fire. One bloke brought out a guitar and as the alcohol went down nearly as quickly as the sun as we talked and sang with them. It all sounds a bit boy scoutish and gay but I suppose the 5 litres of vino helped and it was actually really nice.
Madam needed a lie in the next morning so it was good that we were not travelling the second day! Instead we spent a lazy day exploring Fowler Bay which consisted of about 10 houses,
a caravan park/motel/shop and a population of about 30.
It was a tiny little place but with an interesting history as it was the previously the base for several explorations into WA in the 1800's and sheep trading in the 1900's. Behind it stood a huge sand dune that dominated the town. It was about 100m high and went back for about a mile. Absolutely incredible..... Brutus the town dog befriended us and showed us around. Even I liked him ... until the next morning when I trod in his dogshit.... barefoot!!!
The place was really quiet but they had a regular influx of travellers doing the Nullabor popping in and out.
Saturday night was a big night in Fowler Bay, the camp site held a 'cook up' supper which attracted both campsite residents and the dozen or so locals. It was good but some of the local people were strange hill billy types! .....& we kept remembering 'Wolf Creek'!
Early on Sun 3rd March we watched the sunrise and then set off on the long road to WA..... nearly 2000km's ahead of us.
We had prepared a couple of meals and we had enough water ...but then
realised that we left it in the fridge at Fowler Bay..... Idiots!
So, we paid $6 for a bottle of water at a 'road house'... it was more expensive than petrol. Fuel went from $1.39 in the Adelaide to $2.02 per litre at the Nullarbor road houses. The road is every bit as remote as described but it also follows the coast and we stopped a couple of times to take pictures. There are whales sightseeing spots off the coast in May to Oct. We obviously missed them this time, so we might have to go back some day. We actually paid $10 to enter the whale watching cliffs to find that there were no whales at this time of the year and that 100 yards down the road you could pull over and look over the cliffs for nothing.... It was daylight robbery....at least Dick Turpin wore a mask when he robbed you!!
Other than that the only stops were for fuel or food..... no junctions, traffic jams or traffic lights etc.... In fact that there is so little traffic that we would wave to other motorists as you pass them coming the other way.
At several points
the road is also an aircraft runway with all the markings etc although I'm not sure how you know when a flight is due in.
The flys and bugs were a real pain when we stopped to get out of the wagon but we drove on with the air con and our 4 CD's blasting out. There is no radio signal whatsoever so we now know every word to Oli Murs' latest CD.
We stopped after 750km and set up in a rest area where we found a young Aussie couple already setting up who were CYCLING around Australia, now that is extreme...(MADNESS!) They had been on the road for 18 months and were raising awareness of preserving the bush or something (???) We worked out that it would take them a week to do the distance that we did in a day. Other campervans saw us and settled down for the night with us in our rest area, safety in numbers! It reminded me of a western film where the horses and wagons all formed a circle for the night.
My biggest fear had always been the dingo's - wild dogs that attacked in packs.
The next day
we were still alive and so we cracked on and made it to WA, going through two time zones and having done over 750km's. The border itself is also a check point for WA food and drink authorities. They are anxious to keep fruit flys and other insects out of WA so we were subjected to a search and interogation about what food was in our van that the gestapo would have been proud of. We had been pre-warned so knew what to expect and we had already cooked our fruit and veg and put them in plastic containers but the 'jobsworth' official searched the van and when he opened our fridge and nearly wet himself with excitement because he'd found.... 2 corns on the cob!
He went into great details about the fact that we could bring in the corn but not the leaf covering them. So, we stood by the roadside and stripped our corn of the cob out of their leafy coverings so that we coould have them on the BBQ that night. Then he took each one and inspected them!!! He then found an onion in a plastic container in the fridge.... but we had already
peeled it and chopped it up.
Now this confused him and he had to seek advice from his supervisor.....OMG.... It would be easier smuggling heroin! Good job he never got as far as the booze cupboard. The funniest bit was when he asked us if we had any honey or products from bee's and Annie said, 'yes, we have some jam'!! (I think the sun was getting to her!)
We also travelled along the longest straight section of road in Australia (see the pictures)...There were other road signs included the danger of camels, wombats and kangaroos on the road!
Then at the end of the Nullarbor and a gruelling journey we arrived at a place called Norseman where we chose to turn left towards a town called Esperance rather than go straight on to Perth for another 700km.
We had been told to allow 2 to 3 days to do the Nullarbor but we had done it in just over a day and a half, over 1000km in total ...and most remarkably, we hadn't killed each other!!!
We were still over 700km from Perth .... but Esperance is the Holy Grail of Aussie beaches.... Goodbye Nullarbore!!
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