Advertisement
Published: September 2nd 2012
Edit Blog Post
Day 60 – Tuesday 28
th August – Lucky Bay to Moodini Bluff rest area (26km E of Madura)
Last night’s rain luckily didn’t amount to much and the tent wasn’t very wet when we woke up this morning. Mark and I went for a walk along the beach while the kids had a lie-in. Luke has a cough and has been feeling under the weather so a bit of extra sleep will do him good. The sand on the beach was indeed white, but without the light of the sun and wet from rain and high tide it had a dull, almost dirty appearance. And because it was a cold morning we couldn’t feel the sand squeaking between our bare toes through our hiking shoes and uggs. Next time we will come here when it is warmer.
We were packed up and on our way by 9am, having paid the ranger $22 for our nights camping. The dark clouds had temporarily shifted to reveal some sunshine and blue sky and shed some bright sunlight on Hellfire Bay and Le Grand beach as we drove back out of Cape Le Grand National Park. We had a quick fuel
stop at Esperance and started on our way towards the famous Nullarbor Plain. Two hours drive to Norseman at the western end of the road across the Nullarbor, then we turned right towards Melbourne. ‘Only’ 2700kms left to drive in 3 ½ days. A looooong way.
The first part of the long drive east was more scenic than we had expected, with gentle undulations and trees left and right. Though as expected, the road was dead straight for very long stretches. Every now and again we drove past the location of one of the holes of the Nullarbor Links golf course – the world’s longest golf course with 18 holes spread across 1365 kms between Kalgoorlie and Ceduna. However with 750 kms to cover each day until we get home we don’t really have time to play any of the holes. We also had to drive straight through Balladonia, the town where part of the sky lab fell to the ground from outer space in 1979. Straight being the operative word here as Balladonia is at the end of the 80km straight road from Norseman and the start of the longest stretch of straight road in the world, the
145.6 kms to Caiguna.
One of the other main features of the Nullarbor Plain/ road across the bottom of Australia is the masses of roadkill. There seemed to be a dead kangaroo every few hundred metres along the road on both sides, hit mostly by the juggernaut road trains. And to go with the roadkill are the masses of carrion birds enjoying fresh meat, including the awesome wedge-tailed eagle which has become Mark’s second favourite animal of our trip (after manta rays). In two hours we saw 8 of these magnificent creatures feasting by the side of the road and then flying off on their massive wings.
The aim today was to get as many kms under our belts as possible, so we drove until the sun was setting and decided to pull over at the Moodini Bluff Rest Area, just before Madura and 150kms from the South Australia-Western Australia border town of Eucla. The other aim for the next few days is to get to the end of all 6 Harry Potter audio books that we brought with us for the journey. We are about 1/3 of the way through HP and the Deathly Hallows and it
looks as though we have just enough hours in the car to be able to finish our Harry Potter journey. Moodini Bluff Rest Area is a large rest area with lots of space amongst the trees for us to find a spot for the night. We made a campfire and ate our dinner round it before going to bed at 7.30pm – kids to go to sleep and grown-ups to watch a movie on the laptop.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.102s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0639s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb