The Nullarbor

---

Well, lots of things have been written about the Nullarbor and all of them undoubtedly true to the eye of the writer, but sit back, read and enjoy our journey as we travel from Esperance to Ceduna, this long, flat, boring straight, eventful, dull, uninteresting road.
To build up our nerve we stopped at Esperance for 3 days in a park nestled next to the train line and the road train highway, bringing grain to the port at all hours of the day and night. Now we don’t think Esperance is famous for anything special, but we did hear tell the story of Sammy the sea lion. So with little else to amuse us we went for a look see. Now we have to say that having walked the jetty and seen the small bronze statue of Sammy we were not prepared for what we saw sunning itself down on the beach (see pic). We kept a discreet distance!
Further down the road is Cape le Grand National park with pristine beaches and if you’re lucky a pod of over 12 dolphins, and at this time of year, the place to yourselves!

Time to leave and bite the bullet and head east (well north first), but before we do, a quick stop at the second hand store is required for Steve to buy 2 golf clubs and half a dozen balls!

Now unlike Esperance, the Nullarbor is famous for a number of things. First, there is a stretch of well over 200km with no trees (hence the name Nullarbor, Latin for no trees). Second it has the longest stretch of straight road in Australia at 147km, and third it now has the longest golf course in the world at over 1300km long (yes, that’s why we bought the clubs)! The course starts in Kalgoorlie and finishes in Ceduna (or is it the other way round?) with holes dotted along the route at Roadhouses, Motels etc. It is $60 for a round and at the end, or is it the beginning, you get a certificate. We didn’t pay, but Steve sneaked on to 3 holes, a par 3, 4, and 5. Having played the par 3 at one over, Steve was feeling pretty good, but after the Par 4 & 5, not so good! So the couple of balls left over got pinged from the top of a cliff into the Great Australian Bite…….followed by the clubs! We spent 3 days getting across this great wilderness doing 2 nights free camping followed by a night at Nullarbor Motel / Park itself before crossing into Ceduna via the border check point station. We think that you wouldn’t really want to do this drive just for the fun of it, we didn’t laugh! By the time we reached Ceduna driving into a headwind all the way over $500 of diesel had been guzzled! We spent one night in Ceduna, and that was just to top up on fresh provisions, before heading down the Eyre Peninsula to Port Lincoln via Streaky Bacon oops Bay.

Hope you enjoyed reading this blog more than we did travelling it!

Like any good TV series, we try to encourage you to watch / read the next episode. So look out for the next thrilling instalments in which we get into the xmas spirit and nearly get blown away by the storms!

---