Meekatharra: where the bloody hell are you?

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After landing in Perth we grabbed our bags and found our rent-a-car company. A funny little story, and interesting tip to Americans traveling in Australia among other places...is that the way their dates are written can be used to your advantage. As Americans would list October 3rd, 1984 as 10/3/84, Australians would list it as 3/10/84. Now you might wonder the significance of this. My fellow travel mates and I were all under the age of 25, meaning we would have to pay an extra $250 fee to rent a car. As we were a mere couple months from turning 25, the fee was something we were looking to avoid. Luckily, the rent-a-car lady, either stupid or careless, interoperated my friend's drivers license (born 10/3/84, October 3rd not March 10th) to be that of a 25 year old's. No fee..and a great tip for traveling.


Now we were ready to begin our road trip. We did not have concrete plans for where we were going to stay each night, something that really made the trip better. It was spontaneous decisions and we would go off our feelings for that day. Keep in mind this is not the easiest thing to do in Western Australia, as towns may be a couple hundred km away from each other. As long as we kept an eye on the gas tank and a rough goal of a town we wanted to hit that night we would be ok.


After searching on Google maps, a little before and mostly on the GPS on our handy iPhones, we felt like we could make it to Meekatharra from Perth on the first day of driving. Now what and where is Meekatharra?? Exactly... Google maps showed it to be a small town about 761km (9 hrs 12 min) northeast of Perth in the heart of the outback. As our plane had arrived on time at 9am, and we had our bags and rent-a-car by 930am, it was definitely a distance that we were capable of reaching. We had to make it by sunset, as driving in Western Australia after dark is a serious risk. There are so many kangaroos hopping around that it is actually a hazard to drive at night.


The drive would make for a good first day, and we reached Meekatharra (stopping only briefly twice for food and petrol/gas) before sunset 8 hrs later. The only other time we stopped, which happened to be frequently but for short periods of time, was to take pictures of road signs!! Western Australia, by far..not even a contest has the best ROAD SIGNS I have ever seen in my life. We loved them and would stop to photograph...most of them involved animals and we took turns trying to imitate what animal the sign was showing. Driving through 700km of nothing this was the most entertaining thing we had going...besides the enjoyment of each other's company of course.



Driving on the Great Northern Highway (rt 95) was different than anything I had done before, except maybe comparable to one stretch of highway between El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico in the US. The land was desolate and you could see nothing for miles and miles. Not many cars were on the road, much different from the North-South route 95 in the US that takes you from Maine to Florida, through New York City, Philly, DC, etc. We passed massive road trains as they call them in Oz... huge tractor trailer trucks latched together... stretching as long as 3-4 trailers making these 'road trains'. Besides them and the occasional car, the only thing on the Great Northern highway is dead Kangaroos.


Lots of dead kangaroos, or road kill that appeared one time to be a dead kangaroo and once upon a time an actual living kangaroo. We decided to keep count...and I believe we saw a good 60 distinguishable dead kangaroos from Perth to Meekatharra. Don't worry I didn't take any pictures..


When we arrived in Meekatharra we scanned the small and quiet town for accommodation. We ended up at the Auski Inland Motel where a very friendly family ran the place. The woman at the front was so pleasant and helpful...and the only reason I remember the name of this place (writing two months later) is because of how nice she was, and I bought a stubby (beer) holder from them and it has the name of the motel on it. We got dinner, had a pint, and checked out the locals (lots of wild Kangaroos hopping around everywhere!!) and called it a night. Next stop: Karijini National Park

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Photos

watch out for wildlife
Kangas, Emus, and lizards

Great Northern Highway
desolate land

stop for petrol
A fairly modern petrol station in WA