World Australia South Australia Ceduna

Round Australia with Ev and Az

Day 120 – Nullarbor to Ceduna – Relativity Nov 18, 2009

Let me try to describe the Nullarbor, if you have not been unfortunate enough to see it yourself. It is the most flat featureless environment you can imagine. There are no plants bigger than a knee high bush - with only 8 inches of rain annually it is not surprising. Throw in a howling wind most of the time and you can see why this truly is one of the least habititable places on the earth.

The state of Wyoming in the US has coined the phrase, “Big sky country”. For mine this is due to the fact that the horizon is so flat in every direction the sky genuinely seems bigger. It is very true of the Nullarbor as well. It is truly amazing for its isolation.

I think geologically the Nullarbor is technically only about 200kms long however most would consider it is the drive between Eucla (WA) and Ceduna (SA) about 500kms. This ignores the fact that Eucla is only a roadhouse. For mine the real crossing is the 1400kms of driving, without a single turn, between the towns of Norseman and Ceduna. If you leave Norseman you do not actually have to turn right or left for 1400kms…..not even a roundabout.

One of the most amazing things I realized about the crossing was that in 1400kms, there was no roadwork. None! In contrast to Queensland, NT and northern WA where we met men holding stop/start signs every 20kms, this is a small miracle..

This morning we had a rather late start. In fact all the ‘Earls and Merles’ had got away well before us, including the campers that left at 5:15am. These people are nuts, pot – kettle – pot – kettle. We even managed to be the last van out of the park. Not like us at all.

We started with a visit back to the Bunda cliffs where the weather had cleared and the photos of these dramatic cliffs were significantly better. To use my favourite term it truly was a stunning view.

The only things of note we passed on today’s drive was the town of Penong which bills itself as the ‘town of 100 windmills’…..and not much else. The other quirky thing was the multiple signs to old school sites. To be clear these are not sites where the school buildings still stand as museums, only a small plaque is at each of these sites. There must have been 20 of these signposted along the drive today.

What is the fascination with old school sites? Leaving Esperence there is a 166km long trail of old school sites. Again remember these are not museums, just small brass plaques where schools used to be. Each to their own I suppose. Not everyone would take the Diving, wine and aviation tour I would…..but following brass plaques….not my cup of tea.

Merle: Pull over dear, I think it’s time for a cuppa

Earl: Pardon dear?

Merle: I think it’s time for a nice cup of earl grey

Earl: pardon dear…..never mind I’ll put the kettle on

Arriving in Ceduna we finally had to stop at the border checkpoint, only 500kmns from the border and a third of the way across the state. I am not sure what this says about the residents of this part of the state but I guess there are so few o them they are unlikely to affect an election result. Again we had too many onions so we lost another half a kilo or so to the border control guys. This time I was a little smarter. I had cooked about half of our supply, rather than peeling them all between NT and WA, so we were allowed to keep the cooked ones.

Anyone know what to do with half a kilo of half cooked onions?. New delicacy, twice BBQ’d onions….I’ll let you know how that goes and what the hospital facilities are like for food poisoning in SA.

Walking around Ceduna this afternoon we stopped in at the Visitors centre, the first in SA, where Al picked up approximately her body weight in information brochures for each of the regions in SA. We also managed to pick up one of those corny certificates that read ‘we crossed the nullarbor’ which will go into Evans scrap book.

We then visited the local museum which proved that Al is correct that when you get enough junk in one place you can call it a museum. This place had more stuff that anyone could keep track of, just sitting there, from tractors to old post office buildings to old dentists chairs, 1953 premiership winning team photos and my favourite, a radioactive resistant bricks from Maralinga. I didn’t dare ask how close to the blast they were….but I stayed on the other side of the room. There was a very friendly old curator who personally showed us around everything and his dog Fred who kept the boys amused.

As the saying goes, everything is relative. If we had pulled into Ceduna after Exmouth, Broome, Monkey Mia, or most of the QLD coast we would not have though much of it. Pulling in after the Nullarbor it was like arriving at an oasis. We fell in love immediately. It had running water, it had town power (no generator running all night). There was strange green stuff growing from the ground that the locals called “grass” and it had a beach where the water was at least 20 degrees, so we had a swim.

Better still for dinner we went to the local bistro where for only marginally more than we payed for two bedraggled hamburgers and two questionable sandwiches yesterday, we got a feast with huge servings of fresh seafood, and cold quality beer. A walk out along the jetty as the sunset over the southern ocean was enough to finish the day brilliantly.

To be honest I think the love affair with Ceduna would end pretty quickly. There really is not much here but arriving back on the coast and some form of civilisation was a big lift. Relative to the last week or so this is a beautiful place.

More significantly there is some relief, and definitely some pride, in knowing we have survived the last piece of Evan’s “middle of nowhere”. From here on in, we are in relative civilisation all the way home. We have survived (and conquered) outback Queensland, the Northern Territory, the northwest of WA and finally the Nullarbor.