The Nullarbor

How much fun did we have crossing the Nullarbor Plains!

It all starts in Ceduna of course. The oil and water levels are perfect, the bus is ready and we are all neatly packed and ready to go.

From Ceduna to the head of the bight is not very far, but because we leave in the second half of the afternoon, we are too late to drive up to the head so we pull up for the night at the gates to the bight with a couple of other travelers. The sun sets over the plains and Laura is giving us a run down on the Eyre Highway and the plains –because we asked her to.

Plenty of fun facts about this area:

Did you know Nullarbor comes from the latin ‘no trees’? Surely Australians know this, but I was always misspelling it, because I was trying to make it look Aboriginally, like Nullaboor, or something like that.

Also the RFDS can use dedicated parts of the road as a runway for their retrieval planes if needed, nicely signposted, very nice indeed.

A bight is a very shallow bay that you can sail out of without needing to change your sail-position regardless of the direction of the wind, in the days of 17^th century ships that is.

And the longest stretch of straightness of this highway, in Western Australia, is the second longest straight road in the world, only to be surpassed by some road somewhere in the Middle East, never mind that.

The Eyre Highway connecting Adelaide to Perth and back is named after the first man to cross the Nullarbor by land in 18something.  It is now fully sealed since 1976 and very safe.

The next morning we get to the head of the bight. It is not whaling season at the moment, but a magnificent lookout nonetheless. We can see why there are no trees here: it is all limestone, in fact the biggest lime stone deposit in the world; and it makes tremendous cliffs.

We decide to stop for the other lookouts too, just because it’s so marvelous to see a coastline like this.

It is a glorious day for driving with hardly any wind, let alone prevailing winds.

We are a bit surprised to see that the Plain with No Trees is actually still quite scrubby, and scattered trees are part of the landscape throughout.

Of course we need photos of ourselves with all the major and famous traffic signs, including the warning sign for wild animals, such as wombats, kangaroos and camels. The last ones now counting up to 10.000 in numbers were abandoned after the work on the railroad track was finished. You’d think with 7 pairs of eyes and nothing else to do than look out of the windows, on a plain with hardly any trees, we’d be able to spot a camel or two, but alas.

The SA/WA border is our next state border crossing, and we learned from our mistakes. This time we have no fresh vegetables, fruit nor garlic on board, we have checked the guidelines and made sure we are spot on this time. That also means that we finished all the honey we had with us, from our own apiary.

The lady from the quarantine department is happy with this; she checks all the cupboards in the kitchen, the fridge, the belly of the bus and the trailer.

After another few hundred kilometers we pull up for a night sleep along the road and continue our journey the next day with more cloudy weather and a drop of rain, still little wind.

The straight stretch is mine, (Christel), this is too much fun, 90 miles, 146km, I am ready. I love this landscape; I love how it is so incredibly spacious. Still no camel to be seen, but that is OK.

We decide to keep going until we get to Norseman. Plenty of fun facts about Norseman too, but let’s not write a travel guide with more fun facts and anecdotes. Here is where we chuck a leftie and head to Esperance.

We have a You tube move about our trip across the Nullarbor. click the link for a really fast way to cross the desert: