Wednesday 19th October
Esperance to Balladonia
After a wild wet and windy night we woke up to a fine but overcast day. We were on the road before 9.00 heading first of all north for just over 200 km, to Norseman, then east towards the Nullarbor.
On the outskirts of Esperance we spotted this little tractor parked in a tractor sales yard.
As I have said earlier, big paddocks require big tractors. This little fella would have a bit of trouble getting through your average Taranaki farm gateway!!
The road north to Norseman took us through miles of flat farmland with more wheat and canola crops evident, as well as a few sheep stations. The paddocks for the crops are huge, and it was nothing to travel for 5 or 6 km along the road beside the same crop in the same paddock stretching off into the distance.
As we got further from Esperance the landscape gradually changed to mallee scrubland, and that was it all the way to the Balladonia Roadhouse.
We made camp in the camp ground behind the Balladonia Roadhouse.
It was good to be in the outback again camping at a roadhouse with the sound of their generator whirring away in the background. After setting up camp Cameron and I went for a walk and found the Balladonia Airstrip and then had a wander around and had a close look at the mallee scrubland we had been looking at for most of the day.
Balladonia Roadhouse is about 35 km from the western end of Australia’s longest straight which is generally recognised as the start of the road across the Nullarbor Plains.
Thursday 20th October
Balladonia Roadhouse to Eucla.
Cameron especially, had been looking forward to travelling along Australia’s longest straight, ever since we first told him about it while we were still in New Zealand. You may recall we had measured several long straights earlier in our trip, starting with a 13 km one near Geelong, then a 32 km near Warracknabeal in Victoria, and finally a 72km by the Barkly Roadhouse in the Northern Territory. All pretty impressive by New Zealand standards, but of course none of them matching up to the 146 km one we were about to embark on this morning.
We stopped for the obligatory photo by the sign announcing the start of the straight, and then set off. As far as driving was concerned, it was all pretty simple. Get up to 100kph, set the cruise control, then sit back and watch the countryside unfold, mile after mile after mile after... , you get the picture.
Despite its name, nulla meaning no or none, and arbor meaning trees, hence ‘The Treeless Plain’, we were surprised to find scrubby trees for most of the way, with occasional areas of wide expanses of rough grassed areas. It certainly wasn’t the barren landscape we had been expecting.
However the word plain was a very correct description of the countryside we were driving through. Flat as a pancake for as far as the eye could see in all directions. We didn’t see any animals of any description, in fact for the whole trip today, from Balladonia to Eucla, we never saw any animals or wildlife whatever.
One of the first signs we came across once we got on to the ‘big straight’, was this one, which advised that the road ahead was used as an emergency landing strip for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
We were to see three more of these emergency landing strips marked out on the road before we got to Eucla at the end of our day’s travelling.
After 1½ hours of travelling in a dead straight line without having to touch the brake or accelerator, or turn the steering wheel, we arrived at the Caiguna Roadhouse. We met a huge amount of double and triple trailer road trains coming towards us, and a surprising number of cars. Trucks would have outnumbered cars by about 10 to 1.
After fuelling up at Caiguna we continued on towards the South Australian border about 350 km away. We didn’t know how far we would get but would just continue driving until we had all had enough.
Once off the long straight, the only difference was there were a few more corners. The countryside remained the same, scattered mallee scrub for as far as the eye could see.
Our next fuel stop was at the Madura Roadhouse, and just before we got to it the road suddenly dropped down an escarpment to the plain below. There was a lookout just where the road dropped off the escarpment, and we stopped there for lunch.
The countryside below us reminded us of pictures we had seen of the African Savannah, and we wouldn’t have been surprised if we had spotted elephants and giraffe wandering around among the trees.
From the Madura Roadhouse we continued on, and, as we were travelling okay, decided to continue on to the Eucla Roadhouse just short of the South Australian Border. We got there at about 3.30 pm local time, having gone through a time zone en route, which made it necessary for us put our clocks forward 45 minutes.
Just as we got to the Eucla Roadhouse, we had to climb back up the escarpment, and found the Roadhouse campground had beautiful views out over the plains we had just been travelling along, and out to the Great Australian Bight about 5 km away.
After setting up camp and refuelling for the third time today, we drove down to the coast to visit the ruins of the old Eucla Telegraph Station.
It had been a long days travelling, having put 537 km of blacktop behind us. Just as a matter of interest, we added up our fuel bill for the day and it came to $253 Australian, that’s about $324 New Zealand.
Tomorrow we head for the border, about 13 km away, where we will say goodbye to Western Australia after having travelled through her for about 15 weeks. At the border we will have to go through a quarantine inspection, and then all going well, keep heading east towards Ceduna about another 500km away.
No comments:
Post a Comment