November 20, 2018 - Reading time: 3 minutes

We departed Kalgoorlie in fine weather much to our surprise and made our way south to Norseman, where we picked up a cold chicken and four superb bread rolls to make lunch. Drove for four hours and the landscape certainly not tree less (Nullarbor being Latin for treeless plain) but apparently it is on the Eastern side! The landscape was reasonably dense and wildlife was not abundant, which was much to Helen’s disappointment as she did not see a camel, roo or emu along the drive. At one point she fell asleep and five minutes later we saw a dead camel – which extraordinarily turned out to be about the only road kill we saw for the whole crossing. We set up at a free camp out of Balladonia, just a few kilometres into Australia’s longest stretch of straight road 146.6 kms. That night we could see road lights in the distance and it took over thirty minutes for the vehicle to reach us!

The next morning we set of for Caiguna where we discovered a new time zone – central western which only exists in a small area along the road ( it does not extend north) where we lost 45 minutes. Making good time we headed onto the border at Eucla where we advanced the clocks another one and three quarter hours, setting up camp on the Bunda Cliffs and getting our first taste of the beauty of the Great Australian Bight.

We awoke next morning to clear skies for the first time, and made our way to the ‘Head of the Bight’ a tourist attraction in Whale season but we were a few weeks too late, however it gave us superb views of the Bunda Cliffs running in both directions. They run for approximately 800kms and are both beautiful and fragile with the great Southern Ocean pounding away at them continuously. Unfortunately on restarting the car we had a malfunction light appear, so a unplanned stop 70 kms later at Nundroo, where the local mechanic informed us that it was not a significant issue, but one that we would need to address in Clare but the car would be limited to 100 kph. We stopped for the night at Fowlers Bay where we saw some very large squid being caught.

At Fowlers Bay we cooked all our fresh vegetables as South Australia has strict quarantine laws and all cars are checked at Ceduna. I was really looking forward to driving into Smoky Bay to purchase some oysters but was disappointed as the Bay was closed due to an algae being discovered! We drove on to Streaky Bay for two nights having completed the crossing a day faster than expected!

We used our extra night at Streaky to show Michael and Helen, the sea lions atPoint Labatt, the wonderful Speeds Point and glorious coast line of the Eyre Peninsular! We had a wonderful meal at the Streaky Bay hotel celebrating Michael’ birthday.