After spending a great few days in Adelaide it was time to hit the road to commence the longest part of our roadtrip. The next few days would take us through remote SA/WA as we made our way across the Nullarbor Plain. There would be few if any pies and it would be hello to emptiness and high price petrol and food.
We left Adelaide and headed north towards Port Augusta. We stopped in Port Pirie for a bit lunch and pushed through Port Augusta (or as Tony likes to call it Port A Gutter). We didn't have time to check it out instead we decided that it was time for a rest and to stop in the magnificent Iron Knob. This is the birthplace of Iron Ore mining in Australia, but those days were long gone and life support had been disconnected many moons ago. We drove through the main street and it was a ghost town, we quickly made an exit. Funny story about the place is we were talking to a guy in Norseman who had been on the road for 5 weeks. Just recently he had stayed in Iron Knob to meet a mate and attend there Xmas party. It would have been a cracker.
We reached Kimba which is officially recognised as half way across Australia and home to the Big Galah (Alf would be proud). But more importantly we got to the motel on steak night, yeaah. A few steaks and coopers and we were very relax, it was stinking hot as well, seeing we were in the outback. The next day we checked out the Big Galah and hit the road making our way to Ceduna to start the Nullarbor. We stopped by a roadhouse in Poochera where Heidi and I checked out a prehistoric ant (who knew). We chatted to the locals and one of them was jut heading off to there Local cricket game, only 85km away.
We made Ceduna by lunch time, we had originally planned to stay there the night, but lucky we had plenty of sense about us to keep going. Ritwik I completely agree with your assessment of the town, it was dodgeville. By the end of the second day we had well and truly entered the Nullarbor plain. Nothing around for miles to see and like an oasis appeared the Nullarbor Roadhouse. I have to say we were expecting the worse by for in the middle of nowhere it was decent accommodation. Obviously it was the most expensive motel we stayed in on the trip and petrol was a cheap $1.97L and a pub meal came with the 5 Star Sydney restaurant receipt, but it was all good.
The next day we left the roadhouse and commenced our longest drive of the trip. It would take us 900km to Norseman in WA. It was a weird part of the trip as we went through 3 different time zones and gained 2 1/2 hours. Apparently there is a western central time which is 45mins ahead of Perth so we were a bit "jet lag" by the time we got to Norseman.
Out first stop was border village and we passed through the SA/WA border, where border patrol was ready to meet us. Unfortunately there were no TV cameras to capture our entry or foreigners who didn't speak English trying to smuggle in a supermarket. Heidi was just very relieved that the border patrol man was taking any of her food. Heading through to Norseman we passed quite a few roadhouse's and I found out with the higher unemployment rates in the UK, where British/Irish people are getting jobs, WA Roadhouses. Every roadhouse I was served by a traveller. Hazel met a a Northern Irish girl in Balladonia who was 45min from her town back home.
On our final bit of the Nullarbor journey we drove down the longest straight of highway in Australia. 90 miles between Cagiuna and Balladonia. With cruise control on and not much need to steer, Hazel and I played 20 questions. I have to say that Hazel won the majority but it was difficult to beat her when she didn't even know the details about the famous people. She thought Glen McGrath was predominately a batter and was once captain of the Australian cricket team. I had no chance, she better brush up on Australia history before her citizenship test.
After our mammoth drive we final made Norseman at a respectable 5pm (those timezones helped) and we checked into the railway motel. After a long day I was looking forward to a beer and hopefully my first emu bitter being in WA. The local Norseman hotel had no EB, so I had to settle for VB and then she proceeded to tell me that it's one long neck, per person, per day. Lucky I also ordered a bottle of sparkling wine. Got to love these country towns. With the Nullarbor down and back in WA, we have the next week to check out some beautiful coastal towns and try a few WA pies for the diaries. Next stop would be Esperance which we were looking forward to a few days of no driving.
Get Behind.
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