The Nullarbor Plain

The Nullarbor is approximately 1200kms from Norseman to Ceduna. It is LOOONG and feels it! The scenery changes much more than I expected it to, so in that regard it isn't boring, but it is a long, long way between 2 towns, with only a number of roadhouses between. There's not a lot to see or do on the way.

Coming from the west, I was surprised by how hilly and vegetated it was, with the first part of the drive being part of the Western Woodland. I was surprised to come down off an escarpment and still have it follow along the northern side of us for lots and lots of kilometres. For the first part of the journey there was a lot of roadkill. In one 42km stretch I counted 248, with the majority of them being roos. There was an occasional rabbit and a couple of birds like eagles.

 

 

 We stopped at the Caiguna Blow Hole. This is pretty cool really. It is the entry/exit of a cave and the cave “breathes”. It breathes in when air pressure is high and out when it is low. When we got there it was breathing out, and a cold wind, cold enough to give me goosebumps, was blowing out of the cave. The theory is the Nullarbor is full of limestone caves throughout and the wind is drawn from the ocean, through these caves, to exit at places like this Blow Hole. It was pretty unique and worth stopping for 5 minutes to check it out, and break up the drive.

Our first night on the Nullarbor we free camped at Jillbunya Rockhole. It was quite a nice spot to stop for the night as we could get a long way off the road and there was only one other van a fair way from us. We played Kubb... Greg and Tilda vs Rory and I, and I was pretty stoked that Rory and I won as he is a very big handicap! It was very windy, which made it a bit unpleasant to be outside but we'd been in the car so long it was good to get out. We went exploring the area and found some pretty cool things. We saw some roos, which wasn't a surprise given how much roadkill there was. We came across camel poo and footprints, but didn't see any camels which was very disappointing as we had hoped to finally see some in the wild. We also found some round rocks that were very easy to break open, and they were layered inside. We had lots of fun finding rocks and breaking them to see what was inside.

We had an awesome sunset to enjoy

We crossed into SA early on our second day. We stopped at the Nullarbor Roadhouse because, well, it's the Nullarbor Roadhouse! It has an historic building (not sure if it's original or not but it looks pretty cool).

The camels in SA apparently "prance" (the ones on the WA sign were much more dignified!)

We also stopped at Eucla for lunch and visited the old Eucla Telegraph Station, which is slowly being swallowed by sand. I remember going there about 30 years ago when we did our family trip to Perth. I am guessing it is much more swallowed up now than it was then.

The playground at Eucla is a little bit "historic" 

We stayed that night at the 51km peg (51kms east of the border crossing). We were a short (150m?) walk to the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight which was very cool and we had an amazing view of the coast, although I was quite paranoid about the crumbling cliff tops and Rory being close to the edge without any fencing. We just held on tight to him and carried him and stood where we could see it was perfectly safe, so it was all good and a great experience. We watched as a massive storm approached us, and got to see lightening out over the plain. The storm was pretty big... lots of thunder, lightening and rain, and we felt a bit exposed being the tallest thing around for a long way. But we were safe and it was a great thing to experience.

See the lightening to the right of the photo?

Our third day we reached Ceduna in the afternoon and then spent 2 nights/1 day there to give us all a break from long driving days. Our days aren't as long as some people, who did the Nullarbor in 2 days and drove 12 hours in one day with kids! I just don't know how they do it. We didn't do anything much at Ceduna... Tilda and I had a walk down the street to check out the town and had a “date” at the bakery, then Tilda, Rory and I went for a walk on the jetty and played at a playground with some new friends we'd met at the caravan park.

Here's a snapshot of the Nullarbor as you drive it. I have a bunch of 60-90 second videos to ut together into a longer "trip across the Nullarbor" when I get the chance to