Monday 24 September – I can’t believe that this time next week we will be back in Newborough!  Time certainly flies when you are having fun.  But now that we have our noses pointing eastward, I must admit it will be really good to see everyone again.

This morning we left Balladonia just after 8am, so that was pretty good.  We didn’t need a really early start as today was a 345 km day, so take it easy.  About twenty two km out of Balladonia we passed Del and Cindy on their bikes, so we again gave them a toot, and about a km further on (around a long bend) we pulled over and got out to take a couple more photos of them to send to them.  They stopped and we had a chat for two or three minutes before setting off again.  It was only a few minutes later that we passed the sign telling us that we had now commenced driving on the longest straight stretch of road in Australia –145.6 km, so Grant found steering pretty easy for the next couple of hours.  We saw seven cyclists in total today – apart from the Kiwis we saw one bloke on his own, then a group of three, then one more on his own.  It’s a gutsy effort, as really once you start, it’s very hard to give up.  There’s no phone coverage if you want help, so they must just rely on passing assistance if it is needed.

The Kiwis.

The Nullarbor is anything but boring so far.  The vegetation changed about four or five times today, from small scrubby bushes, to no trees (Nullarbor), to tall trees, and from dense cover to very sparse cover.  But without doubt, today’s outstanding feature was the abundance of road kill!  There would have been over 100 carcasses on the road and its edges, many of them fresh victims.  Most were kangaroos and wallabies, but there were also a couple of eagles and a CAMEL!!  I’d hate to imagine the damage to the car that hit that one.  When we were driving we seemed to be constantly swerving to miss the bodies on the road – after checking the rear vision mirrors and oncoming traffic of course.  Though there was a reasonable amount of traffic, with the road being pretty straight and visibility very good, there were still long stretches where we felt we were the only ones on the road.

There are signs everywhere to watch out for camels, kangaroos and emus, but today we only saw a wallaby which was at the side of the road and hopped along beside us for a few bounds before heading for the scrub.

 

Lunchtime for this eagle.

We arrived here in Madura quite early – about 1pm – a typical roadhouse camping ground with just dusty earth underfoot, but at least this one has some trees for shade.  Oh yes!  I haven’t mentioned that today has been a beautiful day – lovely and warm, sunny all day and just a few whispy clouds to make the sky look good.  We were the first ones to book in for the night, but it wasn’t long before another couple came in, and as it got dark I reckon there were probably a dozen or fifteen vans, etc in here.  We had a long chat to a couple of ladies who were at last night’s camp.  They were going to stay at Cocklebiddy, but decided when they got there that it was too early to stop, so came on to here.

After lunch we spent the afternoon reading.  Grant has moved onto his second Wilbur Smith book for the trip.  The first one took some reading, as he couldn’t get into it, and we were on the go all the time, but he eventually finished it and is enjoying this one a lot more.  As I’ve read the three novels I brought with me, I’ve been mostly reading magazines, and swapping them at each caravan park (at the laundry based libraries), for others.  But yesterday morning I swapped my magazines for a novel which I started last night and I really got into it, so I finished it this afternoon.  There is no library in the laundry here, so I’ll hope for one at tomorrow’s stop.

So that’s about it for today.  Tomorrow we make for the border and intend to spend the night at the Nullarbor Roadhouse not far short of the Head of Bight.  Today we came across a big sign telling us to put our clocks back 45 minutes.  They must do the hour and a half difference between here and South Australia in 2 stages of 45 minutes each, though that’s not official as there are only three time zones in Australia.  Anyway, Grant has duly altered his watch as have I, but as my watch is losing time at an ever increasing rate, and has been for about two weeks now, it doesn’t help me much.  I’ll sort that out once we get home.