Tuesday 25 September – Boy! Today has been a warm one!!  We managed to leave Madura at about twenty past eight this morning, so that was pretty good going.  First stop was at Mundrabilla Roadhouse for the car’s daily fill up.  We had been advised that this place is usually about 10% cheaper with its fuel than others, so we had only put enough in at Madura (at $1.99 per litre) to get us the 116 km to Mundrabilla.  Well it wasn’t quite the suggested 10%, but it was cheaper at $1.86, so we filled up there.  Actually it was the same price at Eucla, too, so there are a couple of places a bit cheaper than others.

Next stop was at the W.A./S.A. border where there is a little settlement called Border Village and here we had our morning tea.  They don’t do the quarantine inspection when you are coming eastward, just tell you not to bring stuff in.  And of course it was time to put our clocks forward the extra 45 minutes, so now we are only half an hour different to home.

Me with the ever essential cuppa at morning tea.

Between Border Village and here there are several places where you can drive in to lookouts on the Great Australian Bight.  We went into three of these – Lookout 3, Lookout 2, and Lookout 1 (They are numbered from east to west and we are travelling from the west.)  The views were absolutely stunning.  The wind was blowing a gale by this time – a head wind I might add, when everyone told us that we would get a tail wind, but the water in the Bight was quite calm and a beautiful blue.  And the bonus at Lookout 1 was that there were three or four whales playing around in the water quite close to shore.  We managed to get a couple of photos, but it’s tricky seeing them in the viewfinders that reflect.  We had our lunch at this stop, too.

The beautiful view from Lookout 1.

It was about 3.15 (newly adjusted time) when we arrived at Nullarbor Roadhouse, after travelling a fair chunk of today in true ‘Nullarbor’ – the part that is actually designated ‘Nullarbor Plain’ and which really is pretty well treeless.  There are scrubby bushes, but no trees.  The road was strangely devoid of roadkill today with just a few wallabies, in fact after we crossed the border into SA I don’t recall seeing anything, except perhaps a snake.  I think we saw three dead snakes on the road today.

Nullarbor Roadhouse is a complex on the flat plains, a big caravan park area of dusty gravel, no shade whatsoever, and when we arrived it was blowing an absolute gale.  We were convinced that the allen key would get a real test tonight.  However it has calmed down quite a bit, and as I write this (at 8.15pm) it is still very hot.  I’m in shorts and Tshirt and am actually sweating.  Showers are $1 in the slot here for five minutes, so that’s not bad, except that the water was what I would call just under tepid.  Lucky it is a hot day.

When I went over for my shower this evening, I was talking to a couple who are into genealogy and are heading from Perth to Broken Hill to meet up with some family connections on both his and her families.  While I was talking to them, their glasses of wine blew off the table in the wind, spilling everywhere and the maps they had out took off towards the highway.  I managed to retrieve one map, she got the other and he had to run for a cloth to wipe up the wine off the table and off her ipad thing (mostly its cover).  So that was a bit dramatic!!

Tomorrow we travel to at least Ceduna and possibly a little further, depending on how long we want to spend at Head of Bight.  We may even have phone and Internet coverage, if we are lucky.