Plains, trains & automobiles
18 May 2018
Crossing Australia takes a few hours by plane. But what if you take the other plain?
The huge truck has three trailers, earning its title of road ‘train’. These guys can be over 50 metres long, and I make another mark in my notebook. That’s number 15, but it is still early. We are to see 116 that day. Caravans are plentiful too.
Other days we count camels; another day kangaroos. Most of the ‘roos are dead on the side of the road, so that activity is too grisly to repeat. Later we allocate points for sighting live eagles, emus, camels and dingoes.
Welcome to our family road trip across Australia. And back!
Before we leave, people ask me ‘which way are you going?’. I reply there’s only one way, the Eyre Highway – named for the courageous 19th-century explorer Edward John Eyre who, with his Aboriginal guide, Wylie, headed west, into the unknown. Basically, he confirmed what was NOT there: lakes, rivers, forests, an abundance of fauna for starters.
The Nullarbor’s Latin name is a bit of a misnomer. It translates as ‘no trees’, and in the true part of the plain the vegetation reaches your ankle. However, the highway technically only covers a part of this massive limestone plain that extends, wedge-shaped, from the Great Australian Bight into Central Australia.
This was our third return crossing by road. I was born in WA and normally fly ‘home’. A few times we have travelled by train, the Indian Pacific, aptly-named because
Come with us
Day one and two: heading for Perth, 4000-odd kilometres away, we choose to drive south-west to Hay, a route we have done before. Day two we cross our first ‘plain’ – the Hay plains. The road is dead straight for kilometres ahead. Then Mildura and into SA, driving on back roads through historic Burra and the stunning Lower Flinders ranges to Peterborough, a train-lover’s delight.
Day three: skirting Port Augusta, a city with fascinating ‘aridland’ Botanic Gardens which we see on the return trip, we are still not on the Nullarbor. Wheat-growing lands now with artistic murals on silos at Kimba, later the Southern Ocean and excellent oysters at Ceduna, the start of the world’s longest (1365km) golf course!
Day four: this is it! The Nullarbor plain extends 1100 kilometres from just west of Ceduna to east of Balladonia. Penong has an outdoor windmill museum and the last ‘shop’ for 1000 kilometres. Every roadhouse has a golf course and one more hole for avid golfers. We pause for stupendous cliff views of the Bight and discover Eucla’s historic telegraph office communications centre disappearing into the coastal sands.
Day five: from Cocklebiddy it’s the ‘ninety-mile straight’ – not a kink in the road for 146.6 kilometres, the longest in Australia. Balladonia displays debris dropped by Skylab, the plummeting US satellite, in 1979. In Kalgoorlie, there’s the last golf hole, pubs, a real town, and the Super Pit, still extracting gold, the town’s lifeblood.
Day six: finally Coolgardie, a historic gold centre, wheat belt towns (a couple with silo-art) then on towards sunset over the Indian Ocean and lovely, remote, Perth. Home at last!
Would we do it again? Yes, we were committed to it. This was a return trip but we knew that we would see everything from another perspective.
After all, isn’t that what travel is all about?
What to bring:
- Sunscreen, a hat, drinking water, a first aid kit.
- Definitely a camera.
- Satellite phone - mobile phone signal can be sporadic in the most remote areas.
Need to know:
- Each state has rules about which foods may enter. Learn these or you may have something confiscated.
- Be careful driving at dusk, early morning and night because of ‘roos, emus and stock around.
- The Nullarbor has several landing strips on the road for Royal Flying Doctor aircraft emergency landings.
- Cliff edges at the Bight may crumble. Obey the signs.
- If leaving your car on the plain, watch out for holes in the ground. In the bush, keep your car in sight, and watch out for snakes.
- Summer can be very hot (think 50°C!). The best time to go is May to October.
®