Crossing the Nullabor

Crossing the Nullabor is one of those “must do” experiences if you live in Australia or travel within Australia. Last time I crossed the Nullabor was back in primary school so I don’t remember much of it. This time I wanted to have a good look around and take my time.I was a little concerned that I was crossing in the middle of summer, who in their right mind would set off in February? But I’ve had amazing weather the whole way across, generally mid 20’s during the day and mild evenings though often very windy.

Oh yes, you get to spend many hours staring out of a bug splattered windscreen, at mile after mile of tarmac. And a few of these things above, the while lines on the road denote that it’s also a landing strip for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

The Nullabor crossing is well set up for those who don’t mind camping along the way, there are regular parking bays and most of them have small networks of tracks leading further back away from the road so that you can get some piece and quiet. The roadhouses also have motel units and caravan parks attached to them if you prefer.

This was my first camp in South Australia, yeah big deal you may say, till you see the view from the other side.

Even the view from the table inside was nice.

I camped here for about 3 days, hey I had internet connection, patchy phone connection, but lots of food and water, so why not. I visited the beach once, it was quite a long walk down a bit of a cliff and then over many dunes to get there, but bad time of year, the march flies (biting flies) were terrible, I couldn’t even think of fishing on the beach.

Look carefully at this picture, way down towards the beach, about in the centre of the photo there’s two large brown patches. I was wandering around these areas when I found this.

It was up off the ground in the branches of a dead shrub. After I bought it back and had a good look at it, I realized it was pretty special and really needed to go back, so the following day I went to put it back and to look around some more with my camera.

 

 

The following two appear to be some sort of grinding stone or similar, they had rough textures and yet some specific worn spots on certain edges

 

 

All of these rocks are not local to the area. In these large clearings there were all different types of unusual rocks, nothing like the rest of the rocks around the countryside.

This was a very unusual type of rock and it looks like perhaps a fossil in the top. There were quite a few chunks of this green coloured rock along with hundreds of the glassy sharp rocks.

This was the area I found all the rocks and artifacts, if you look really closely in the middle of the picture, up on top of the ledge, you can just make out my van as a tiny spec in the distance.

And the sunsets weren’t too bad either.

In W.A. you will get to drive the second longest straight piece of road in the world, and the longest straight road in Australia.

Yep, hows that for exciting, almost 150km without a bend or a curve. Oh well, at least it’s easy to see the oncoming traffic, and sometimes you really want to see the oncoming traffic. I reckon this guy likes the long straight section.

Oh and did I mention that you’ll see lots of this…

It’s worth the journey, and it’s not really any effort making the crossing, there are service stations at least ever 200km and there’s a fair amount of traffic.

I’m not really sure whether I’m technically across the Nullabor completely, I’m stopped in a little place called Fowlers bay on the coast of South Australia. I’m still almost a thousand kilometres from Adelaide and Fowlers bay only has a population of 18 people. In fact I just checked things and technically I’m still not half way across Australia, that’s another couple of hundred kilometres yet.