Half-lap Day 103: The Nullarbor

I got up just after sunrise and it was cold and beautiful outside the tent, the early morning sun shining on the few trees and over the low bushes surrounding the campsite. I went for a bit of a walk to find more firewood, there were a couple of dead trees not far from us and I was able to find plenty of branches around them that would get the fire going again for the morning.

I sat near the fire for a while and then as people woke up, got breakfast ready and we started to pack up. Everyone was cold and wanted to sit near the fire, which helped us feel warmer and may have slowed down our packing a bit. We were ready to go around 10.30, the last (by a few minutes) people to leave the campground.

We continued eastward along the longest straight stretch of road in Australia. There was a slight slope to parts of it, so we could only see 5 or 10km ahead, and when it was flat, the road shimmered out of sight in the distance, so we didn’t ever feel like we got a strong visual sense of how long it was – but it did take a long time to drive, without a bend. It wasn’t boring though, the scenery was fascinating, sometimes low, sparsely scattered trees, sometimes plains of low bushes, all very dry and inhospitable looking, but always quite pretty. It was exciting to get to the end and have the road bend a little. There weren’t a lot of bends over the course of the day – mainly the road was straight with the occasional meander to one side or the other. Therre wasn’t a lot of traffic either,  some road trains and caravans coming the other way, and occasionally another truck or van going our way, often we were the only vehicle we could see.

Part of the longest straight stretch of road

Not long after we started driving we saw a dead camel by the side of the road – our first wild camel sighting and we all felt it was a sad way to start. About 2 hours later we saw live camels, four of them to the right of the road,  in an area with no trees. We pulled over and watched them for a while, very excited to tick another desired animal off our list. Later on I saw a pair of emus – the kids didn’t see them though so we hoped that we would see more as we kept driving.

Camels

Around 2pm we were approaching Madura, and saw a sign to a lookout. I think this is the place someone told me about, way back in Hahndorf, so I suggested we pull over. It was a fairly bumpy road in to the lookout, and then the view was incredible. The road sloped down quite steeply just after the turn off to the lookout, and below us was the Nullarbor Plain – flat land for as far as we could see, with low, silvery green bushes and grass, and the occasional tree scattered all the way across. From where we stood the trees looked like emus – rounded green tops with thin trunks. To the north of the plain, looking straight ahead in the direction of the road, was a large escarpment – I had no idea that it even existed. From the lookout we could hear, and then see as they came past, the road trains and the caravans laboring up the hill as they headed west.

View from Madura lookout

We had lunch while we were stopped, then drove down the hill ourselves, onto the plain. The road followed the escarpment for the rest of the day. The terrain was similar all the way, with the occasional stand of taller gum trees (not tall, but not the tiny trees that were over most of the plain. Many of the rest stops had these taller trees. 

Once again the sun was setting fast as we drove away from it. We had hoped to get to the border, or at least close to it, today – however there was a strong vote for stopping at a rest stop with a toilet, and the last toilet was at Jilah Rockhole, about 70km before the border. We arrived there about 4pm and found a nice clearing between trees and set up the tent – the sun was close to setting by the time the tent was up so it was good timing. We wandered through the trees to find wood for a fire, finding a pile left by someone at one of the spots near the back (again, it was a very large camping area, with lots of relatively private spots because of the trees) and Tony found some wood he could cut with his axe. Caitlin had a bit of a scare as we loaded wood onto her bike – 2 wolf spiders were nestled together in a hollow in one piece of wood, and it took a while before we found them on the ground (after we flung the wood away) to make sure that neither of them were still on her bike.

We got the fire going and I made a cup of tea, while Tony cooked dinner. I hung some washing so it could start to dry in the morning, and Caitlin went for a ride to see if she could find anyone heading west so that she could give them our leftover onions – we can’t take fruit and veg into South Australia and we’d used all the onions we could manage. We also had carrots and apples left and felt confident we could eat them in the morning.

Caitlin had finished reading the 8^th Harry Potter book in the morning, and I got it out to start reading. While I did the washing LiAM started to read it and made his way through most of the first scene – that’s all 3 kids who have started to read by reading a Harry Potter book.

Caitlin hadn’t come back when our sausage and egg burgers were ready, so LiAM and I went to find her. She was talking to couple from the Central Coast, who were travelling west and had taken our onions gratefully, and as usual we shared tips on places we’d been and things to do. We walked back over and had our dinner and enjoyed sitting around the fire.

The toilet was interesting – a drop toilet, not surprisingly, but with a very narrow hole leading from the bowl down into the pit underneath. Normally with the narrow hole, the toilet has a water pump that lets a small amount of water be run down the bowl after use, or a bucket of water with disinfectant in it and a toilet brush that can be used to clean the bowl. This one had neither – just a stick (an old broom handle) that could be used to poke down anything that hadn’t made it through the narrow hole. It was pretty gross, and seemed to get worse every time we went in there. I’ve recommended to my friends who are following us across the Nullarbor in the next week or so that they don’t bother stopping here just because it has a toilet…

We heated up our hot water bottles on the fire and snuggled into bed, with beanies and socks and neck warmers, to read Inheritance, which is getting extremely exciting.

Half-lap Day 102: Esperance ->The Nullarbor

LiAM woke up feeling extremely cold around 4.30am and came up to our bed. Millie was already there too so it was a little crowded. I waited until everyone else had settled back down to sleep then extricated myself and got up into the cold morning at around 5.30. I put on as many clothes as I could find and went and sat in the car to use the computer. Once the camp kitchen was open at 6.30 I moved over there to have a cup of tea and charge the computer and my camera battery.

Everyone was a bit reluctant to get up because it was so cold. As the sun got higher though the day started to warm a little and I gradually shed my layers as I started to pack everything up. We had breakfast while we packed and kept an eye on what was happening in the Olympics, particularly the swimming. We all stopped to watch the semi-final of the womens 100m freestyle on Tony’s phone, which an Australian won (Cate Campbell).

We were ready to go before 10, and headed slightly out of town to the Esperance Bird and Animal Park (we pulled over to the side of the road to watch the mens 100m Freestyle Final, also won by an Australian, very exciting to see another gold medal). Tony dropped us off at the Bird and Animal Park, unhitched the trailer, and went back into town to get groceries, petrol etc.

As we had driven up the driveway to the park we’d seen Scottish Highland Cows on one side, and horses and ponies on the other, so everyone was excited even before we got through the door. In the café area there were tanks with turtles, lizards, fish and frogs, and once I’d paid and the kids had finished looking at those we moved outside. The first several cages were of birds – lots of Australian birds and also more exotic species, the coolest of which was probably a golden pheasant – I’ve never seen a bird with such varied colouring, and he had a gloriously long tail. We moved past more cages of birds and up a hill, then through a shipping container that is a bridge across the path below (very clever) and then down past more birds and almost back to the start. The path from there went around under the shipping container past more cages of birds – this time the highlight was a Major Mitchell Cockatoo who appeared to be digging himself an escape tunnel – he had made quite a hole in under the wall and was working hard at it. We were amused though that if he got through he’d end up in a tiny little ‘air lock’ cage in the entrance of the cage next door.

Around the corner we came to the mammals, which we were allowed to feed (the kids had each been given a bag of food). The lady at the café had said we’d know who we could feed because they’d ask for it, and she was certainly right! We walked around the corner and suddenly 2 goat’s head were thrust through the fence, trying to get to our food. We fed and patted the goats, then some kangaroos, several pens of sheep, some more goats, 3 emus (who got incredible range with their long necks as they poked them through the fence – I was standing back so they didn’t peck me, and a sheep from the pen across the path stuck its head through the fence and started nibbling on my shoes).  At the end of that path were 2 miniature horses who we stopped and patted for a while, then back past the other side of the sheep to a pen with 3 alpacas in it. We tried to fee the smallest of the 3, but he was very shy, and the other 2 kept getting the food first no matter how we tried to distract them and give some to the little guy.

We moved on to some ducks and chickens, then there was a pen where we could go in with lambs and kids, the kids enjoyed that until the kid nibbled Millie’s ear when she was leaning over to pat a lamb (who was lying on the ground with a coat on and didn’t look very well – he got up and tottered around for a while and looked very unsteady). From there we went into the rabbit pen and the kids could have stayed all day. There were big rabbits and baby rabbits, plenty for everyone to cuddle. Eventually we also discovered some guinea pigs. There was a 5^th birthday party happening at the park and a lot of the kids were in the rabbit pen when we arrived, they moved on to have their party food and our kids got to pat and hold rabbits as much as they liked. Eventually they came out of the pen and we saw a wedge-tailed eagle called Willow – she had a broken shoulder and can’t be released into the wild. She was magnificent looking, so impressive to see – we felt quite sad though because she was up on the highest perch in the cage and kept trying to fly out of the top corner, she didn’t look very happy at all.

We did a quick circuit back around past all the mammals and the emus so that LiAM could use up the rest of his food and we could pat everyone again. We ended up back in with the rabbits and stayed there until Tony said he was back and hitched up and ready to go. We washed our hands and went to the toilet and chatted to the lady in the café then headed back to the car and on our way around midday.

Tony had bought cheese and bacon rolls, and doughnuts, so we were able to eat lunch in the car as we drove north towards Norseman. The countryside here was largely treed, good sized gum trees that reminded us a bit of home. There were more of the low lying areas that fill with water at times, as well as some sizable lake type areas with lots of water in them. We did see one billabong that was pink, exciting to actually see a pink lake after missing all the others  (there were some up along the west coast that we didn’t go to see).  We stopped at a rest stop once to get LiAM a drink of milk, then kept going to Norseman where we filled up with petrol. Norseman looked like an old town, all the houses were made of fibro and it seemed pretty sleepy. We listened to Harry Potter on and off, playing alphabet or word association games in between.

From Norseman we headed out on the Eyre Highway to the east – really heading towards home now and excited to be about to cross the Nullarbor. The highway was initially between trees again, not quite as tall here but still fairly thick. The gum trees were thinner than we had been seeing, and their trunks were a shiny coppery colour. Their leaves were a very glossy green, it was like the whole trees were a bit sparkly. We stopped at a rest stop to fill up our water bottles from our bigger containers in the back – it was hot in the car (22 degrees outside which is the warmest day in the last week or so, and the sun was shining and making us all quite warm) and we’d drunk all our water in our little water bottles. We wandered areound the rest area a bit, it felt pretty remote and dry. There were still trees but they were getting shorter. We drove a bit further and stopped athte Belladonia Roadhouse for more petrol (we didn’t need much but wanted to hit the Nullarbor with a full tank, especially as the price is likely to get more expensive as we go across). The sun was low in the sky but we were keen to get to a rest stop with toilets – there are 24 hour rest areas quite frequently on this highway, but few of them have toilets.

As we drove further east the landscape changed a bit and there was mainly low, silvery bush, very few trees at all. We passed the 90 mile sign – the start of the longest straight stretch of road in Australia – 90 miles, or 146 km. We’d seen plenty of long straight stretches of road on our drive so far today, and when we measured them on the odometer they were only 5-10km long, so this stretch is going to be beyond our imagination. We drove a short way then pulled into Woorla Homestead Rest Area and found a place to put the tent – at first it looked like every cleared area was a road, then we found a spot between several clumps of bushes and trees, and we settled ourselves in there.

The sun had nearly set but we had plenty of time to get the tent up in the light. Tony started cooking tea and I organised the beds and the chargers for our devices. Caitlin rode her bike around and explored the site. LiAM really wanted a fire so he and I went exploring for firewood, it was easy to find small sticks but bigger ones were more difficult. It was quite enjoyable walking together in the dark, with a half-moon and lots of stars. We found a little bit of wood, and discovered that the rest area went WAY back, it was huge, so many spots for people to camp.

We came back and got the fire going and had our dinner (lamb and mashed potato). Caitlin was exhausted and went straight to bed to keep reading the new Harry Potter book. LiAM and Millie roasted the last few marshmallows, then we heated the water for the hot water bottles on the fire. Tony found some more wood across the road and got the fire nice and hot. He also cooked up the rest of our potatoes so that we won’t have to throw them out if we get to the border today.

It was cold but not as much as the last few nights, it wasn’t too uncomfortable in the tent. I read Inheritance while Tony did the dishes (so he could hear the story as well) then we all snuggled in to go to sleep.

Half-lap Day 24: Finke River -> Alice Springs

We were camped quite near the highway and we throughout the night we could hear road trains coming for a minute or two before they actually came past. The noise would gradually get louder and then it would be like an aeroplane going past, and then it would recede over the next couple of minutes. It wasn’t too disturbing though, there weren’t a lot of them and in between it would be completely quiet.

I was up in time to see the sunrise, I went down to the river and watched it slowly come to light and enjoyed the reflections in the water and the incredible peacefulness. I saw a few tour buses pass over the bridge on their way to Uluru – would have been an early start from Alice Springs! As the morning went on we saw many army trucks going south, big trucks carrying lots of supplies – and 2 of them were carrying tanks! That was pretty exciting to see.

Early morning on the Finke River

As we were packing up the tent we found a tiny scorpion inside it, running along the floor near the wall. We all watched him for a while, then I scooped him up in a cup (I did squish one of his pincers as I tried to catch him) and threw him outside (away from the tent). We chatted to our friends about the Ernest Giles track (I was thinking we might leave the trailer and just drive back in the 16km to see the meteorite crater) and they said it was the worst road they’d ever driven on, corrugated all the way with no respite. We decided to give it a miss, if they struggled in their huge 4WD. The other couple had broken several things on their van and both of them said everything they had was covered in red dust.

An extra camper in our tent

The kids wandered off to explore while we finished packing, then I went to take them down to the river while Tony put the last things on the top of the trailer. I found them talking to another family, a mum with 2 boys. We chatted for ages, and Tony joined us after a while with everything packed up and trailer attached and ready to go. Eventually I took all 5 kids down to the river, the water was beautiful and they were soon all completely wet (in their clothes, but since it was a hot sunny day, and fresh, flowing water, I wasn’t worried). They played in the water and in the sand, which was a bit like quicksand in parts, it was easy to sink in up to the knee. I waded around a bit then found a shady place to sit and watch them and enjoy the location. Tony joined me after a while and then the other mum and we chatted and the kids played for a couple of hours. It was a pretty magical way to spend the morning.

Swimming and exploring the sand in the Finke River

We got everyone out of the river and headed off around 1pm. We’d planned to stop at Stuarts Well for fuel and lunch, but the kids had had a sandwich before we left and Tony and I were happy eating in the car, and we had enough fuel to get to Alice Springs, so decided not to stop. There was a camel farm though that the kids wanted to see, so we pulled in to check out the camels, and an emu who was being amorous with the fence, a dingo on a chain and some birds. Not the greatest animal place we’ve seen so far.

There were several ranges of hills that we drove past before reaching the McDonnell Ranges and then Alice Springs – a bit different seeing many hills after so much flat land. We drove in to Alice Springs through a gap in the ranges and it was exciting to be here. We checked out a campground which was only $11 a night, but none of us felt comfortable there and the reviews we read were very mixed so we decided against it. We were stopped by the police on the way in, who asked if we were going to the bottle shop or the campground – later when I saw police checking ID outside liquorland at Coles we realised that the police check ID before anyone goes into a bottle shop. I hadn’t seen that anywhere before.

We drove up Anzac Hill – a lookout over the city – to rest for a bit and figure out where we would stay. It was a cool place to get a bit of an idea of the layout of the town, and the kids thought we were going to physically look for caravan parks from up there – we did it the digital way however. There was a place out of town where we wanted to stay, we rang them but they were full, so we found a place in town that seemed all right and not too expensive. It seemed nice when we arrived, nothing special – it’s a fairly basic caravan park with everyone laid out in a neat grid, not much atmosphere but clean and quiet and a good place to rest for a few days.

I crashed when we arrived. Last time I arrived in Alice Springs I was overwhelmed and a bit teary and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do – I thought that was because I’d just been on a 20 hour bus ride from Darwin. But this time I felt exactly the same. It’s an odd place – part city, part country town, part regional centre, part cultural and arts centre, part violent and unsafe, part touristy, part multicultural, it’s hot and dry and sometimes stifling, it’s a remote town but so full of tourists that it doesn’t feel remote – I am reading Tracks by Robyn Davidson (a lady who came to Alice Springs, learned about camels and rode a camel train from here to the Indian Ocean) and she says that having the ranges so close to town drives everyone a bit crazy and I see what she means.

Tony recognized that I was not coping well so he sat me down and made me a cup of tea before we set the tent up. The kids explored the park a bit and eventually I was up to helping set up. We used the free wifi for a bit, I sorted out my washing, and then we went for a swim in the pool. The water was freezing and I just had a quick dip before I got out, Tony stayed to supervise the kids and I went to Coles to stock up on much needed supplies, and got a hot chicken for dinner. I enjoyed driving around the town and discovering where things were, I even went over the river to get some hot chips to have with our chicken (there are Indian food places everywhere here, but only 1 fish and chip shop. Shopping in Coles felt like shopping in Griffith, very multicultural and the food options available reflect that.)

We were in bed pretty early, read for a while then off to sleep, keen for a quiet relaxing day tomorrow.

Half-lap Day 23: Kings Canyon -> Finke River

I was up early enough to watch the sunrise from the viewing platform, very cool watching the sun pop up over the ranges. I had a bit of a wander through the scrub near our tent afterwards, looking for LiAM’s swimmers – I saw lots of shoes and socks and bags and other things, but not what I was looking for.

We did a fairly relaxed pack up, and were ready to go by 11. We stopped not far down the road to do the Kathleen Springs walk which we’d heard was quite beautiful. It was sunny and hot today, and there were a lot of flies – our fly nets and/or the fly repellant we’d bought came in handy for everyone. I really enjoyed the walk, it was a paved, easy path down into Kathleen Gorge, between red gorge walls – not very tall but really that image that I have in my head of the Northern Territory. This gorge used to be used as a cattle pen and there were still signs of cattle yards and watering troughs which were interesting to see. There were also lots of signs explaining the indigenous stories from around this land which were great. We could see a bit of water flowing over rocks towards the end of the gorge, and there was a lovely shady waterhole right at the end. We sat and rested and looked at it for a while, then headed back out. LiAM found a big stick insect, we saw lots of butterflies, and one lizard – I’m so glad we saw him because I’d told LiAM I was sure we’d see lizards at Kings Canyon and there had been none.  Tony didn’t enjoy the walk so much, with the heat and flies and he also ended up carrying Millie most of the way so it was a much harder walk for him.

The Waterhole at Kathleen Springs

We had some sandwiches at the car then drove a bit further to Kings Creek Station to get petrol, a lot cheaper than at Kings Canyon Resort (thanks to wiki camps for that information 192c/l as opposed to 176 I think). It was still expensive though so we just put 20L or so in. We had a bit of a look around the station, and the kids found zooper doopers for sale for $1 each so we grabbed some of those.

It was a long drive back out from Kings Canyon to the highway and then east again to the Stuart Highway. We finished listening to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, then listened to music for a while. Eventually we arrived at Erldunda where we’d planned to get some supplies – there was no bread and milk was $4 for a litre of UHT milk so we decided to do without for now. There was mobile signal though so we caught up with the messages we’d received over the past few days, and there was an emu farm and we were able to feed the emus – these pellets were bigger than the ones at Uluru so it was slightly less scary when the emus pecked them out of our hands. We also saw a couple of emus fighting – they fluffed up their neck feathers until they were huge and ran at each other – one emu didn’t want anyone else eating the pellets so chased a few of them away. We also sent some postcards while we were there.

We drove north for another 70km or so and stopped at a free camp by the side of the Finke River. This is one of the oldest rivers in the world - it's been there for between 100 million and 350 million years! We arrived just before sunset and Caitlin and I wandered down to check out the river bed – there was water flowing and it was so beautiful standing in the dry part of the river with the bridge to our west and the sun setting behind it.

Sunset over the Stuart Highway and Finke River

As we were setting up 2 of our neighbours from Kings Canyon arrived, they had driven across the Ernest Giles track instead of coming around the sealed road (and they’d left an hour before us) so we were keen to talk to them in the morning about what the road was like.

We had ready made pasta packets for tea, and sat outside marveling at the brightness of the stars – they haven’t been so bright for a while because the moon has been so full – but at first the moon wasn’t up yet and the stars were mesmerizing. The moon rose before we went to bed, a big orange almost full disk, very very cool.