Days 170 - 184

Rain, rain and more rain. This summed up our time in Esperance, which is a shame as the scenery was stunning. The 4WD tracks that we wanted to take were all closed due to the rain and we decided to move on and start our crossing of the Nullabor Plain.

Many Australians that we had spoken to on our trip were really looking forward to their crossing of the Nullabor. They told me that you are not a true Aussie unless you have crossed it at least one. However, I hope that when they came to do their crossing, they could see out of their windscreens better than we could. The rain pelted down and we were pretty miserable. To top it all off, due to the weather, we could not filter all of the oil that we had collected for the crossing and kept on having to stop at roadhouses and asking if we could use their undercover forecourt for some filtering of the oil. While Gerard got stuck into filtering the oil, I mingled with the truckies and got stuck into some pies and toasted sandwiches. Each time Gerard had filtered 20 litres, we set off on our next 100 kms before we had to stop again and filter more oil.

It took us five days to cross and we passed through three different time zones – WA time, Central WA time (45 minutes ahead of WA time) and SA time (1.5 hours ahead of WA time.) It all got pretty confusing.

We passed signs that warned us of kangaroos, camels and wombats on the road. Unfortunately, our first sighting of a wombat was of the squashed variety on the side of the road. We also saw tons of skippies who had suffered a similar fate.

The road was always busy with both travellers and road trains. We had a “small” run in with a 3 carriaged road train (about 40 metres long). I told the driver on the two radio that I will slow down if he wanted to overtake me. I did not get a response and pulled off the road slightly for him to pass me. Over the two way radio, I heard a very angry driver saying “Fing 4WDrivers. How would you like it.” Not knowing what he meant, he overtook me and deliberately went over to the hard shoulder and flicked stones up at the car. I heard him saying “So, how did you like that, you punk. How Fing wide do you think you are.” I then realised that I had accidentally thrown stones up at him when I pulled over for him to pass. I apologised to him over the radio and told him I was having a fat day. Another lesson learnt.

Not long after we had crossed into SA, the sun started to shine. We drove into Ceduna, where the quarantine station was and were greeted with a cheery sign: “Welcome to Ceduna. Drowsy drivers die.” We stopped for a couple of days in a sleepy little beachside town called Streaky Bay on the Eyre Peninsula to recharge our batteries and restock on food. That whole peninsula is stunning, with golden hay fields backing onto sand dunes leading into the ocean. We did some cliff top drives around the peninsula and stopped off to see a sea lion colony. I had never seen sea lions before and it was great fun watching them play and swim in the ocean.

Further down the peninsula, we stopped off at a lookout and saw some surfers making their way down a rocky track on the cliff with their surfboards over their shoulders. We thought they must have been crazy to surf this area as the sea lion colony was not far away and is known for having great whites (or white pointers as they call them here) present in the waters. We sat down and watched the surfers, who managed to get some great waves. Whilst I was taking pictures, Gerard saw a single fin appear not far from where the surfers were. We looked around to see if we could see any more fins or jumping from the water as this would mean it is a dolphin. We could not see any of this and thought we were about to witness a horrible attack on the poor surfers. Gerard started to yell at the surfers about the fin he had seen but they could not hear us. All of a sudden, we saw about seven more fins appear and realised that there was nothing to worry about – it was just a pod of dolphins. Phew! We watched as the dolphins went right up to the surfers and started to surf the waves along side them. One or two dolphins would jump through the wave just as it was about to break. It was fantastic to see. The surfers eventually had enough and climbed back up the cliff. We asked them what they thought when they saw the fin. They replied that they had seen the fin and were extremely relieved when it made a beeline for them that it was only a dolphin.

From Eyre Peninsula, we made our way up to Port Augusta. Before we got to Port Augusta, we once again made the mistake of camping too close to the road in a roadside rest area and had the worst night’s sleep of our trip. It went a little something like this: we pulled into a free rest stop area at about 5pm. It was a nice spot, right by the beach, but was quite full and a huge thunderstorm had just started in the area so we decided to move on. The next road side rest area that was described as being not next to a road was another 200 kms on so we made our way to this. We arrived at 9pm in the pitch black and with the rain pelting down. We set up the camper trailer but the ground was rock hard so we could not put any tent pegs into the ground to secure the tent. We got into the trailer and all we could hear were road trains, one after the other. They did not stop all night. The wind picked up and before long, both Gerard and I had to get out of bed to stand on either side of the trailer to stop the tent from blowing inside out. As we got back into bed to try and get some sleep, the tent did blow inside out, twice, which involved us getting up each time to stand in the corners until the gusts died back down again. A huge thunderstorm broke out and the thunder was clapping right above our trailer, making the trailer rock. A road train then decided to come and stop right next to us to take off one of his trailers. He then drove away, only to be replaced about 30 minutes later with another road train picking up the trailer. The road train driver decided to play us some loud music, which was nice of him. When first light broke, we got out of the trailer, assessed where we were (we were literally 5 metres from the roadside) and got the hell out of there!

We headed inland from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy and the landscape quickly changed. We left the beautiful, lush, green grass and coast behind and came to low scrubland. The whole area looked extremely dry and there were eagles everywhere devouring their road kill. We stopped and watched one feeding frenzy of eagles and could not believe that they did not fly off as we drove slowly passed them. Times must be hard for them around here.

We are now in Coober Pedy, which is an opal mining town, and you will be pleased to hear we are back to the weather we enjoy, bright sunshine. It is an extremely strange but fascinating town. The weather gets so hot here that most of the locals live in underground houses called “dugouts”. We visited some of the “dugouts” and an underground church and hotel. There is absolutely no grass in the town and water is strictly limited. From here, we are heading Northwards to visit some sites where Mad Max and Priscilla Queen of the Desert were filmed. We are then going to the Gammon Ranges and Flinders Ranges before heading to Adelaide at the end of the month.

I have included some photos of the stormy but beautiful sea at Esperance, our crossing of the Nullabor, some sea lions we saw, the surfers with dolphins beside them, an outback sign warning of the flies, an eagle in mid flight, a picture of Coober Pedy from the local scenic spot “The Big Winch” and St. Peter and St. Paul's underground Catholic church.

Hope everyone is well and as always, thanks for all your emails and comments.

Rachel and Gerard x