Nullarbor

There are many ways to describe the Nullarbor, but the majority of people describe it a long and boring. Darrin and I have travelled this stretch before and I have memories of seeing so many things and the scenery spectacular. We had found a great brochure on the Nullarbor which the girls read up and believe it or not, it was seeing the longest stretch of straight road that they were looking forward - what visions must go thru their minds of what they are expecting?

Parmango-Balladonia Road



Deralynda Homestead


Preparing ourselves for the trip making sure we had all the essentials of fuel, water and plenty of lollies and chocolate, we were ready for the challenge or journey whatever it may be.
Leaving Cape Arid, the weather was still perfect we travelled the Parmango-Balladonia road, against advice from the tourist information centre that this road was boggy, sharp limestone rock and also sandy so therefore impassable. But we sourced further opinions from fellow travellers who have actually travelled this road and they said it was a good road. So we headed north to meet the mighty Nullarbor. The Parmango-Balladonia road was in excellent condition and we were surprised to see the terrain to be so rich with gum trees and flower, thinking it would be barron with low lying scrub like Cape Arid. Along the way we dropped into an old homestead which looked as though someone was living and working the land there one day and then abandoned it the next day.We all jumped out the of Troopy for a look around the buildings, within seconds we were swatting madly at the hundreds of overfriendly march flies, after 10 minutes enduring these friendly creatures I could see why this place was abandoned. The shed housed a carpet snake hanging out in the rafters and the small homestead looked like it was visited regularly by passing campers, with the contents of emergency food supplies, wood pile for the fire place and a place to escape the march flies. The homestead was built in 1890 and is called Deralynda Homestead, this homestead is one of many scattered from Balladonia to Israelite Bay which have been abandoned due the the shear isolation of this place.

Yes, we made it to the long stretch of bitumen called the Eyre Highway. Once we were on the bitumen the girls kept asking 'Are we on Australia's longest straight road yet?'. Luckily it was not long and we were at the start of it. Who would have thought 146 km's of bitumen could be so exciting!

The first detour off the bitumen was the blowhole. This blowhole was amazing, it was an air hole for the underground cave. As we stood at the edge of the hole the cool air was blowing out. It would be great on a hot day it would be like standing at the refrigerator with the door open.

Blowholes



First nights camp beside the Eyre Highway

 Our first nights stop was at a rest area just east of the Mundrabilla Roadhouse, it was beautiful weather conditions and we enjoyed sitting at the table for dinner as the sun set talking about what we all thought of the Nullabor so far. The next morning we were up at the break of day, as we were near the SA boarder and the time difference was 3 hours between WA and SA so the campers heading east to west were three hours ahead of us and up and about extremely early.
We stopped to have a look at each roadhouse Darrin was interested in the price of fuel with ranged from 1.68 to 1.94. The girls hung out to see what the playground had in store and I was most amused by the age era each roadhouse and motel represented. At some of the road houses I felt like I was on the set of a movie which would have been made back in the 70's or 80's with the big bessa brick, arches and very outdates decor. Even the playgrounds where just like the ones I use to play on when I was a kid with the traditional swing, see saw and long steep slides. But the girls loved every playground.  My favourite roadhouse would have to be Eucla Roadhouse because it felt like I was back in my childhood with the era playground and buildings represented.

Eucla Roadhouse

Eucla playground

Eucla playground

View of the coastline from Eucla

Old Telegraph station ruins at Eucla

Our first stop for the day was to have a look at the Old Telegraph station ruins at Eucla. The girls had an absolute ball crawling thru the doorways which were have filled with sand. The spent ages playing in the ruins while Darrin and I watched the Galah's playing in the nearby tree, it was if they had put on a show for us playing with each other.

Crossing the boarder

Exciting boarder sign!

The Great Australian Bite

As we got closer the the Great Australian Bite, we had great pleasure in show Emma what it looked like in person as they had covered this area in their unit of enquiry in term one. It was absolutely beautiful, the weather was just perfect as we crossed the Nullarbor - not a breath of wind and clear blue skies so getting out at each lookout was more pleasent and looked even more beautiful with no white caps. The shear drop of the massive cliffs and the gorgeous blue waters were just magnificant. We really enjoyed the scenery along the Great Australian Bite.

Typical nullarbor sign

Windmills of Penong

The big Galah

Our next feature was Penong - to town of many windmills and just as I remembered there are also lots of ruins around this area, just heaven for photographers. We were driving thru Penong just before sunset so the colours in the country made it look even more spectacular. We set up camp for the night just out of Penong ready for a big day of travel to get to James and Kelli's home in Adelaide for Saturday night.

A big day travelling from West of Ceduna to Adelaide, we did really enjoy seeing the change in the country side and besides have Hungry Jacks for lunch a highlight was stopping to see the big Galah.

Arriving at James, Kellie and Tiarre's late Saturday afternoon were looking forward to enjoying their company and Hospitality for a few day.