Pasterinos!
As expected there’s nothing on the Nullarbor! No but seriously, we did have to stop and wait for a herd of wild cattle to cross the road and fuel up in Norseman but that was about it until we got to Fraser’s Range! Frasers have a gorgeous stop that reminded me of Newman, where I grew up. Red dirt, a really nice campground, and a camp kitchen that serves huge dinners for $30! They also had a couple of camels, a couple of goats and some really cute work puppers! All the eagerness we felt to attack the Nullabor quickly got old.
We only had internet in the camp kitchen so it was really nice to unwind and switch off for a while. Forgetting about social media for a second it was amazing how often I went to grab my phone just to ask google a question though! We met some absolutely amazing people at dinner that night, who used to be bee keepers and invited us to Kalbarri next year to go fishing with them on their boat for a month.
We got to the 90 Mile Straight sign and got out and took a compulsory photo, fuelled up in Balladonia and stopped at the Caiguna Blowhole. While there isn’t much to report on for the actual driving it was interesting that it wasn’t as barren as we expected. It is very much the same and it does get a bit boring to look out on but there are trees, and scrub stretching on for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres. We counted 61 road trains on the full day of driving, and that wasn’t counting any other large trucks, caravans or oversize loads.
Jon and I take the time to talk to each other, talk about our plans for the future and talk about what we’ve been through. Its amazing what we have been through as a couple – mostly we just see it as normal even though when people hear our story they tell us how insane our lives have been.
We stayed in Eucla for the night, one hotel to choose from and considering it was absolutely bucketing down we settled in for an early night and the second half of Nullabor tomorrow. The irony of Eucla’s ‘welcome to Sunny Eucla’ was not lost on us at all.
Fuel, breakfast and some planning in the morning and we got on the road again, heading towards the Nullarbor Roadhouse for fuel and a coffee. WOO WE MADE IT INTO SOUTH AUSTRALIA GUYS!!! It felt like such an achievement to cross the border – just that little bit closer to home. Another compulsory photo with the giant kangaroo and we were on the road again. The most expensive fuel we’ve come across has been $1.99/L and we refuel reasonably often so its never too much. Some more of the same driving mixing it up between listening to music and some podcasts we’d downloaded.
We got to The Bight Lookout not a moment too soon. A few days cooped up in the car we were tired, uncomfortable and cranky but we got out and walked out to the lookout anyway saying to ourselves ‘you can’t come this far and not go in’. It was absolutely amazing, the Bunda Cliffs were stunning from the platforms and there was tons (pun intended haha) of whales frolicking about with some calfs for us to see in the bay in front of us. It was absolutely refreshing for us, the wind rushing past us, feeling like you could be on the edge of the earth. Nothing between us and Antarctica but the big blue sea.
It gave us enough of a boost to keep on going to Ceduna which was our last stop of the Nullarbor and we were SO excited to see some more civilisation that didn’t have their home inside their car with them like us. Shops! Information centres! Hotels! Even though it had only been 3 days of the Nullabor Drive, we covered quite a bit of the country in that time and it felt like another thing on our bucket list we could cross off. Step by step we are getting closer to home, and healing in the process. Not every day is peachy, but every day is new, different and exciting for us to explore, relax and enjoy. We have each other and we both feel very lucky for what we do have in our lives.
It’s time to explore South Australia guys!