Crossing the Nullarbor

CROSSING THE NULLARBOR

                                                                                                                                  Caravan+RV April/May 10 issue

The Nullarbor Plain – straddling the border between South Australia and Western Australia – is famously treeless and empty. But it has come to be a shorthand term for driving from Adelaide to Perth, its 2700 kilometres a right of passage for many travelling Australians who still regard it as an adventure. Tim and Ros Bowden have made the crossing four times towing their camper in 1998/99, 2000 and 2008.

We made it!

FIRST BIGHT: Nullarbor cliffs looking east

FIRST BIGHT: Nullarbor cliffs looking west

Am I going potty, or are there more trees now growing in the Nullarbor Plain over the decade I have been driving through it? They were poor miserable little things as trees go, but I didn’t pay them a great deal of attention. With my temperature gauge nudging the naughty red bit, I had other things on my mind.

Heading west, once you leave Port Augusta there are a few wheat towns across the top of the Eyre Peninsula, but once you leave the comparatively big smoke of Ceduna, there ain’t much in the way of mechanical support – or anything else really – until you reach Norseman, not far from the mind-numbingly hypnotic Ninety Mile Straight. (I’m told road builders would never do that again. It’s better to throw in a few bends to keep drivers alert.)

A overheating engine in the middle of the Nullarbor is something you don’t need. Penelope (our Series 80 Landcruiser) has had her temperature gauge seemingly welded safely below the half-way mark for the ten hears we have owned her. I had been alerted to a leaking radiator seal during a pre-Nullarbor oil change and diagnostic check in Adelaide and talked into a new radiator. Bad move, as it happened. It wasn’t a Toyota radiator, and perhaps the flushing of it left a bit to be desired. The upshsot was that in September 2008 I was heading for the West Australian border in a distinctly worried state of mind.

Ros, trying not to look concerned, attempts to drown her anxieties at a Nullarbor bush camp.

God did not intend me to be a mechanic, and I’m not. I take plenty of spares and hope, in an emergency, to meet someone who knows more than I do and that’s very predictable. I can change a tyre well enough but an overheating engine was way out of my league. We were towing our latest off-road camper, a Goldstream Sovereign we had dubbed The Palace (replacing our previous faithful Jayco Flight, The Manor). Despite the temperature gauge going berserk, the cooling fluid was luke warm, so that was a puzzle, but something was obviously very wrong. I found that by keeping our speed down to below 80 kph (there was the usual strong headwind from the west of course) I could keep the temperature gauge just out of the red.  More later!

The Nullarbor Plain extends along the coast some 300 kilometres west and 250 east of the WA border. Composed of ancient limestone, this harsh country is heavily fissured, its water courses running deep beneath the surface forming large caverns and rivers most of them unexplored. Where the highway runs close to the Southern Ocean, you can see the spectacular 90 metre sheer cliffs that border the Nullarbor Plain to the south. (Some of these viewing points are now closed because of erosion and sections of rock falling away.)  Too many people, I think, tackle the Nullarbor as something to be put behind them as quickly as possible. I’m told the Murrawijinie and Koonalda caves as well as the Bunabie Blowhole are well worth a visit, and there are many others as well. To my shame I have not yet done so. There is evidence in the caves of Aboriginal habitation 18 000 years ago. The mummified body of a Thylacene – Tasmanian Tiger now extinct – was dated as having been there for 2000 years.

Southern Right whale and calf at The Head of the Bight

Bleak surroundings at the Nullarbor Road House

We did, however, coincide with the breeding visits of Southern Right Whales at the Head of the Bight viewing centre, well worth a detour. The turnoff is not far from the Nullarbor Hotel and rather bleak camping ground.

Apart from the whales and their calves obligingly swimming close to the viewing platform, I was intrigued by an extremely pertinent sign over the single, rather basic, gents’ urinal: PLEASE ENGAGE THIS FACILITY AT POINT BLANK RANGE. I did my best.

There are some designated bush camping sites (particularly on the Western Australian side of the border) but there are lots of surprisingly good opportunities for bush camping along the Eyre Highway. This is not the case in the heart of the Nullarbor Plain of course, and most travellers choose the white-gravel camping ground beside the Nullarbor Hotel – an area so bereft of vegetation that even dingoes can’t find a tree to pee on. The fairly basic amenities there do give you a coin-operated hot shower, and campers cluster together seeking shelter behind their neighbours from the seemingly ceaseless westerly winds. (The larger more opulent motor homes made the best windbreaks we found.)

Reliable information on fuel stops can be hard to come by. Certainly in 2008 the Ceduna Information Centre listed the Yalata Roadhouse as one of them, but when we got there it was very shut. We found out later that the building, given to the Yalata Aboriginal people by the Maralinga Rocket Range administration back in the 1950s, was so riddled with asbestos that it was impossible to renovate. Fortunately we had enough fuel to get to the Nullarbor Hotel pumps only 79 kilometres further west.

At Eucla we simply had to drive down to the Old Telegraph Station we had first visited a decade before. This substantial sandstone construction was built for the opening of the Overland Telegraph Line between Albany and Adelaide in 1877, but was fairly quickly overtaken by shifting sand dunes. I wondered idly why they would build it in such a vulnerable area, and found the answer on a postcard pinned up on the wall in the Eucla Motel. Bunnies, that’s what. The rampaging rabbits ate out all the vegetation and the dunes moved in. When we first saw it in 1998, only the chimneys of the Old Telegraph Station could be seen above the sand.

When we first saw the Old Telegraph Station in 2000 it was almost completely buried in sand, but more was visible in 2008.

In 2008 there was much more to be seen, due to the ebb and flow of the sand, but the building has been vandalised, and this important historical relic is not in good shape.

Our diesel engine was still overheating, but the good news was that if we kept our travelling speed low, we might JUST make it to Norseman. Refuelling at Caiguna, a settlement consisting of the roadhouse and nothing else, we asked about mechanical help at Norseman. We were told there was a workshop there, but the owners were brigands and bandits who would charge like the proverbial wounded bull, knowing they were the only option for desperates like me.

Caiguna is on the eastern end of the Ninety Mile Straight (somehow the ‘146.6 Kilometre Straight’ doesn’t have quite the same ring about it) and we were still feeling vulnerable. We noticed some caravanners who had been parked next to us at the Nullarbor Hotel camping ground, stopped in a lay-by. We pulled over ourselves a bit further on, and flagged them down. I wanted to ask them if they would mind staying behind us until we reached at least Balladonia at the end of the Straight and in the spirit of the camaraderie of the road, Alex and Frances said they would be pleased to. In fact Frances had decided to drive the Ninety Mile Straight just to say she had and liked driving at 80 kph anyway!

The Nullarbor can always produce the unexpected. In 1998 we had seen press clippings and photographs on the wall of the Caiguna restaurant of the ‘Great Truckie Bog’ of March 1995, when road works on the Straight diverted all traffic on to a 21 kilometre side track. Cyclone Bobby dumped torrential rain and flooded this dirt road, stranding 1000 cars, semi-trailers and road trains at various points between Norseman and Cocklebiddy. Ironically the road works were designed to raise the level of the Eyre Highway so it couldn’t be disrupted by rare flood events.

The truckies, losing up to $1000 a day, were not amused but had to pass the time as best they could. Those fortunate enough to be stopped near a roadhouse, organised cricket matches and card games. Adelaide truckie, Bernie Dawe, whose rig was down to its axles in soupy mud on the bypass, strung a tarpaulin between two truck cabs and created a social shelter called ‘Bernieville’ where he companionably fried bacon, eggs, sausages and tomatoes for himself and his mates until the ground dried out.

At least we had good bitumen and no rain as we made our sedate way to Balladonia Road House, shepherded by our guardian angels, the amiable Alex and Frances. It seemed we were going to make it to Norseman by taking it slowly so I thanked them and freed them from their onerous duties.

Camel sculptures in Norseman’s main street

We were pleased to see Norseman hove into view I must say. Despite the alarmist stories we found Wilsons’ workshop managed by friendly, competent mechanics who quickly diagnosed what was wrong – the main problem was a carked thermostat – re-flushed the radiator and charged us what I thought was an absurdly modest fee. All this was done in one day, while we camped comfortably at a caravan park nearby.

(By the way it is worth mentioning that if caravanners and campers do break down on the Nullarbor, there is a system where a tow truck goes out from Norseman ­– servicing the Western Australia side of the border – and puts your vehicle on a trailer, then tows the camper or caravan behind the rig back to Norseman where they install you in a caravan park while repairs are organised. All you have to do is pay for the service of course, but that’s better than any alternative I can think of.)

Despite our overheating worries on our 2008 crossing I have nothing but fond memories of the Nullarbor, where we have found some of the best bush camp sites of our travels. The night before we got to Balladonia was a very special one. We pulled off about 4 pm on a whim, and followed tyre tracks of previous nomads to a clear patch in the mallee scrub and made camp, the Southern Cross blazing overhead and with that sense of well-being that comes from a full belly, a glass of red, and being alone in such a marvellous setting under the stars.

Earler shot of a Nullarbor bush camp with our Jayco Flight off-road camper. The Nullarbor has surprisingly good free bush camping.

We didn’t come back via the Nullarbor on our 2008 trip, but drove the Great Central Road from Laverton to the Olgas and Uluru. But that’s another story.