<< Back to Adventure

You read about some of the Caravan & Motorhome crew’s shenanigans across the Nullarbor last issue for our new DVD. Here’s the next bit of their adventure from Ceduna to Norseman.

Words by John Rooth
Photography by Robb Cox

Ceduna is the last outpost of ‘civilisation’ before crossing the Nullarbor, so like travellers have done since the track was first pushed through in 1941, we took full advantage of the town’s facilities. Trips to the bank for spare cash in case the Eftpos line was down, a full trolley from the supermarket, phone calls home and even a search for some more suitable underwear and a spare oil filter (not necessarily from the same shop…) for the Fiat motorhome all took the best part of the morning. Water tanks were filled, spare containers topped up in each vehicle – thirst is the first killer in the outback – and yes, there was a run through the bottleshop of course! Then before we left we checked all the vehicle oil and water levels, spun the wheels of the two Jaycos to check the bearings and put the tyre pressure gauge to work checking that all was well.

Despite the popularity of crossing the ‘no tree’ Plains in these days of sealed roads and air conditioned vehicles, this is still one place where preparation can make all the difference between a comfortable crossing and a very expensive delay. Why? Sheer isolation, that’s why. The two recognised towns at each end of ‘the nothingness of the Nullarbor’, Ceduna and Norseman, are 1228km apart. That’s considerably further than Sydney to Brisbane and there’s very little in between. You could wait for a long time for that fan belt to arrive…

Yes, the roadhouses are well developed – for the most part – and offer a range of services that’ll bail you out if you do have trouble. But like the Simpson Desert, anyone offering recovery services here can virtually name their own fee. It’s not as if the competition’s going to get the job when they’re at least 200km further away…

No shops, apart from the basic and expensive provisions offered by the roadhouse garages, no medical centres, no friendly roadside fruit stalls. Nullarbor might be bad latin for ‘no trees’ but the Null part is relevant to virtually everything except space!

Yep, the Nullarbor has been scaring people away since explorer John Eyre made the first east-west crossing in 1841 and told everyone what was, or wasn’t, there. In 1877 a telegraph line was laid across the Nullarbor and by 1912 a car had survived the crossing following the poles. But only another three cars made the crossing during the next 12 years!

The war prompted the rough grading of the track – which ran close to the coast along the edge of the Plains rather than the railway line which runs through the plain itself - And by the 1950s a few vehicles a day were making the trip. By 1960 that was more than 30 cars a day and the Western Australian Government surfaced their end of the road to the border in 1969. By 1976 the South Aussies had completed the rest of the surfacing making a hell trip into a merely a long one!

At least that’s all it’ll be if you’ve done some preparations!

Although most people think of the Plain as one huge flat treeless expanse, the fact is there’s only a small stretch where you see no trees at all. Because the highway runs along the southern most edge of the Plains most of this land is subject to coastal rains – very occasionally and mostly in winter – which means there’s quite a bit of scrubby vegetation lining the road.

Ceduna’s got a strong oyster industry running alongside their agricultural community and nearby Thevenard is where the fishing boats ship from. You’ve got it, our biggest problem was bolting Editor Gil behind the wheel of the leading Subaru Outback and making sure he went west instead of south! For all you other seafood lovers a little reminder – the Ceduna Oyster Festival is on the Labour Day weekend in October. Good thing we weren’t there in October, it’d have cost us another couple of days!

Within three quarters of an hour, despite pushing a decent headwind, we saw the first of the many windmills surrounding the tiny township of Penong. A word about these Nullarbor winds, they’re usually up during the middle of the day, often pretty severe and nearly always running from the same direction. No worries, as long as you remind yourself you’ll be getting a tail wind on the trip home!

Penong is better known in surfing circles as the turn off to Cactus Beach, one of Australia’s best known surfing spots some 21km to the south which regularly runs breaks from both the left and right. Although my own surfboards have been growing longer and wider for 40 years (to support more weight with less work, a bit like me) this is one beach I’ve always wanted to try. But not this time, we were on a tight schedule as it was.

Another 74km and we passed through Nundroo Roadhouse on our way to Yalata. Not much breaks the monotony of the scrubby bush through here although on previous trips I’ve seen locals selling boomerangs, throwing sticks and spears from roadside ‘stalls’. The mighty dingo fence that runs all the way down from Jimbour in Queensland crosses the road about 7km east of the Yalata Roadhouse.

There’s some 600,000 square kilometres of Aboriginal land surrounding Yalata and running all the way to Nullarbor and you’ll need a permit to drive off the highway. Some of the best whale watching along the Bight is accessed via tracks to the coast between Nullarbor and Yalata so pick up a permit for $2 and make sure you ask about current track conditions while you’re at it.

Not that we saw any whales, all we saw was the endless scrub until we pulled up at Yalata for our first fuel stop since Ceduna. Shortly after that stop, which saw the ice cream fridge get very popular, we pulled over for lunch at one of the tables along the roadside.

What with the demands of filming the DVD and plenty of still photography it was mid afternoon when we pulled through Nullarbor Roadhouse and made another stop – this time for drinks as well as fuel again. This is the treeless plains country and with the sun out and that constant dry wind we were all pretty thirsty. Although the vehicles had plenty of fuel left we decided to top up here before the run to the border.

Between Nullarbor and Border Village are several turn offs to lookouts along the coast. This is the closest the highway gets to the Great Australian Bight and the views either way are magnificent. To have those immense plains suddenly end as if the land had been ripped apart with huge waves booming in to a wall of rock hundreds of metres below is to experience the ultimate contrast of this region. It’s an awesome experience too. And yes, sometimes you’ll see real whales along here during winter and spring and not just the concrete version sitting outside Nullarbor Roadhouse.

It’s a model of a sperm whale by the way, something rarely seen in that part of the world if ever. Oh well, the horizon’s an endless mirage around here as it is, might as well add to the unreality.

The border crossing loomed up just like another mirage and soon it was our turn to open up our vans for inspection. The quarantine rules are pretty strict on the Western Australian side and fresh fruit, vegetables, plants, seeds, nuts and honey and any containers that’ve carried any of these all have to be forfeited. Despite knowing the rules and complying to the best of our ability the inspectors still found and confiscated a bottle of honey we’d forgotten about. Make no mistake, they’re thorough!

We set our watches an hour and half behind at the big fibreglass kangaroo at Border Village. Somehow it seemed appropriate to celebrate the sight of something as meaningless as that big roo right out here in the middle of nowhere.

With an hour or so worth of sunshine left we decided to press on through Eucla and head for Mundrabilla. There’s nothing ‘standard’ about any of the roadhouses across the Nullarbor, they’re all different. At Mundrabilla we found that the ‘caravan park’ amenities were incredibly basic with only one shower and toilet working in the ancient facilities. There might have been more but all the other stalls were signposted ‘out of order’ and the one that was ‘in order’ was so ordinary one wondered how the rest could be worse!

The owners have posted a sign requesting patience until they renovated in February. It was March and nothing had happened but then things have a habit of taking their own time when you’re this far away from town! The immediate consolation was that camping fees were the cheapest I’ve seen for 10 years!

Fair enough too, the ‘park’ itself was a dust bowl lined with rocks next to the roadhouse and flanked by a yard full of broken cars that hadn’t made the trip home. But with the Hampton Tablelands looming up behind the flats surrounding the highway at least the terrain was looking different. Still dry, still scrubby but for the first time in days it wasn’t flat.

Like another two other couples towing westwards that night we decided that Mundrabilla was it regardless. Why? Because the sun was sinking over the horizon in the west – right where we were heading. That and the number of dead animals along the roadside was enough to put any one off travelling through the night.

If any ‘bar’ along the route has a party-time reputation it’s that isolated Mundrabilla ‘pub’ so, seeing as we wouldn’t give Gil time out to go fishing, he decided a few drinks wouldn’t be out of order even if the facilities were. After a few shouts things were starting to get mellow and it wasn’t long before we hit the top shelf for something more in the line of medicinal purposes. Being a rum drinker I was surprised to find they’d run out of Bundaberg’s finest but they did have something in a hand labelled bottle that was reputed to be rum. Lord knows where it was from and while it tasted terrific going down, the next day saw me feeling as if the sky would fall on my head any minute.

So Victor took over at the wheel of the mighty Fiat I’d been driving the night before while I spent the morning nodding off. I missed Madura completely an hour and a bit later and was only starting to feel human when we pulled into Cocklebiddy. Although we didn’t have the time to do it this trip, if you’ve got a four wheel drive then Cocklebiddy is one of the best places to take a trip southwards.

Here you’ll find the 70m plus high limestone cliffs at Twilight Cove and heading east is the famous Eyre Bird Observatory housed in the old Telegraph Station built in 1897. This is a great place to experience the sheer isolation of the Bight country especially if you take a walk (or drive) down to the beach, about a kilometre or so from the buildings.

To the north of Cocklebiddy this area of the Nullarbor is riddled with limestone caverns and caves filled with water. Most are on unmarked tracks and while they attract world wide interest from cave divers and explorers, they’re still worth seeing for us non-cavers because of the bird life the waters attract and support.

That’s what you’ll find. All we found was the fuel and toilets at Cocklebiddy because we were behind schedule yet again. Punching on into the afternoon we all began to think that our speed of crossing to meet deadlines meant we were missing a lot of the ‘real Nullarbor experience’, the bit that happens when you get off the road. That was the chat over the radio and by the time we drove into Balladonia, a bush camp somewhere was calling.

At Balladonia a few inquiries netted a place called Newman’s Rocks. ‘Look for a sign on the right about 50km out’ someone said. The sign was on a rise in the road, a low ridge running north to south. I was reminded of those years prospecting for opal where we’d look for a gentle roll in the topography because they could bring on big geological change. Lightning Ridge itself is almost an unnoticeable ridge in the middle of that flat expanse of western lands yet the red on black opal from there is unique to the world.

The track behind the dusty, faded sign ran along the ridge to the north. At the crest of the hill the scrub dropped off, the trees were taller and straighter and we broke through to a massive view. A little further and wow, a beautiful big pool of water sitting on a rock shelf with views to the horizon. An old fireplace gave us something to centre our wagons on and that night Newmann’s Rocks rocked!

Mostly to the sounds of uncomfortable expulsions of wind! Yes, shattering the peace and quiet of the outback was a bated crescendo of ‘bottom burps’ as my four year old would word it. The lads, keen to enjoy another round of my shearing shed special, sweet chilli curried sausages, had begged for an encore of the meal we’d had down at Port Augusta.

Now I’m still not sure whether this is because they’d enjoyed it that first time around or were just out to get Gil back because he’d missed that part of the trip. Whatever the motive, the brew had to be bigger, better and stronger to leave a mark. But we’ll leave the subject of laundry on the road until another issue…

So I launched in with the sweet chilli sauce and peanut butter and didn’t spare the apricot jam either. In went the curry powder – whoops! – there goes the tin – with a pack of raisins for good measure. The sausages needed all the help they could get even if they were the best Ceduna had to offer – in a bulk pack at least.

But it’s amazing the difference the right camp can make. Here we were just a few kilometres off the highway yet we might have been in a world of our own. With the Jaycos parked on the flattest part of the ridge we could see for miles. Both the sunset and sunrise in such a place were absolutely magnificent, especially with the sun glinting off the salt pans in the distance, and it was easy to imagine how in the middle of all this barren and dry country, a place with permanent fresh water and a view to forever would inspire a deep connection with Mother Nature. Grinding holes near the rocks prove that other people had been enjoying that connection for many thousands of years.

Somehow for me, that night’s camp at Newmann’s will always typify the Nullarbor experience. A magical place, right where you’d least expect it, the sheer isolation of a massive empty space and yes, more than a few beers to wash it all down. And talking washing, I couldn’t help jumping in to the pool for a swim. Knee deep it might have been but it was so deliciously refreshing I did it again before we left next morning!

From Newmann’s to Norseman took a bit more than an hour although a late start and some stops for photography meant we didn’t get there until lunch. The old mining town is the first ‘civilisation’ heading westwards and like Ceduna to the east, heralds the end of the Nullarbor crossing. The country changes again before Norseman, going from flat desert scrub to rolling soil covered hills.

With the Nullarbor ‘done’ our adventure felt like it was over but that certainly wasn’t the case. Not with Gil up front anyway.

“Righto chaps, we could head due west through Southern Cross for the quick trip to Perth or point the rigs south for Esperance and a trip around the coast. It’ll be longer but there’s more to see.”

Yeah right Gil, and we’ll be a lot closer to fresh seafood too I bet. But like the other lads there’s plenty of Australia I haven’t seen and some of it’s down in this south western corner. You beauty, let the adventure roll on!

Next month that is. Same time, same place. See you here.

Page 1 - 2 - 3