I must say, crossing the Nullarbor was a bit of a disappointment. Growing up you hear all these stories about the Nullarbor Plain and how desolate it is and how long and straight the road is. It does have the longest straight stretch of road in the world, the 90 Mile Straight, but even that is fairly nondescript. It may be the longest straight but because the road is undulating and through some well treed areas you never really get the sense of very long straight. There are sections of the road in the middle that do feel like you’re miles from anywhere in the desert but even so, for my money the Hay Plain in NSW is much more impressive.
The weather probably didn’t help us appreciate the Nullarbor much either. It was windy and wet, as it has been since we hit Perth just over a month ago. In fact, I don’t think we’ve actually had more than two days in a row without rain since Perth. We’re certainly getting well practised at putting the Jayco up and down in the rain without getting too much wet inside. We haven’t had to sleep in wet bedding yet. Mind you, that day could still come. If we ever get really heavy rain with strong winds the challenge may prove too much.
Also, hitting the cold weather with the rain and wind has dampened our spirits at times. Spending so much time up north with hot weather and beautiful balmy nights, we’d forgotten that the rest of the country actually has a winter to which we needed to re-acclimatise. Our last night at the end of the Nullarbor in Kimba was the coldest we’d had since Alice Springs way back in August and we felt frozen to the bone. Being a free campsite, the only electricity we had was from our battery and a 300 watt inverter. The inverter gives us enough power to run our telly, the powered aerial and to charge phones and laptops but not to run an electric heater. To make matters worse, that was the night that our gas ran out so we couldn’t even boil a billy for a hot drink and get some warmth from the gas flames. It’s funny what you get used to. Back in August, our nights were getting down to 2 and 3 degrees. They were cold nights but I do remember that we coped with them just fine. Our night at Kimba only got as low as 9 degrees and yet we were so cold that we couldn’t sleep.
The other thing about the weather during our Nullarbor crossing is how heavily influenced it seemed to be by the roadhouses and the price of petrol along the way. I was expecting a nice cheap run through to Adelaide given that the winds should have been tail winds. We only got tail winds though when fuel prices dropped below $1.60 per litre. Anything above that price and the winds would swing around to become roaring south easterly headwinds and which would eat into our fuel at an amazing rate. Heading towards the Nullarbor Roadhouse in the middle of the crossing I was starting to think that we wouldn’t make the fuel station before our tank ran dry. I had a full jerry can to see us through if we had run dry but if we had that would have meant that our 60 litre tank got us less than 300km from the previous fuel stop. Head winds when towing a van does more damage to fuel economy than anything but the steepest of hill climbs.
The Nullarbor crossing marked the end of our time in Western Australia and we were really sad to see that part of the trip over. Everywhere we’ve been has been fabulous, but for me WA has been my favourite part of the trip so far – probably in large part because of the surf, I guess. The other milestone marked by our Nullarbor crossing was our return to South Australia. It was not long after hitting SA again that my initial impression of this State was confirmed. South Australia is a State that’s a little bit different to the rest of the country. It’s the eccentric, weird uncle of the Australian States. The one you only see every now and then, usually at family gatherings, and he’s the one mumbling unintelligibly to himself in the corner or shouting random words at passersby or talking to you to closely about some obscure irrelevant issue in far too much detail. Highway distance markers are a perfect example of the sort of thing I’m talking about. Occasionally they display the distances to the next town on the zero or five kilometre mark, as in 20 or 25. But mostly these markers were in random increments. I saw twos and sevens, threes and eights, fours and nines. And then there was the label used for the next town. Everywhere else in the country uses a single letter; ie. D for Darwin, P for Perth. Not SA. Usually the markers used two letter labels and the letters chosen didn’t seem to have any logic to them. Mn for a town called Millicent for example. Reinforcing my impression of SA as the weird state was the elderly lady who accosted me at our first SA fuel stop at Streaky Bay. As I was filling the tank at the servo, this woman came up to me at the pump and started raving about something. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying but I tried to nod politely and continue filling the car. The nods only seemed to encourage her and so she kept going for the whole time I was at the pump. I think the topic of her rant was something to do with asbestos removal from buildings. What triggered this tirade and why I was the privileged recipient is still a mystery to me. I put it down to a very South Australian experience. Don’t get me wrong. SA is a lovely place to visit and I did enjoy it but despite Jenny’s constant suggestions that we do, I could never live there. I don’t feel that I’m eccentric enough yet to fit in.