It’s 1181 km across the Nullabor from the little town of Norseman (itself 200 km North of Esperance) to Ceduna on the western edge of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. 1181 km. Walk in the park! Although it turned out to be the most consecutive days we have spent in the car since Mum and I tackled the drive from Canberra to Darwin.

In my mind the Nullarbor was a treeless flat desert from start to finish, baking hot and with a steady wind from west to east (just as our weather travels) to blissfully glide us on our way. Turns out I was 0 from 3 in my assumptions.

The Nullus Arbor (treeless plain) itself is in fact only about 100km across extending roughly from the Nullarbor roadhouse through to somewhere just before the Yalata aboriginal community. The rest of the drive was through varying density of woodland or mulga like scrub. Very pretty, often with huge numbers of budgerigars, such as I had only previously seen in peoples aviaries, moving in swarm like numbers in and above the woodlands.

On the WA side of the drive much of the landscape while dead flat on the southern edge was accompanied by an escarpment, not unlike that of Lake George, just to the North. As for baking hot, it certainly was not. Rather it was wet and cold in the west and tepid as we arrived in Penong, the town of 100 windmills, in the east.

The discovery of these truths as compared to my imaginings was all fine, a pleasant surprise in most regards. The awful truth about the predominant winds was, in my estimation, much more of a crises. West to east, Huh! It blew east to west for four days straight varying only by roughly 90 degrees to swing from the south east to the north east. With a feeling of dismay ( from me at least) we slogged it out sometimes travelling little more than 70 km an hour lest we single handedly drain the remaining oil reserves of the middle east. ‘What’s up?’, Emma inquired of me at one point. ‘The wind is irritating me’, I grumbled in return.

Still I managed to drag myself out of my wind blown depression with a reminder from Emma that it really mattered not one jot and wasn’t it great just to be here? You bet it was, so I endeavoured to return to my focus my photographic journal of Nullarbor roadhouses and to trying to stop singing Mary Poppins. Yes Mary Poppins. You know ‘supercalifragalisticexpialadoscious’. Those 16 vowels and 17 consonants that would have prevented the Roman Empire from entering the abyss! It kept Amy and Oliver entertained for countless hundreds of kilometres. Oh supercalafragilistic… No. STOP IT!

Amy and Oliver were exceptional the whole way especially considering this has really been the only part of the trip where we have started to feel like we have been in the car a little too much.

Along the way we took in the very dramatic Bunda Cliffs which fall some 90 metres straight down into the ocean, stayed at some great camps like the historic Fraser Range Station and the windy Bunda Cliffs and visited the old Eucla telegraph station, perhaps the most ignored heritage building in the country (see photos). We also called in to Head of Bight, but only to discover the last of the whales had left two days ago. ‘But the sign on the highway said they would be here until the 31st’, is what I didn’t say.

The Caiguna Blowholes was another attraction high on our list of things to see. After all our trusty tourist literature said, and I quote, ‘Visit a spectacular blowhole located just 10 m of the Eyre Highway.’. We thought, well if its anything like the one back at Carnarvon that’ll be a must. The photos below tell the rest of the tale. In fact the blowhole ‘blows’ due to changes in the barometric pressure affecting the airways in the limestone caves below. We moved on.

We also consumed 7 to 8 days worth of fruit and vegetables in just 3 after realising the Quarantine arrangements for entering South Australia. We were well prepared entering WA. Don’t know what we were thinking this time around. Anyway after Emma whipped up an apple crumble with our last seven apples last night (which was @!;$:-?! delicious) we were forced to forfeit just a couple of onions and some garlic.

We also paid for the most expensive fuel of the trip at $2.04 per litre. I’d been ignoring signs on petrol bowsers insisting that fuel be paid for before filling up for nigh on 15,000 km. But the guy at the Nullarbor Roadhouse was not going to turn the pump on until he had my drivers license in his hand. ‘Read the sign!’ he barked from behind the till as I stood there waiting impatiently for the pump to be turned on. I was already grumpy, as previously mentioned, about using 24 litres per hundred km for the pleasure of cruising at 69 km an hour and this fellow did nothing to improve my humour.

So today we drove just 76 km to Ceduna and our Nullarbor adventure was done. A very memorable drive.