Lathams News: DAY 142 & 143 CROSSING THE NULLABOR INTO SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

We are only traveling 200kms today to Nullabor Roadhouse, as we want to do a fair bit of detouring to check out the Great Australian Bight.

We left Eucla Roadhouse just after 8.30am to drive down to the beach to see the ruins of the Old Telegraph Station, which is located on the beach out from Eucla.

It was a 4km dirt track into the Station and beach… and the road was really good, although it did have quite a few puddles from all the rain the previous day…

These days Eucla is only a roadhouse, where once it used to be quite a thriving little town. Before the telegraph came, communication between Western Ausstralia and the rest of the nation took months, but when the Eucla telegraph line and manual repeater station were established in 1877, transmitting messages only took a few seconds. In those days, the telegraph was as important to them, as the internet is for us today.

When the telegraph line was put it, a jetty and tramline were also constructed for offloading supplies brought by ships. The remains of the jetty is still there today. Apparently, the old Eucla used to be a bustling town until 1927 when the telegraph station closed. However, its ruins still stand even though they are partly covered in sand. The remaining old stonewalls protruding above the moving dunes mark the station’s location, since the entire place has been enshrouded in white sand dunes. The sand drifts were caused by the rabbit plague that destroyed dune vegetation back in the early 1900s.

Remains of the Eucla Jetty

Along this area of the coast, there are also the remains of what was once the Eucla Jetty, standing in contrasts to the blue sky and sea. The original jetty structure extended out into the Bight for more than a hundred metres but today there are only the ruins left….

We probably spent a good hour down on the beach there checking it out and photographing the Station before heading off to explore the rest of the coast between Eucla and Nullabor.

Crossing the border from WA into SA today

We've left the west behind and have entered the beautiful SA

Eucla is only about 12kms from the Western Australian border, so today we are leaving Western Australia after spending almost three months exploring this beautiful state. There is a touch of sadness in crossing the border… but we are moving eastward, which means that family and home are getting closer….

There was no boarder check for us today as we are moving into South Australa and the South Australia border check doesn’t happen until you almost get to Cenduna. However, those travelling from the east to the west had to go through quarantine and declare all their fruit, vegetables and honey. We still had an extra day to get rid of all of ours.

Just over the border, you come to Border Village, another roadhouse really as there are no towns along the Nullabor. We stopped here at the big Kangaroo to have our photos taken with him.

Then it was off to check out the lookouts on the Great Australian Bight. Once you cross the border, you pretty much travel along the coastline for a while and there are several lookouts that you are able to drive into where a short walk to the cliffs gives you stunning views of the steep cliffs and rugged Australian coastline. Very stunning.

Steve's found a mate up on the headland....

Interesting to see the Old Bundy rum tin.... considering it comes from Qld...

The last lookout we stopped out took us on a 500m walk around a cliff top to a lookout on the other side of the little bay, where you got stunning views of the coastline for as far as the eye could see.

You also could look back across the cliffs to the cars and caravans parked on the other side and they just looked like matchboxes cars once again. We certainly live in an amazing country. We were so blessed with the weather again today, as the sun was out, and the colours of the earth and ocean were really quite vibrant. The bonus was that once again, we had a tail wind, which really did help to conserve our fuel as it pushed us across the vast distance of the Nullabor.

Today we were actually travelling on the Nullabor Plains and it was how I had expected the whole journey to have been, with hundreds of kilometres of treeless country. Lots of little shrubs but no trees, and lots and lots of stretches of very straight highway. We came across another RDFA emergency airstrip along the highway again today, and some really cool beware of animal signs along the road. All worthy of photos….

Typical Nullabor Plain scenery... no trees....

We arrived at Nullabor Roadhouse mid-afternoon. It was more expensive to stay here at $30 pn plus a dollar each for a hot shower, but the roadhouse was very neat and clean and the amenities were very good with camp kitchen being provided also. This is a thriving roadhouse with lots of vehicles pulling in.

Our camping site at the Nullabor Roadhouse

Our camp site at the Nullabor Roadhouse

We were pretty tired, so spent a good part of the afternoon sleeping. Once again, our clocks had to be bought forward, so it felt like the day was very long with the sun not setting until 8.30pm. With the later sunset, it gave us a good chance to have a good look around, and take photos of the roadhouse, and some of the things around it.

Late in the afternoon, two big semi’s pulled in carrying Montser Trucks, and I think every male staying at the Roadhouse were out with their camera’s photographing these trucks. One little vintage jalopy also pulled in, ( I took a photo of it) and then later in the evening, a semi pulled in with big V8 Racing cars on it, so we had them all, from vintage, to racing car to the big Monster Trucks.

We also got to witness a majestic sunset as the sun set over the Nullabor Plains. More photos…

It was getting closer to 10pm before we had finished our dinner, these late sunsets really throw our body clocks out, and with the big sleeps we had all had this afternoon, going to bed early was never going to be an option for us.

It was a pretty restless night and we had to be up relatively early again in the morning for the last stretch of our journey across this vast highway.

We had just on 300kms to travel today until our destination of Ceduna where we hope to stop for a couple of days….

We only had one detour today, and that was about 20kms up the road from the Nullabor where we wanted to detour in and visit the Head of the Bight. This is the vantage point to view the Southern Right Whale. Unfortunately, we had arrived just at the end of the season, so we did not expect to see any today. Apparently, between June and October each year, up to 100 Southern Right Whales frequent this area of the South Australian coastline to breed and give birth to whale calves.

Today we were more interested in viewing the 65 metre high Bunda Cliffs. The Bunda Cliffs are a magnificent sight in themselves and stretch in an unbroken line for 200 kilometres to the Western Australian border.

We had planned to stop at Nundroo for morning tea or lunch as it was actually closer to lunchtime when we got here, but there was nothing there other than a rather run down roadhouse, but definitely no picnic table, so after a toilet stop we pushed on to the nearest rest area with a picnic table.

We had no sooner set up our lunch and cuppas when the table was swarmed with bees and flies…. No one wants to sit eating lunch with bees landing all over you and your food, I really didn’t cope too well with it, so it was a case of down our cuppas, pack up and get out of there…. Poor Ian was the only one that ended up with a bee sting.

It was pretty much straight through to Ceduna from there, arriving mid-afternoon at the Ceduna Foreshore Caravan Park. This park had good reviews on Wiki Camps and was a Top Tourist Park, so it was our chosen destination for the night.

What a great park, probably one of the best we have stayed in and under $30 a night. It is right on the beach, just a walk across the road, and the amenities are brand new and beautiful, lots of space, lots of light and plenty of hot water. Feels like 5 star luxury, especially after spending five days on the Nullabor.