The eastern end of the Nullarbor seems to hold a couple of things
to stop and look at, as opposed to the western end where this is even less than
a couple of things, so while we were only going to cover 460ks today we needed
to be up and going early.
Our first stop was Ceduna where we picked up a few things (replacement for De's glass pot from last night) from one of my customers Malcolm, got some WA tourism brochures from the
visitor information, and filled up with diesel including a jerry can as I was
pretty sure I would miscalculate how much I had in my tank and with no
reception expected for the next 1000kms calling the RACQ to bring me some fuel
might prove a tad difficult!
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| The beginning of nothing! |
We rolled out at 11am started one of the great Australian
drives and it wasn’t long before the wheat fields gave way to patchy grass,
salt bush shrubs and low standing trees with the occasional patch of trees.
Then it was as if somebody had come through with a chain saw, there were no
more trees and I mean NO more. We were looking forward to stoping the beginning
point of the dog fence and while we did see it, the map had it as being west of
Yalata where as it was east of it, so the SA Dept of tourism will be getting a
letter about that one! Funnily enough we had only traveled about 10kms past the fence when I saw something cross the shimmering road about 5kms in the distance that turned out to be a dingo! Sorry not the best pic but we were moving and it was a fair way off!
About 275 kms down the road we turned into see ‘Head of
Bight’ the northern most point of the large chunk that is missing from the
bottom end of Australia. To the east massive white sand dunes stretch hundreds
of kilometres to Ceduna and consume 11m of the mainland every year. To the west,
the Bunda Cliffs, massive limestone rock faces climb out of the water 50 to 80m
and stretch for the next 200kms along the coast.
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Head of Bight is famous for its whale viewing as they come right up to the beach....apparently...
they were all on holidays in Antartica! |
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| Sand dunes stretching as far as you could see to the East |
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| The Bunda Cliffs to the West were spectacular |
While we were there we caught
up with The Hernandez’s who we had camped with at Coffin Bay and we travelled
the rest of the way across the plain together. We intended to visit the Murraiijinie Caves but again SA
tourism seem to have dropped the ball when they left Ceduna as there wasn’t any
signs to show us where it was...so we missed that one as well.
We reached our destination, a free camp called “Great
Australian Bight” that must be one of the most spectacular camping spots in the
world! A rocky dirt roads leads off the highway for 3 or 400m to a large
cleared area for van parking. There was an even bumpier 20m track that took you
to a very small clearing right on the edge of the cliffs. There wasn’t even
close to enough room to turn the Izzygator around so, determined to wake up
looking over the water, I backed down and jackknifed the Gator so that it was
parallel to the cliffs and with only 5m of ground between us and the cliffs
edge. The view was absolutely priceless! Needless to say I drilled the boys
pretty hard about what being careful. After scouting the best photo angle
everybody clambered down a rocky valley bracing themselves against the wind,
especially the gusts which had incredible force and while I think they are
pretty impressive they do not go close to capturing the real magnificence of
the view.
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| Not a bad view!!! |
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| My attempt to capture a different side of the Bight! |
De got some nibblies ready while I again tried to get
creative with the camera and the boys with their new BFF created a BMX track
that included sections such as ‘Death Rock Valley’. Unfortunately we had to
move inside the van as the wind was so ferocious and carried with it the finest
bits of sand that I am sure I will be scrapping out of every orifice for the
next month.
We had and entree of the remaining razor fish with Dave and
Laurance and then fed the boys who were now exhausted from going flat out for
the last few hours. With WA 2 ½ behind we moved the clock back 1hr so the
‘truck lag’ wouldn’t be so bad. We had a big day crossing the majority of the
Nullarbor tomorrow so with the van perched precariously on the cliff top we hit
the sack!
When we are in free camps the boys usually just go outside
on their own in the middle of the night for a pee, but tonight I insisted that
they wake me to take them out. I locked the door securely before going to bed,
not to keep people out but to make sure nobody went sleep walking!!
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