You hear many crazy stories about the way to Western Australia through the nullarbor. If you read in the „Lonely Planet“ about that it says: „You’ll only share the road with caravans, road trains and cyclists of questionable sanity“. But lets start at the beginning.

Now, that we left the Eyre Peninsula behind, we are in for the first massive distance through misanthropical environment. To be prepared for that, we do everything many people told us we should do. They told us something like, 1200km of no drinking water, fuel prices over 2$ per litre and other insane rumors. Because of that, we refueled our car and bought as much reserves as we would need to easily survive a few weeks in the desert. Better safe than sorry. There was not much up in Ceduna and after a short visit in the vistor centre we changed our plans. Actually we planed to stay in Ceduna for a night and start the big trip on the day after, but so we moved on today. From Ceduna to the first roadhouse it’s only about 300km, the first quarter of the whole trip.

It is an unpleasent feeling to know you won’t have mobile reception or workshops around for the next 1200-1400km. The way to Norseman is 1200km just straight ahead through unreal landscapes where allegedly no single tree grows. This promises to be a exciting ride. And in fact the vegetation decreases afer the first 250km. Less trees, untill only bushes remain. Every 10-15km a disgusting smell from rotted flesh of dead kangaroos, wombats or birds on the roadside is in the air. These dead animals are literally a real feast for the crows.

We reached the roadhouse safe and spent the night under the starry sky. Here’s really not much except from bushes so we moved on the other day. Google thinks it’s interessting anyway, because we spotted a car with „Google Maps“ on the doors and a camera on the roof. So there should be a street view available for the nullarbor.

It’s always the same…the stories are exaggerated. We never paid more than 1,85$ for fuel and could buy drinking water at every single roadhouse. The only thing I agree with is the distance. Additionally on this paltry 1200km you can find the longest straight road in Australia, 146,6 km without any curve. You could easily put a latch between the throttle control and the steering wheel and do a little nap. It’s likewise worth seeing and exhausting. The thing with the insane cyclists is also true, we saw a few of them. Even weird was, that we saw a man running, with an offroad pushchair full of watercans. Sounds like fun……

To the travellers exhilaration there is also the longest golf course in the world. The 18 holes are spread over the whole 1400km. We loved to do that, but the pass is 70$ per person and we also needed golf clubs and proper clothing. So we didn’t do it.

At the boarder to Western Australia our supplies decreased unforeseen. The pest control took 3 onions and honey, which we bought at the supermarket. You are not allowed to bring fruits, vegetables, honey and something like that into Western Australia.

The rest of the story is told very fast. We drove straigth, the trees increased again and we arrived in Norseman. But just for a quick stop before we went on to Esperance. Goodbye South Australia and hello Western Australia. More about that in our next blogpost.

Simon