Day 1The mechanic gave us the all clear, and we were good to go. We'd stocked up with plenty of water, as there are only emergency supplies on the way, buckled up, and hi the road. For the first day there is really not that much to report. The road was long and straight, a highlight was driving the longest stretch of straight road in oz, 146.6 kms, which was a novelty for about 2kms, then just really boring. We drove for about 7 hours swapping the driving every 100ks and singing along to cheesy songs to pass the time.
We had aimed to reach the township of Eucla but soon realised we would not quite make it so instead settled for a road house about 90ks from the South Australia border. We managed to time it just right arriving as it was getting dark, only to be told that the camp ground was closed and we would have to drive another 30ks up the road to a rest area. This would normally be fine, but it was now dark, and driving in the dark is a really bad idea as there are so many accidents caused by roos. we headed on not sure if we should drive quickly to get it over with, or slowly so as not to hit anything. We were half way there when this small shadow appeared at the roadside, it waited until we were right on top of it, and then calmly hopped out into the middle of the road. Luckily we were able to just swerve round it, although we both thought it was going to slam into he side of the van.
We knew that roos were stupid, but now we think they're just suicidal.
Day 2The day started with a trip to the border, which was only about 70ks away, we had a beautiful day with clear skies and the sun shining, but we knew it was going to be a hot one and wanted to cover as much ground as we could before it got too hot.
We had one brief stop off on the way at a small place called Eucla to take a look at their old telgraph station which is slowly being buried by massive sand dunes, it looked pretty cool, but in fairness was noting more than a derelict house full of sand.
Day 2 was slightly more interesting as once we had crossed the border we were driving right by the sea, and there were loads of lookouts to stop at and have a peak at the coast line. There were loads of massive cliffs and it felt like standing on the edge of the world, the next land mass to the south was antartica... after a while though even the lookouts got a little tiresome, as we kept stopping every half hour and never really felt like we were covering any good ground.
Fortunatly they saved the best one till last though, as we arrived just in time to see a load of Southern Right Whales with their calfs in the head of a bay. We walked out onto a broadwalk on the edge of a cliff and got to see the whales breaching, throwing their tails in the air and slapping the water, and generally carrying on. It was like our own private display as we were the only two people there.
After the Whales we put our foot down, we were hoping to get to a town called Ceduna which we had marked as being the end of the really tough part of the journey and we would finally be out of the wilderness as it is a proper town with about 4000 people living there, but as with the day before we didn't quite make it and instead stopped in a little place called Penong which had a gas station and a pub and not much else. We treated ourselves to dinner and a beer in the pub to celebrate getting through 2 long boring days of driving.
Fortunatly it had not been as bad as we were both expecting, all the aussies seem to build it up as this superhuman challenge that your crazy to attempt, but it wasn't all that bad when you've already driven over 20,000kms around the country. Once we crossed into South Australia the going wasn't so bad. That said we still had about 800ks to Adelaide with the prospect of a 1000k detour to Coober Pedy (a crazy mining town where everyone lives underground).
Day 3Our last hop to Ceduna only took us an hour to complete, we had to stop for a quarentine inspection to make sure we weren't carrying any fruit across the border-and this is no joke, you get caught smuggling tomatoes interstate and that's it, your going down!
Ceduna had nothing to offer except a supermarket, so we stocked up on tomatoes and headed for port augusta only a short days drive (480kms) but through a much more populated area with small villages every hour or so.
We finally arrived at port augusta at about 5pm having again driven all day in 36 degree heat, and the thought of another 500k's the next day to coober pedy pretty much made the decision whether or not to go for us.
When we asked at the information center if it was worth the trip the best reason for going they could come up was it's the only place in the southern hemisphere with underground fruit machines... mmm, tempting, but not quite 'pack my bags and drive a 1000k round trip in the sweltering heat to see another town covered in dust' tempting. So our plan for the next day was made, Adelaide...
The Nullarbor was over, we'd survived, Bruce had made it, we'd made it, we were still talking, we're only 15hours drive from sydney, all the hard driving is behind us, now we're on the home straight!
