The Photos are up, go back to Feb 12 & 13 first...
Summary: Think of it as a long bridge, Emus and Gamecocks, The Spirit of the Desert, goodbye WA
First off, a quick visual to explain this nullarbor thing. Nullarbor is Latin for Null (zero) Arbor (trees).
Arbor (coming out of Norseman)
Nullarbor
Good breakfast and a good final impression of the Best Western. Too bad the first impression was off. We hit the road early and it was a smooth ride. We even found a roadhouse with a pretty nice playground. It was flat enough for me to turn around and take a picture of Alex playing the harmonica (not that I did, but it was flat enough).
Norseman was – as expected – a gold town with BP, Shell, and CalTex fuel options. Their slogan is something about mining gold since 1894, but a snappier slogan would be “you have to stop for fuel, some people stay for the gold”. Anyhow, I turned right and set off across what would become the Nullarbor. The road itself is not that remote in that it is well-traveled (I’ve seen emptier roads all across the North) and the spaces between stops is not so extreme (see the North). It is still pretty empty, but it is the main corridor from Perth the rest of the country. The astounding part is that there are no intersections for 1200 km. At no point from Norseman, WA to Ceduna, SA) can you turn off on a paved road. You can take a dirt road to sheep station or pull off for gas, but you can never say “hey, why don’t we take this road through the Victoria Desert to Uluru” unless you’ve got your own fuel and a way of charming local landowners. 1200 km without cross traffic, like a long bridge (say Houston to Tampa). Only bridges are not this flat or straight. Aside from the arrival of a ridge a couple hundred km ago, the landscape has been …shall we say … predictable. At least the plants have changed a little. Oh, one last thing. Nowhere outside of the United States are personalized plates as common as Australia and Western Australia has got to be the champion here. Maybe they are dirt cheap or maybe WA is the only place I saw more than 20 cars, but this made me feel like I was in Virginia a few times. (I have no statistics on this, but Virginia has got to be the personalized plate capital of earth)
Norseman was – as expected – a gold town with BP, Shell, and CalTex fuel options. Their slogan is something about mining gold since 1894, but a snappier slogan would be “you have to stop for fuel, some people stay for the gold”. Anyhow, I turned right and set off across what would become the Nullarbor. The road itself is not that remote in that it is well-traveled (I’ve seen emptier roads all across the North) and the spaces between stops is not so extreme (see the North). It is still pretty empty, but it is the main corridor from Perth the rest of the country. The astounding part is that there are no intersections for 1200 km. At no point from Norseman, WA to Ceduna, SA) can you turn off on a paved road. You can take a dirt road to sheep station or pull off for gas, but you can never say “hey, why don’t we take this road through the Victoria Desert to Uluru” unless you’ve got your own fuel and a way of charming local landowners. 1200 km without cross traffic, like a long bridge (say Houston to Tampa). Only bridges are not this flat or straight. Aside from the arrival of a ridge a couple hundred km ago, the landscape has been …shall we say … predictable. At least the plants have changed a little. Oh, one last thing. Nowhere outside of the United States are personalized plates as common as Australia and Western Australia has got to be the champion here. Maybe they are dirt cheap or maybe WA is the only place I saw more than 20 cars, but this made me feel like I was in Virginia a few times. (I have no statistics on this, but Virginia has got to be the personalized plate capital of earth)
We did stop at a roadhouse with a playground and you can see that Alex played some harmonica (it may be best that no audio files work here). With the steering wheel tied to the gearshift, this photo was totally safe.
An Emu did his level best to get hit by a car, without success. Emus are these very large birds that occasionally stroll into traffic. They are dangerous like kangaroos because their mass is right at windshield level for a car. Anyhow, this emu just sort of strutted around the road. I slowed down and he crossed to my side. At the same time another car came in the oncoming direction – shortly before that car passed us, the emu sprinted to get in that car’s lane then off into the woods. Look closely at the picture in the woods, just left of center next to the left end of the near stand of trees. He was moving pretty fast - he had just been 5 meters away.
A recurring theme has been my placement of University of South Carolina stuff (mostly beer coozies) across Australia. I was due for a stop when I saw the “town” (roadhouse) Cocklebiddie near a bird watching pull-off. Jackpot. South Carolina Gamecocks – Cocklebiddie – this will be easy. Well, the woman who manages the fuel pumps excels in one-word, preferably one-syllable conversation, so I did not see much hope there. However, the woman on the store (& pub) side was more sociable and told me that the name is straight aboriginal from Cockle (shellfish) Biddie (lots of) because the local aborigines found lots of shellfish at the nearby shore. Still, the beer coozie appealed to her as part of a collection by the bar, so we got one more out there. “By the way” she added, “that sort of thing (cockfighting) is illegal in Australia”. “Right, it’s illegal in the States too,” I reassured her. (Note: I am not a cockfighting aficionado and I recall that there may still be one state where it is permitted, but it is not South Carolina or any other state where I have lived)
And with that we arrived in Eucla. Eucla’s slogan is “Spirit of the Desert” and it is a pretty good fit (“discard or consume all fruits and vegetables before entering South Australia” is also a good fit, but less catchy). It is desert around here, although not as harsh as the Mojave, and the town seems to have a nice spirit to it. It is hot in the day and cold at night – that fits the desert. The town is sort of like a decentralized roadhouse, with the fuel, mini-mart/restaurant, motel, camper area run by more than one company. Cleverly, several things here are sponsored by towns you could be driving to: the entrance to the mini-mart and the phone booths extol the virtues of Norseman, there is a big whale and rowboat from Albany in the playground, foreshadowing one potential way of spending time in Albany (Whale expo in Frenchman’s Bay). Anyhow, for the first time since leaving Esperance this morning, we are back on the water. The signature place in Eucla is an old telegraph station that has been taken by the sand dunes. It was fun for Alex to play around there and soft sand made it better than most places we go. Surprisingly, Alex was unable to find any cables or outlets, so he actually just climbed around and tumbled in the dunes. If we felt like stumbling over another kilometer of dunes, we could have also gotten to the Ocean, but that seemed a little ambitious. In an amusing note, we did find some panties sitting right on top of a dune, so apparently messages of some sort are still being sent at the Telegraph Station. Sometimes one can forget that some historic place that the rest of us find in guide books is just some remote place for people to (presumably) meet up.
So, the sun is setting on us in Western Australia after two weeks in this state (and three weeks in Australia in total). We’ll cross from WA into South Australia in about 15km. We have certainly seen most everything one can get to on paved roads (except for gold mining destinations like Kalgoorlie and a wave made of stone in the same general direction – north of Norseman). Genuine people, large stretches of sparsely populated beautiful land, nice resort towns, more personalized license plates than the Commonwealth of Virginia, fun dolphin encounters, good wine country, unique forests, great beaches…Good times and I really like this place in case that was not obvious, but the road is calling. Only 532km more until I see a cross street! I’ll actually be spending my birthday in Barossa, so life is good.
Next: Nullarbor Part II – the Final Flatness
An Emu did his level best to get hit by a car, without success. Emus are these very large birds that occasionally stroll into traffic. They are dangerous like kangaroos because their mass is right at windshield level for a car. Anyhow, this emu just sort of strutted around the road. I slowed down and he crossed to my side. At the same time another car came in the oncoming direction – shortly before that car passed us, the emu sprinted to get in that car’s lane then off into the woods. Look closely at the picture in the woods, just left of center next to the left end of the near stand of trees. He was moving pretty fast - he had just been 5 meters away.
A recurring theme has been my placement of University of South Carolina stuff (mostly beer coozies) across Australia. I was due for a stop when I saw the “town” (roadhouse) Cocklebiddie near a bird watching pull-off. Jackpot. South Carolina Gamecocks – Cocklebiddie – this will be easy. Well, the woman who manages the fuel pumps excels in one-word, preferably one-syllable conversation, so I did not see much hope there. However, the woman on the store (& pub) side was more sociable and told me that the name is straight aboriginal from Cockle (shellfish) Biddie (lots of) because the local aborigines found lots of shellfish at the nearby shore. Still, the beer coozie appealed to her as part of a collection by the bar, so we got one more out there. “By the way” she added, “that sort of thing (cockfighting) is illegal in Australia”. “Right, it’s illegal in the States too,” I reassured her. (Note: I am not a cockfighting aficionado and I recall that there may still be one state where it is permitted, but it is not South Carolina or any other state where I have lived)
And with that we arrived in Eucla. Eucla’s slogan is “Spirit of the Desert” and it is a pretty good fit (“discard or consume all fruits and vegetables before entering South Australia” is also a good fit, but less catchy). It is desert around here, although not as harsh as the Mojave, and the town seems to have a nice spirit to it. It is hot in the day and cold at night – that fits the desert. The town is sort of like a decentralized roadhouse, with the fuel, mini-mart/restaurant, motel, camper area run by more than one company. Cleverly, several things here are sponsored by towns you could be driving to: the entrance to the mini-mart and the phone booths extol the virtues of Norseman, there is a big whale and rowboat from Albany in the playground, foreshadowing one potential way of spending time in Albany (Whale expo in Frenchman’s Bay). Anyhow, for the first time since leaving Esperance this morning, we are back on the water. The signature place in Eucla is an old telegraph station that has been taken by the sand dunes. It was fun for Alex to play around there and soft sand made it better than most places we go. Surprisingly, Alex was unable to find any cables or outlets, so he actually just climbed around and tumbled in the dunes. If we felt like stumbling over another kilometer of dunes, we could have also gotten to the Ocean, but that seemed a little ambitious. In an amusing note, we did find some panties sitting right on top of a dune, so apparently messages of some sort are still being sent at the Telegraph Station. Sometimes one can forget that some historic place that the rest of us find in guide books is just some remote place for people to (presumably) meet up.So, the sun is setting on us in Western Australia after two weeks in this state (and three weeks in Australia in total). We’ll cross from WA into South Australia in about 15km. We have certainly seen most everything one can get to on paved roads (except for gold mining destinations like Kalgoorlie and a wave made of stone in the same general direction – north of Norseman). Genuine people, large stretches of sparsely populated beautiful land, nice resort towns, more personalized license plates than the Commonwealth of Virginia, fun dolphin encounters, good wine country, unique forests, great beaches…Good times and I really like this place in case that was not obvious, but the road is calling. Only 532km more until I see a cross street! I’ll actually be spending my birthday in Barossa, so life is good.
Next: Nullarbor Part II – the Final Flatness
1 comment:
loved the Arbor vs Nullarbor!
Indeed, a picture is worth a thousand words.....
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