The Nullarbor Part II - Feb 16

Since I am posting today's content as well, let me restate to jump back to Feb 12-13 for photos.

Summary: Nullabor planes, cliff driving, dingo watching, looking for German cars, into Adelaide

Before I get too carried away here, the entire 1200km drive is not really “Nullarbor”(no trees) in the truest sense. There is a stretch of about 50 uninterrupted miles with nothing but low scrub. There are many stretches of barely any trees. Still, there was farmland at the end and lots of variation between trees and no trees. I’m not saying I would want to drive it every day, but I don’t want to paint a picture of a bleak, uninterrupted barren plain.

Speaking of plain, every so often on the Nullarbor the highway was set up for planes to land with stripes and a wider shoulder and everything. That highway is the emergency runway for anything between Perth and the cities that would fly direct to Perth. In the US, highways are emergency landing sites, but the time and effort to clear a freeway would likely not make it worth it. Here, they have gone to the trouble to mark it accordingly and seeing a plane approach would probably get the attention of all 5 vehicles nearby that could be affected.

As soon as we entered South Australia, we were on the cliff version of the Nullarbor (it was a little cold, in case Alex's gang signs don't make sense). There were frequent pulloffs to take photos. We took a few. (nice shadow I cast, huh?) Then we got on with it. The landscape really changed quite a bit from desert (Eucla) to windswept cliffs to empty plain. The rest of the way into Adelaide it varied from looking like Central California farming country to Nevada desert (Reno, not Vegas). If that means nothing to you - it was dry, eventually there were mountains, much of it is rural argicultural land, the rest is desert.

Of the many well-know Aussie wildlife, we had not seen any Dingoes until yesterday. We saw a lot of them today. At first, I just thought they were normal dogs that were feral. Then I noticed they all looked alike - tan, shorter than a retriever. They all had that stray dog in a bad part of town look - aware of traffic, but not in a hurry to get off the street. Never really running, just moving at a good clip and wary of people. One pranced through the gas station, so I asked the attendant and she said "yeah, those are dingoes".

Adelaide was settled by Germans and has a slightly higher per capita income than most of Australia, so maybe we'll see some German cars. If you added up all the European cars we've seen, you could hide them in Jay Leno's car collection and he would not notice for a couple weeks. We've seen them all - BMW, Audi, Porsche, VW, Mercedes (ditto for non-Germans like Citroen, Renault, Volvo, and Jaguar) - but we've seen about 2 of each. Odd really. Over 10,000 km and maybe 20 European cars total.









These two photos tell a little story - this rural town with a grain elevator could be in South Dakota or outside Fresno. The second one is the approach to Port Augusta with the beginnings of the Flinders Range in the background. (note: I know photos from moving cars should be avoided - there just wasn't a good place to stop)

We departed a little after sunrise and arrived in Adelaide at sunset. We had intended to stop at Port Augusta. Still, I saw that Adelaide was only 3 more hours and we would not have to drive at all on Sunday. It just made sense. Given that we had something of a pit crew mentality when stopping, the day itself was memorable only for the success in crossing the Nullarbor and pushing on to Adelaide. And we scored! The hotel is in the center of the city. Look at a map of Adelaide, there is an obvious center – the Hilton is on that corner (points again – whenever it seems like a nice place assume points). The street next to us, Gauger, was simply packed with people, great restaurants, cafes, and watering holes. Very cosmopolitan selection of places – Brazilian, Argentinian, Italian, all measure of Asian, Australian. Anyhow, we just walked up one block, down the other, and called it a night, but we clearly found a great part of Adelaide. We'll be here 2 nights, find some other place, then come back here for 2 nights. There is some sort of race in town and things are packed.

Tomorrow: see if I can get that exclusive Penfolds tasting booked, otherwise chill