Nullarbor Part 3 - Dingos and All Sorts

Location: Darwin
Weather: Hot n'Humid

Well after that minor mishap, it was time to start on my journey again. On my way out of Kimba I had a quick stop at the local IGA supermarket and met this Japanese dude who was cycling all the way across the Nullarbor. What a nutcase, I don't know how he could even manage 10km's in that heat and all he was wearing was a headscarf over his helmet to shield him from the sun! He was a bit upset that the IGA was closed, because he couldn't buy any bread, sadly I didn't have any to give him.

Drove to Kyancutta, Wudina, Minipa, Poochera and Wirrula. All tiny places with a roadhouse to buy petrol at. It was now at $1.20 a litre! The scenary was still mainly wheat fields interspersed with grain silos or the odd bit of freight railway line. I was now only a few km's from my next goal Ceduna - the real start of the Nullarbor and a reasonable sized town ie. it had a few shops and a fair sized supermarket. Only this far to go now...

Rolling into Ceduna I had fish n'chips, wrote my diary in the 24 hour Shell servo there and slept in the car by some field! The next day I did a bit of fishing on the pier, but didn't catch anything. Leaving Ceduna, I drove through Penong, Nundroo and Yalata. Yalata is a stretch of road on Aboriginal community land. As it happened I came across a crashed car at the side of the road and considered nicking the stereo, because I was having so many problems with the one in my car. Just as it dawned on me that this would be impossible anyways, because I didn't have any tools, some locals pulled up and told me the dude was waiting to have it fixed, so I left the scene. At Yalata roadhouse there was an exhibition of some Aboriginal artwork and stuff. Next main town from here is Norseman...

I also went to see ''Head of Bight'' park, to see the coastline and Bunda cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. During June-October whales go there to mate and apparently it's popular with toursts, but it was totally deserted when I went there. It was much like the Great Ocean Road, rocks in a very blue sea.
My final stop for the day was the Nullarbor services roadhouse! I was now at the start of the true fabeled Nullarbor Plain - HOORAY! the biggest limestone plain in the world devoid of trees (Nullarbor is bad latin for [nullis]Without [arbor]Trees). Despite all the hype there is really only 29kms without any trees whatsoever, but it is very odd to happen upon this area, going from bushland covered with trees. It was quite eerie and strange to be honest.

This night I slept at some parking spot down the road, on the way I saw a dingo that had been run over by one of the many roadtrains that were passing through that night. I had now clocked up 1481kms! Upon waking and getting some petrol from the Nullarbor servo costing $1.42 a litre now, I saw a couple more dingos, this time alive! they seemed quite friendly to be honest :


By the way it was also around this area that you come across the unique Nullarbor road signs - there are quite a lot of them, including this famous one:

By JamesReed on 21.12.04 @ 06:45 AM GMT