Van Morrison: Lonesome Road

The long and lonely Nullarbor.

A road famous for it's length (some 1,200 or so kilometres) and not much more.

Starting at Ceduna - in South Australia and going all the way through to Norseman, some 700 kilometres into Western Australian, this is one trip across the centre that we made with haste.
We were across it in two days.

If we had to endure more days, it's possible we'd have gone a little but nuts. We were already playing the worlds most ridiculous car games to keep ourselves amused and awake, having forgotten to load the audio books onto our ipod's.

You can't pick up any radio station and you can't pick up any phone coverage.

I had grand hopes of seing some fabulous wildlife running about freely, after the promise held in this sign:

But it was a big fat lie. Some sort of trickery designed to help keep you awake.

It feels like you're just looking at the same piece of road and that you're not actually getting anywhere the whole time.
You feel like you're a mouse on a spinning wheel.

Here's a little taster I snapped along the way especially for you.

To spice it up they've removed any need to turn the wheel for a while...

I got to drive that whole straight myself telling Husband man every few kilometres that we're still going straight. He did not laugh.

And then:

You get the idea, yes?

We actually met some grey nomads at the beginning that were taking a slow month to do it.
They're literally going to be staying out the back of road houses and on free parking areas at the side of the road for a month to look at Blue Bush shrubs and red dirt.
I find this very odd.

But it's not all bad.

What's amazing is that you get what I call the 'snow globe' feeling - one of my all time favourite things about the Australian outback.
The sky goes all the way to the horizon that you can see laying out flat at 360 degrees around you. You feel like you're in the centre of a store bought snowglobe of Australia.

And there are a number of stop offs that you can take to look over the edge of the 80 metre cliff drops down into the Great Australian Bight.

And every 200 kilometres or so, you get to pull into dusty old roadhouses, filled with truck drivers looking exactly what you imagine a truck driver looks like (faded blue wife-beater singlet, stubbies, tatts and beards), European backpackers cramming themselves into small vans and caravaners like us.

We're all paying for overpriced petrol and stretching our legs.

The LEAST awesome pull-up was at Madura - where upon heading to the bathroom - I encountered this sign at the door:

At first I spun on my heel and walked back to the car.

There is no freekin way I was going to be walking into a bathroom where there is the possibility that I will be sharing it with a snake.

Snakes have ZERO legs and MULTIPLE fangs and that is an unnacceptable combination as far as I'm concerned. 

I've been reading in all theses national park brochures lately that 'snakes are misunderstood, don't kill them'.
I fail to see how alive snakes are serving any purpose alive and I fail to see how they're 'misunderstood' when they slide around biting people.

They only acceptable form of fangs piercing the flesh of unsuspecting humans is when they are the fangs of Eric from True Blood.
Hot vampires are good. Snakes are evil.

But then unfortunately for me, there isn't another toilet for 300 kilometres.

It took me about 5 minutes to convince myself to go in there.

It was the quickest pee of my life.

Our one night stop over was at Mundrabilla where we camped out on the side of the road behind the service centre.

It provided a fabulous bush sunset, a great end to a long first day.



It really is very far away as this sign at the WA border points out:

If you add another couple hunfred kilometres, you can work out jsut how far we are from home. It's weird really.

And now we find ourselves in sunny Western Australia. Ready to 'experience extraordinary' - as the ad campaign entices.

I spent a whole year at the ad agency Host in Sydney watching all the stunning videos and the gorgeous stories from the extraordinary taxi ride campaign that Host created for Western Australia.

Just look at the awesome on the website: http://www.westernaustralia.com/au/

I've got high hopes for this state and am partocularly looking forward to the weeks ahead.

Will be kicking off in Esperance - soaking up the sun and drinking spritzers!