Depending on whether you're a glass half full or half empty kind of person, the Nullabor could either "bore you s***less" as in Australiana speak, or entrance you. We took 3 days to cross the full length with the first stop at Fraser Range Station, about 4 hours north and then east of Esperance. It had been a sheep station, and I'd told the kids about all the sheep, horses and animals they would see, so the disappointment was palpable when we arrived to find all sheep etc were no longer available. Thankfully though, the kindly gents who now run the small caravan park on the "former" sheep station were happy to take the kids in hand and introduce them to the farmers dogs (including a very cute 4 month old kelpie), feed the chickens and collect a whopping 30 eggs from about 20 chooks! There was a great communal campfire too, and as we hadn't had the camp oven out in a couple of months, whipped up some bread dough and cooked it over the communal coals - with lots of grey nomad advice of course. There was dinner cooked in the camp kitchen which we joined in on whilst warming ourselves on the enourmous bot belly stove (think it was actually an old still). Not enough to entertain the kids here though, so we took off again the next morning on our way to Eucla.Surprisingly the trip from Fraser Range to Eucla (602km) was quite thick with desert plants and low trees, and just before the Madura Roadhouse, the landscape dropped away for a 100km, with the road running on the lower side against the plateau, and then rising again just before Eucla. I found the Eucla Roadhouse to be really modern but Paul informs me it wasn't quite like that on his trip over a little more than 12 months ago. Very cold overnight perched on top of the cliff and it appears that the temperature differential in colder weather causes quite a lot of condensation above the beds - need to research on how to avoid this. In the meantime we've luckily brought some picnic rugs and a drop sheet which will keep the beds dry in transit.
Eucla to Ceduna in South Australia was a shorter trip (490km) but with the Great Australian Bight Marine Park to see, plus whales at the nursery at Head of the Bight, took us most of the next day. The actual "Treeless Plain" was only 146km long, and the remainder had shorter trees and saltbush - actually quite pretty. The Head of the Bight is on Aboriginal Land, and much of the local revenue comes from this place, but they had a very cool info centre, along with good boardwalks down to the cliff edge to view the whales, and we were amazed by how many we saw. Southern Right Whales come up from Antarctica to calve here (amongst half a dozen other places in the southern hemisphere), and we saw around 8-10 dark whales cruising around the small bay, some with calves in tow. Beautiful. Harri was disappointed they weren't closer (even with binoculars) - sure is hard to please visual kids these days. A quick bite to eat and then a big drive on to Ceduna Big 4 Caravan Park. We'd planned a few days extra at Esperance and Fraser Range, and as a result had plenty of fresh fruit and vegies to hand over to the quarantine fellows just before Ceduna. We arrived just on dark (winding clocks forward 1.5 hours) and proceeded on to the local pub for a very decent meal.Another big driving day from Ceduna towards Adelaide. A stop at the Big Galah in the small town of Kimba was a highlight (or not as in my case), however the homemade pasties were extremely good! Refueling in Port Augusta at around 3pm, we decided to keep going a little longer, and ended up in the big iron smelting town of Port Pirie. Actually quite a pretty waterfront - just with a big smelter across the water on a small island. Onwards towards Adelaide tomorrow - hopefully to catch up with the cousins.