It was a cold night at Fraser Range! Little did we realise that Fraser Range is 300 metres above sea level. I only found that out after we had a very cold sleep and woke up to find ice on the camper!! I checked the ambient temperature on the Pajero, and when I turned on the ignition the outside temp display showed me it was -2 degrees!!! I thought it was reading incorrectly, so I consulted with the small thermometer we have on a magnet inside the tailgate of the camper, which indicated -4 degrees… Yep, it's bloody cold all right!! Needless to say, we were in no hurry to pack up the camper in that! Once finally packed up and thawing out in the car again we continued toward the Nullarbor.

Driving the Eyre Highway is not as flat and boring as most people think. For the most part there are quite a few trees, a lot of low shrubbery, varied wildlife, plenty of dead kangaroos, hills and corners. Even once we arrived at the point of the start of the 90 mile straight, which is the longest straight section of road in Australia, the landscape was really not much different than a lot of other Western Australian landscapes. Even the Longest-Straight-In-Australia was undulating with trees on both sides, so we didn't really feel as if we had just driven 146 km without a corner. I had preconceived ideas of the straight being dead flat and tree-less, but it's nothing like that at all. A few more hours of similar scenery was enough for one day, so we pulled into a rest area to camp the night. We were on the road again early, and meandered our way east. We stopped at Eucla to visit the old telegraph station ruins. The ruins are almost right on the beach and are slowly being filled in with sand. The weather was almost perfect at the time of our visit, blue sky, a few clouds and very little wind. There were a few people visiting the ruins at the time, one bloke told me he had last been here in 1962 and the ruined building still looked the same as it did back then. The sand must be piling up very slowly then, if nothing has changed in the past 50 years! Not far from Eucla we crossed the Western Australia - South Australia border, so ends our travels through Western Australia. Here is where the Nullarbor National Park starts as we continued driving in and out of various lookouts along the way. The Bunda Cliffs run for 800 km along this stretch of coast, starting at Head of Bight and going west from there. Visiting the cliffs is hard to describe, and photos never will do it justice. From the lookout you can see the flat expanse of the Nullarbor, and as it nears the ocean it just stops and there is a 50 metre drop into the ocean. No hills, no sand dunes, just a right angle cliff face. Awesome. We found a spot to camp on the edge of the cliffs. We backed the camper up to the edge of the cliffs, set up the camper and sat there enjoying the sunshine and a light breeze only 30 metres or so from the edge of Australia, overlooking the Southern Ocean with nothing between us and Antarctica. During the night the wind picked up and began rocking us around a bit. By the time morning arrived the wind had freshened from the south and was attempting to blow us inland. It was getting stronger and stronger, so we packed up with some degree of difficulty and headed off. I knew the wind was coming, but I had hoped we would get a bit of a break until mid morning at least. Bloody wind follows us everywhere!! Back on the highway and we stopped at the Nullarbor Roadhouse to make a couple of phone calls, because it was the only place where there is mobile coverage. As we sat in the car the wind was howling through, creating a couple of large dust storms. Once we got going again we were happy to find the wind had swung around a bit and we had a nice strong tailwind pushing us along, which was a bonus for our fuel consumption.

After a bit of discussion about whether of not to visit Head of Bight, we decided to at least have a look. As far as we knew, you must pay 12 bucks a person to visit the Head of Bight (which is the very top of the Great Australian Bight) to see the cliffs and possibly sight a whale. We had seen the cliffs for free down the road a bit, and we have spotted whales before, so we were reluctant to pay for the same experience. The woman at the entry point was very convincing and guaranteed that we would see numerous whales close to the cliffs, she even offered us our money back if we were not happy with what we saw. Can't ask for more than that. So we paid our money and took the walk to the cliff edge, where there is a boardwalk and viewing platforms. The woman was correct to give her guarantee, there were Southern Right Whales everywhere!! Mothers and calves were just lazing around in the protected waters of the bay at the Head of Bight. We spent well over an hour watching the antics of the calves playing, the mothers watching they didn't get too close to the cliffs, and even the odd whale was breaching out of the water. All this was happening less than a hundred metres from the lookouts. When the whales exhaled we could hear the rush of air as they breathed, they were that close. Truly a fantastic experience. We were lucky to be here at this time of the year, as the whales generally move on by September / October, so enduring crappy weather and wind does have its up-side. We walked from platform to platform, following whales as they drifted by. As we were walking along one of the paths we moved over to let another couple past. Kathy found that the bitumen path didn't reach all the way to the fence here, and her foot slipped off the edge of the path, rolling her ankle and then she fell hard on her knee, tearing her jeans and taking some skin off in the process. She was a bit sore but she would live. Not being one to miss an opportunity though, when we had finished with the whales and had returned to the shop, Kathy informed the woman of her fall and explained the section of path that needs attention before some old duck falls in the same spot and breaks a hip. Kathy showed her the resulting injuries and asked, "Do I get a free whale toy because I fell over on the path?" She did! It has pride of place on the shelf in the back of the Pajero. We thanked her for a fantastic experience with the whales, and for the newly acquired stuffed toy, then, whale in hand, we returned to the car and headed off again.

The wind was roaring through the Head of Bight, and as we drove out it was getting worse. After a few more kilometres the rain caught up with us and the weather turned proper nasty. It became obvious that we were not going to be able to set up the camper in such a strong wind, and as it became dark we made the decision to park in a rest area and sleep in the car for the night. Sleep in the car we did, and it was a cold, uncomfortable and restless sleep we had. Put plainly, it sucked! The only bonus was that we were on the road again by 6:30am, something that is hard to do when you need to pack up a camper trailer. We completed our Nullarbor crossing without incident and pulled into Ceduna in the hope of finding somewhere to buy a decent breakfast. The only place in town that did a breakfast was the bakery, and one look at their rubbery bacon and egg muffins for $6 each was enough for us to pass. Ceduna is not a big town, but in the short time we were there we quickly noted that it was a bars-on-windows and big-fences-around-everything kind of town. So we drove a bit further along to Smokey Bay, where we stopped near the bay and had breakfast in the car, eating some of our delicious Passionfruit Curd that we bought from the Margaret River Chocolate Company, spread on fresh bread. A short drive along the Eyre Peninsula brought us to Streaky Bay where we pulled in to the caravan park.

Streaky Bay is a lovely place, the kind of town I could easily live in. It has a population of 1,500 people, the streets are quiet, everything is closed by 1pm on Saturday and nothing opens on Sunday. At night it is like a ghost town. The town is placed around a nice sheltered bay with clear water, just a beautiful spot. We decided to stay a couple of nights and we took a day trip out to the nearby coastline to visit the Blowholes and Whistling rocks amongst other coastal scenery. When we left Streaky Bay we took another scenic drive along the coast, in and out of various lookouts and bays. The Eyre Peninsula has some of the most beautiful coastline in Australia, without a doubt. We meandered our way down the coast to Point Lebatt, which has the only permanent colony of Australian Sea Lions on mainland Australia. Here we were able to view the sea lions from a viewing platform atop the cliffs, looking down on the sea lions as they went about their daily routines, unaware that we were even there. We camped the night at Murphy's Haystacks a bit further inland from Point Lebatt. The Haystacks are a number of pink granite rocks that rise out of green grassy fields. They are interesting and make a good photography subject, but that's about it. It was incredibly quiet there over night, so we had a good night sleep without wind for a change. The next day we drove to Coffin Bay, which is one place we had been looking forward to visiting. As seems to be the current trend, the wind picked up again as we neared Coffin Bay. The weather forecast was looking bleak again, with a deep low pressure system promising very strong winds in the next day or so. With this in mind, we reluctantly decided that camping in the Coffin Bay National Park on the sand dunes or on the beach would be a bad idea, and we had better find somewhere more sheltered. So, we had a nice fish and chip lunch at Coffin Bay and then drove to Port Lincoln to bunker down in the caravan park and await the storm. We found a spot that was sheltered from the westerly winds and tied the camper down well. The next couple of days were windy with showers and cold, but then the expected storm hit us on Thursday and it was everything that had been predicted. The westerly wind blew at a constant 50 km/h, reaching 65 km/h for a couple of hours, and Port Lincoln recorded gusts of up to 100 km/h! It rained, hailed, and was generally not a nice day. We hid in the camp kitchen of the caravan park for most of the afternoon, looking out every so often to check on the camper. Even with our sheltered campsite, and not bearing the brunt of the wind, we still had poles and ropes flying off from time to time. I'm sure camper trailer tents are not designed to come in contact with 100 km/h winds … At the end of the day the wind began to abate and the camper still stands! We are very happy not to have been camped on the beach somewhere when that storm came through - it pays to keep an eye on the weather forecast sometimes.

While waiting out the weather we have had a look around Port Lincoln, it's a neat and tidy town, easy to get around in, and it has almost everything you would need to live here. There is a large grain industry here as well as a large fishing industry (which is what it is best known for), so there is a bit of an industrial feel to the place, but it's not too bad. We have sampled some of the local seafood and it was very tasty! I am hopeful to get to go out on a boat and dive with Great White Sharks, but the weather has kept the charter boats in dock, and the reports from the tour operator are that they haven't had a lot of success finding sharks recently. In fact, they have only sighted four Great Whites in the past month… they must have taken a mid season holiday. We are going to hang around here for a few more days and see if things improve before I part with my cash, the weather is slowly improving, we'll go for a drive out to Lincoln National Park, maybe have some more seafood and wait and see if the sharks return.

Here's hoping!