With it quite cool in the mornings we had taken the trouble when we stopped the night before to try and align the van so that when the sun rose it would shine in on our bed come morning. As luck would have it we got it pretty well right but unfortunately we woke to an overcast day with a sprinkling of rain. No matter – if nothing else we would have a better clue as to how to orientate the van next time round. With the day a distance day we did not muck around and got on the road as soon as practical but even so we were the last but one to leave the camp area.
After 67km we arrived at the Caijuna roadhouse and the end of the longest straight road Australia. Given that we had had a break while traveling its distance it had not seemed that arduous, just a bit boring with the scenery pretty much unchanged from end to end although a lot greener than we expected. There is however a unique species of tree that grows alongside the road – the Nullarbor Junk Tree. They come in many varieties from just plain junk to those that specialize in manmade items of some sort or another such as hats, shoes, mugs, clothes etc. Up the centre it was junked cars. Here it is anything you can hang in a dead tree. Something that is not junk however that we did not hang in a tree was the lovely appliqué of Mrs Wishy Washy that Carol started in Nabawa and finished along the way (washing hanging on the line – get the connection??).
Prior to heading off across the Nullarbor we had rung all the roadhouses on the western side of Eucla to find out which had the cheapest fuel and the one we were at was it so a refuel was in order and then it was back on the road east. Shortly after leaving the roadhouse we crossed an informal timeline and put our clocks forward 45 minutes. The remaining 45min (a total of 1.5hrs from WA to SA), to be taken at the border. At that point we will only be 2.5hrs behind NZ instead of the 4 that we have been since late March.
The scenery, although pretty, was much the same on either side of the road and the km did drag a bit although the drop down to the Roe Plains at the Madura Pass was quite interesting going from one long flat road down to another long flat road. After traveling quite a distance during what eventually turned out to be a very sunny day, we arrived at our stop for the night at a rest area about 25km west of Eucla which is just next to the SA border. From there the road follows the coast along the Great Australian Bight which should be quite interesting.
