Day 68 Fowlers Bay

The roar of the road-trains racing past woke me just before dawn so I began packing up the van while Jacqui and the boys slept a little longer. The noise got to them before too long and after a quick coffee and corn flakes, we were back on the highway at about 6:30am.
Our 1st stop was Eucla where we grabbed a coffee before driving out to the ruins of the old Telegraph Station. The sand dunes have reclaimed the building and I’ve been told that on some days, the sand completely covers the house while on other days, there’s so little sand, you’d wonder why the ever moved out. We got some great pictures.
After Eucla, it was on to the WA/SA Border and the obligatory border-crossing pictures. The border also put us in our third time-zone in the past 18 hours, which confused us all. Of far greater significance to us all was the sadness we all felt as we left the western state. We crossed into WA on the Tanami during day 21 and here we are on day 68 crossing the boarder again, but this time, we’re leaving this great state. During the past 47 days, we’ve seen virtually the entire west coast with some of the highlights including Cape Leveque, Palm Springs at Halls Creek, camel rides at Broome, crocks at Windjana Gorge, snorkelling on Ningaloo Reef, skinny dipping in the Python Pool at Milstream and the views at Natures Window. To add to the great locations are the great people including our caravan park friends at Derby, Dampier and Hyden, not to forget our Swiss backpackers. We’ve had a great time in WA and we’ll always hold the memories close.
We stopped at a number of lookouts along the Nullarbor Plain but none presented views more spectacular than those we encountered at Bunda Cliffs. The views from the edge of the cliff, quite literally took my breath away. We’ve seen some amazing sights on this journey but these cliffs are hard to beat. With no railings or barriers of any kind, you can get to the very edge of the cliff’s 90 meter drop and the feeling of standing on the very edge of Australia is exhilarating
When you look at the map, you’ll see towns all along the Eyre Hwy. Towns like Balladonia, Caigunu, Cocklebiddy, Mundrabilla, and Nullarbor so when planning this trip, I thought we could stop at some of these little towns to break up the journey, but the reality is, there are no towns. All of these places are nothing more than highway service stations where they gouge every penny they can from passing motorists. Fuel and cold water are the two things making someone out here rich, but its money they’ve earned if it means living on this stretch of road. I’ve learned that the name Nullarbor comes from two Latin words, nullus and arborus. The rough translation to English is, godawful, boring, long straight drive. We saw one camel along the way and if not for the cliffs, I could have slept all the way. It’s done, and we made it without incident so it’s time to enjoy what little time we have before the reality of Sydney again claims us.
The boys are excited to have finally arrived at Fowlers Bay as we’ve told them that it’s named after Jacqui’s long distant relative Robert Fowler, 1st Lieutenant to Mathew Flinders on his initial circumnavigation of Australia in the 1802. We were pleased to discover that after another 562km today, Fowlers Bay really is a town and not just another service station. I’m not sure how people survive financially here but it does have an unusually long pier and the town sits in amongst magnificent sand dunes. It has a caravan park with showers and toilets, which is all that really matters to us after the 1,300 km of the past two days. We’ll be having a shorter, easier day tomorrow. We seem to be having a problem with the fridge when we turn it over to battery power and despite the indicator on the gas bottle, we seem to have run out of gas. Luckily we have the spare bottle with the cooker to get us through the night. Our original plan was to spend today driving down to Lucky Bay and catch the Sea Ferry across Spencer Gulf but we’ve learnt from some fellow travellers that the ferry is closed until mid year. I called the SA Ferry Company and sure enough, no Sea Ferry across the gulf until July, 2010. It looks like we’ll be taking the long way around via Port Augusta after we check a few things out at Streaky Bay.
Cheers,
Jorg