Day 64 – Kalgoorlie to Mundrabilla

This morning we left Kalgoorlie about 8.00am and headed south, retracing our steps of a couple of days ago, until we reached Norseman. After a quick morning tea stop, we were on our way heading due east across the Nullarbor Plain. It such a long, treeless plain, and after a couple of hundred kilometres we reached the first roadhouse – Balladonia.

The roadhouse is quite organised with a motel, basic food, powered van sites and even a museum all about the Nullarbor. It tells the story of the afghan cameleers, the pioneers, the flora and fauna of the area, and even a section dedicated to the finding of Skylab which crashed near here in 1979.

The landscape is mainly saltbush, with a few gum trees scattered here and there. We pass lots of dead kangaroos (about one every two kilometres), sometimes with the accompanying wedge tailed eagle perched on top having his lunch. Stumpy tailed lizards flit across the road in front of us, and apart from the odd bird, we haven’t seen any other animals so far.  Along the way we see the first of three RFDS emergency landing strip signs, signalling to us that when we see the white markers on the road ahead, it has been set aside for a RFDS plane runway, if needed.

The word Nullarbor is not aboriginal as we thought it might be, but is derived from the Latin “nullus arbour” meaning ‘no trees’ – very appropriate. As we pass by Balladonia we are reminded to turn our clocks forward by 45 minutes from WA standard time. Very strange – there are two time zone points that we pass over the Nullarbor where we must change our clocks.

Before long we were seeing the signs for Australia’s longest straight stretch of road – 144kms to be precise. 

We stopped at the Caiguna roadhouse for a brief afternoon tea and to stretch our legs, while the kids had a quick swing.

It was late, about 7pm by the time we pulled into Mundrabilla Roadhouse, and secured ourselves a powered caravan site (aka a piece of dirt out the back). About 850km travelled today, one of our longest days on the road, so we are all tired and hungry. We bought some hot chips from the roadhouse, everything else was way too expensive. I was amused to see this offered for sale here….