Adelaide, Flinders Ranges and Surviving the Nullarbor Crossing

Jan 8 - 11th

Sign just outside our campground in Adelaide


We spent our next few days seeing more of Adelaide, the lovely city that is laid out in a grid that is so simple even I would be hard pressed to get lost.

Rundle Street is a pedestrian mall where everyone shops until they literally drop. We chose to explore the used book stores and found several Australian authors and more of Tim Winton's books. I was introduced to his work last year by a young woman who works at Wellspring (thank you Antonia) and who spent some time living in Australia. She knew we were planning this trip and loaned me her copy of "Dirt Music". I was hooked, then Bob was hooked and now we are proud parents of 5 of his novels. We find him quite impressive and are spending evenings at the campsites soaking up his wonderful stories.

The next several hours were in the Adelaide market; an indoor market (like Grenville in Vancouver and St. Lawrence in Toronto) however this one takes up an entire city block. The kiosks of lunch options ranged from Thai to Aussie (kangaroo burgers...NO, thank you very much!!) to Russian (we opted for the Russian) and the choice of fresh food was huge. Fair trade chocolate, coffee and organic fruit, veg and cheese made in the Adelaide area....every kind of olive imaginable, seafood, meat, meat pies..........it was too much and we bought so much!!!

The following two days were incredibly hot so we walked the km to the largest mall in Australia; Bob got a buzz cut once again then we joined the senior's movie club. What a hoot it was to actually JOIN a senior's club. This theatre in the mall is like a Cineplex chain and their theatres can be found all over Australia. It was $15 pp for a ticket and the membership was $28 for the 2 of us and $7 per ticket once you'd joined. The young people signing us up thought we were a riot (Bob tried to convince them we were native Aussies) and we had a lot of fun with them. That first day we saw "Happy Feet"....an Aussie movie that is cute and has a very strong environmental message. The next day we walked back to the mall, did some grocery shopping and then spent the afternoon in the theatre watching "Casino Royale"....YES!!! It was awesome and my personal feeling is that this new Bond is perfect for the times. I felt 30 years younger just ogling him.

Walking back to the campground at 6 pm felt (as Bob describes it) like what he imagined being in a convection oven would be like. Your skin literally feels as if it's cooking! Such heat at that time of day was unbelievable. The neat thing is that the temperature drops suddenly once the sun goes down and we don't have to sleep with air conditioning.

January 12th we headed north to the Flinders Ranges; a most unusual advenure through terrain unlike anything we'd seen so far. We saw salt lakes .....no water, just salt and bushes growing beside them called salt bushes ....funny that! These lakes have been there for centuries, ever since the tides filled the basins a very long time ago.

We spent the night at Hawker, a tiny village where it seems time has almost stood still. The campsites were empty because it is simply too hot for Aussies to travel here at this time of year. There was one other van in this huge campground. High season for this camp is April to September however they stay open for silly people like us who don't quite get it.....and to be honest, it was a heck of a lot cooler than Adelaide those last couple of days.

Jan 13th we left early to drive to Wilpena Pound (isn't that the coolest name?) in the ranges. The "Pound" is actually a crater with one entrance where farmers of old brought their sheep. The walls of the crater provided a natural yard. We spotted wild emu and roos. Outside the Pound, the hills were desolate and dry. We had been told that Walut II would make it through the unsealed roads through the ranges and so we set off. The drive was great for around 100 km although some bits were "corrugated" or what we would call washboard. We looked at each other, laughed (because Maui rentals would NOT be pleased) and cranked up the bargain tunes we'd purchased....Phil Collins, Bob Marley....lit a doobie (will you ever believe another word???) and rode it out.

There are geological signs along the path and we saw silt, limestone and quartz gorges that are more than 500 million years old!! Too much to comprehend I'm afraid. The road became narrower and narrower and suddenly in front of us was a river....that we had to cross with our beloved van. No room to turn around....we just had to proceed. We held our breath and we did it. What was amazing that in spite of the incredibly dry land, there was actually a river that appeared out of nowhere. In our 5 hours of travel through this dusty range, we only saw 2 vehicles. They tell you that if you break down, never, ever leave your vehicle and make certain you have lots of food and water. We had both and fortunately didn't have to test mother nature by breaking down. God knows how long it would have taken for anyone to find us.

Photo's: Wild emu's; Flinders Ranges; Not confirmed but we believe may be the deadly Whitetail spider seen on our walk near Wilpena Pound


Having seen enough, we drove another 100 km to Port Augusta and a great campground. We sat outside until quite late in the quiet and looking at the stars that seemed close enough to touch.

Jan 14 - Left Port August early and travelled to Ceduna. It involved km after km of absolutely straight highway. By the sides of the highway were scrub brush and no signs of houses, laneways or anything else reflecting human beings.

A Milestone - reaching the 1/2 way point across Oz!!


Our camp in Ceduna was on Shelly Beach and our site was behind a sand dune over which was the Southern Ocean. It was beautiful and Bob ventured into the water. He had to walk out quite far and the rule here is that someone can swim while the other watches for shark fins. No joke! Bob took his time walking to deeper water and stopped short of the dark colour of the deeper water. He was so far out there that all I could think was "How on earth could I help him if he was in trouble?" After a refreshing dip, he returned and we walked up the beach.

Jan 15 - Surviving the Nullarbor!!!

Ok, so for the past few weeks, Aussies have been asking us if we are going to cross the Nullarbor (pronounced "Nullabor") and when we say "yes" they roll their eyes, grin and say "yes, you have to do it once!" In all our reading we had not seen anything negative about this area so we did more research and saw that it is a plain....an ENORMOUS plain. Nullarbor is Latin for "devoid of trees" and trust me when I say it is aptly named. The Eyre highway cuts through 1200 km of nothing but sea grasses, blue bush and dead things. The highway seems to go on forever and we noticed that everyone we met coming the other way waved at us. We decided that this was done to relieve the boredom since it seemed it was 25 to 50 km between vehicles. No doubt they were waving to keep awake! We broke the trip up into 500 km segments and stopped at the most unusual campgrounds you have ever seen. Right out of the 60's! Diesel rose from $1.25/litre in Adelaide to $1.68 at Madura. These places however are a welcome sight and like an oasis in the desert.





Photo's: The Nullarbor; When the Eyre Hwy frequently becomes a landing strip for the Flying Doctors; animals to watch out for as you cross the plain; Head of Bight

Once we reached Bordervillage we were at the West Australia border and once again we were stopped by quarantine officials. We had eaten all our fruit and veg and had been told to get rid of cheese as well. Little did we know however that we would have all our honey confiscated! Our wonderful delicious honey (1 litre bucket) we had just purchased on Kangaroo Island. We were gutted!! The story we were given was that a disease that the eastern Australia bees carry is in the honey and it is feared it will get into the hives in West Australia. Our feeling however is that unless every vehicle is fumigated, a bee or fruit fly could hitchhike across the country. Perhaps someone will be able to explain it to us.

We stopped at a lookout called "Head of Bight" where cliffs rise out of the ocean dramatically. The ocean is an amazing blue and the wind was refreshing.

Jan and Elliot, the photo (we'll get a better one when the opportunity presents itself) here is for you! This is a "short" road train. For those of you who have never heard of them, they are trucks that pull up to three trailers and are up to 60 metres long. To see one bearing down on you at 120 km/hr is like something out of a Mad Max movie. On narrow roads it is recommended that you pull over to let them pass. If they have to put their wheels off the road to pass you the resulting shower of stones is likely to smash your windshield.


We saw wild long-horned sheep by the side of the road today and artistic creations...bottle bushes, a boot bush and a squashed vehicle standing on end around 15 metres off the road. No doubt created by bored travellers.

We completed the crossing on Jan 16th and arrived at Norseman Crossing, a mining town where you pick up your certificate declaring you crossed the Nullarbor.

Tin camels in the town square in Norseman



Bob picked up a newspaper at the pathetic IGA in Norseman (hardly a fresh veg in the place and I won't talk about our honey options) and saw that a well known aborigine artist and bushman had died out on a road on the Nullarbor. He and his nephew got caught out with 2 flat tires and they died a few metres from their vehicle.....far from help. They were experienced bushmen and they died! I was driving when we passed the little road and he noticed the name Donkey Trail. Authorities figure they ran out of water and died somewhere around the end of December. The rains came Jan 4 and the irony was that there were puddles around them on the road.

Today we drove from Norseman to Esperance on the south coast. We drove through more scrubland and then subtly the landscape changed to lovely farms and beautiful red trees.

Cute names! Who comes up with them???


As we approached Esperance we saw the devastation caused by the storm from a couple of weeks ago. Trees are uprooted everywhere. Amazing that they got the much needed rain however they lost so many old trees. A few days later, birds began dropping out of the sky....dying on the spot. Thousands of birds are gone from this area and no one knows why. Needless to say we won't be staying here long! It is a beautiful place on the ocean. We will be moving on toward Perth....only 700 km however lots to see in between.

Blessings to you all!!
Sharon