(or Don’t Lock Your Keys Into Your Car When You’re Halfway Across The Nullarbor)

Bear with us as this will be a long one. A one-sitting-read is not required!

Day 1: Berri – Tanunda (169km)

First stop on our trip was an evening in the Barossa Valley. You can’t really drive through the Barossa and not stop for a night. One of our fears after leaving the Riverland was that all of rural Australia would be similar – identical towns with nice people but terrible pubs and no real charm. We were very glad to stop in Tanunda first because it immediately put those fears at rest. The one thing the Barossa has in spades is charm; the other thing it has in spades is good wine, so we were in our element. The little towns that dot the region all have their own character and any one of them would be good for a nights stay. We pottered around the place grinning like eejits, ate in a fantastic restaurant and had a couple of glasses (ok, bottles) of good local wine. The last thing we did was to catch the second half of the Irish innings in the cricket world cup against England. It looked like an English walk-over so we went to bed.

Day 2: Tanunda – Port Augusta (315km)

We woke up to a text message saying “did you see the cricket?” As it was now obvious that the match had not been the easy defeat it seemed like the previous night, we made plans to try and catch the repeat of the match and stay off the internet. So we packed up the tent and got back on the road to Port Augusta where we failed to find any pubs with Fox Sports. All there was left to do was eat some fish and chips and discover online that Ireland had, completely unexpectedly, beaten England for the first time ever. We celebrated with a pint in the nearest pub we could find. Then we celebrated again when Marie beat me unexpectedly at pool.

Day 3 & 4: Port Augusta – Ceduna (468km)

After three days of driving in a fairly desolate landscape, the sea hits you like a double espresso. It was almost a spiritual experience to see the open sea for the first time in 5 months. This was the last proper town before we hit the Nullarbor plains. We liked Ceduna immediately, with its cheery middle-aged caravan park population and sea-side atmosphere. After eating fresh oysters by the sea and watching the sun set in brilliant orange over the horizon, we decided to stay an extra night. The following day we went crab fishing off the pier with free nets supplied by the caravan park, and caught several crabs but none big enough to take out of the water legally. The only option left was to have some more of those local oysters for dinner!

Day 5: Ceduna – Mundrabilla (557km)

After Ceduna we were well rested and ready to tackle the mighty Nullarbor. The word is derived from Latin and it means “no trees”. They should have added “and not much else either”. As we left the town our satellite navigation voice told us to “continue along this road for 1,257 kilometres.” Only in Australia.

We drove, and drove, and then stopped for what turned out to be a rather miserable lunch. We pulled in to a rest area, laid out a rug, got out our little camping stove and proceeded to make tea.  We have mentioned before that the flies in Australia are rather annoying. In the cities they’re not so bad, in the rural towns they’re a nuisance, but it turns out that in the outback they’re completely unbearable. They’re all over every part of exposed skin, and as soon as you swat them away they’re back on your skin like they’re magnetic. They crawl up your nose, into your ears, onto your eyes. It was horrible. We ended up abandoning our picnic and eating in the car.

We stopped for the night in the Mundrabilla roadhouse. It’s a garage with a bar in the middle of nowhere. We had a couple of drinks at the bar and chatted to the staff and some truckies. “I drive this route every day” said one of them. “Must be boring,” I replied, ”there’s nothing out there.” “I know”, he sighed, “tell me about it.”’

Day 6: Mundrabilla – Balladonia (401km)

I got up in the middle of the night to get earplugs from the car boot as the truckies had left their engines on. Half-asleep, I clunked-closed the boot and immediately realised I’d left the keys inside.  I cursed myself and went straight to the roadhouse phone box. We had taken out cover with the Aussie equivalent of the AA before we set out encase anything like this happened, so I called them and they said “call back in the morning and we’ll send someone out immediately.”  I slept soundly. Next stop Norseman.

Another call in the morning and they said that they’d send a mechanic from the nearest town 100km away. We had some breakfast and waited around. All our stuff was locked into the car – including our clothes, so Marie had to sit there in the lunch room of the roadhouse and eat eggs on toast in her pyjamas. After two hours we called them back. “I’m sorry sir,” they said, “but we can’t get through to the mechanic. He won’t answer his phone. We’ll keep trying, though.”

So we decided to try and get into the car ourselves, and as soon as everybody in the roadhouse heard about our predicament they were all over to help. We used packing tape, coat hangers, screwdrivers and everything we could find. A series of truckies of various shapes and sizes (well mostly Oversize and Wide Load) lent their skills but after about four hours of this we were still locked out and rather pissed off. At this point the AA called back and said that the local mechanic was in Norseman, at the other end of the Nullarbor. He wouldn’t be back for several days. He recommended, they informed us, that we smash the window.

With disgruntled faces we bricked our small window in, taped some cardboard over it and proceeded, belated, across the plains. As it got too dark to continue we stopped in Balladonia and regrettably had to spend another night on the Nullarbor. The only benefit was getting to see the awesome cloudless night sky. The Milky Way shimmered beautifully across the southern stars.

Day 7: Balladonia – Kalgoorlie (426km)

After an hour and a half of driving the next morning we arrived in Norseman; the town which bookends the Nullarbor on the west side (Ceduna being its twin on the east). The triumph of crossing the Nullarbor was not as great as was hoped given the delays. Norseman itself is a dying post gold rush town whose population has dwindled from 6,000 70-odd years ago to just over 1,000 now. Most of the shops are boarded over with corrugated iron. However, we did get a great breakfast in a little café. Norseman was a bit depressing, so we changed plans and decided a slight detour to interesting-sounding Kalgoorlie was in order.

Kalgoorlie is a strange little town. Driving into it is like driving straight into a sandy Western. The buildings are all in the Wild West style, the female bartenders walk around in their underwear (or in one bar, topless) and the town boasts three legal brothels. Boring and mundane this place was not. It’s a miner town, pretty much the whole male population works in the massive Super Pit goldmine, which is almost the same size as the town itself. The view from the lookout above the pit is very impressive (see photos, click them for full size). Dozens of trucks the size of houses, but looking like toys, carry the rubble up from the depths in a huge layered man-made canyon. We found the Irish bar and I had my fist Guinness in 7 months. We ate some great Japanese food and finished the evening with a nightcap in one of the “Skimpies bars”, as they call them.  I prefer my bartenders fully clothed.

Day 8: Kalgoorlie – Cunderdin (437km)

We motored on the next day to our penultimate stop – a tiny town called Cunderdin, population: small. The only interesting thing about this place was the local Ettamogah pub, which is modelled after a fictional pub in a famous Australian comic strip.

Day 9: Cunderdin – Perth (157km)

And, smiling, we climbed back into the car for our final short trek to Perth. The road to the city winds down from the hills, so you’re treated to the cityscape, including skyscrapers, as you drive in. We drove into the CBD in our 1990 Ford Falcon with a cardboard-and-cellotape window, parked, and wandered around the CBD probably looking like awestruck culchies. After living in the Riverland for so long we were impressed by the thousands of places to eat and the huge selection of cheap Asian food. Perth is closer to Jakarta than it is to Sydney. They also have 20(!) brewery pubs. We went to the Monk Brewery in Fremantle and ordered two craft beers. They were delicious – dark and complex and full of flavour. They had everything that all the big Australian brands lack. People mingled and chatted and passed each other by on the sunny sidewalk, everybody looking rather bohemian and pleased with themselves. We were too. After that we went to the most famous of the Perth breweries, Little Creatures, which is a bit like the porterhouse on steroids albeit with a more limited selection. The pub is in the actual brewery, and it’s a big brewery, so you’re drinking with these huge metal brewing tanks towering over you. The beer was great also.

Total distance: 2,929km.

So here we are. We don’t know what we’re going to do next.

To view a map of our trip on Google Maps click here or you can zoom out on the map at the top of this post.

PS: Thanks to everyone for following our little blog, we just passed 1,000 reads!