We left Perth through the 5 acre plots and
riding schools of the city’s eastern suburbs heading for the goldfields and
flat expanses of the Nullarbor. We will complete another 4000km before reaching
home.
Large areas of salt lakes were interspersed
through the paddocks of wheat – saltation has been an ongoing problem for crop
farmers of this region. As we drove east through the towns of Northam and
Merredin, cropping gradually phased out and semi-arid mallee came to dominate
the landscape.
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| Mallee woodland bordering the Nullarbor |
A strong SW wind followed us all day. At
times, it has been gale force over the past few days. Where paddocks have been
left fallow and stripped of the year’s stubble the topsoil is visibly lifted
over tree tops and transported down wind. This problem has been largely
alleviated in the WA wheat belt over recent years by no-till farming practices
– crop stubble being left in place to hold the top soil and add organic matter
to the soil.
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| Trees bent by prevailing south-westerly winds |
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| The dusty consequences of leaving fallow, cleared paddocks |
A steel umbilical cord connects Perth to
the goldfield towns such as Kalgoolie, delivering precious water to these
desert mining towns. This was an audacious project envisioned and executed by
C.Y.O’Connor between 1894-1903. He faced so much criticism at the time for issues
around this engineering feat, that it lead to his dramatic suicide in1902 by
riding into the ocean off a Perth beach near Fremantle on his horse and
shooting himself.
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| Water for Kalgoorlie...a mega-infrastructure program from the late nineteenth century |
The natural reserve area along the highway
is complemented by the adjacent pipeline and railway vegetation reserves, thus
creating a ribbon of green through which we searched for flowering shrubs and
small delights. Various tinsel flowers, grevilleas, wattles and emu bushes
beckoned us to stop and search for new examples of WA’s extraordinary variety
of flowering plants.
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| Tinsel flowers lined our route home in "the West" |
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| Another type of Emu bush |
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| Bottle-brush Grevillea...a type of spider flower |
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| Toothbrush Grevillia...our first sighting of this black and green flower |
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| Dampiera...one of the LPPs (Little Purple Plants) |
Photographing these flowers was extremely
challenging in the strong wind but identifying them from our travelling library
was even more difficult. Each plant seems obvious, until we start to
investigate its features to find each may be one of a variety of up to 20 or
even 60+ similar species! This is an amazing part of Australia and we have
enjoyed the thrill of the chase of finding, photographing and identifying
dozens of new varieties and species.
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| Foxglove |
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| Another type of Grevillea |
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| Pink Pokers....we could now identify them at 110 kph! |
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| Are emu bushes eaten by emus? |
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| Tall Mulla Mulla...perhaps a dwarf variety stunted by the relentless Nullarbor winds? |
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| LPP...possibly a Dampiera! |
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| Stackhousia...easy! |
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| A wildflower "garden" on the Nullarbor |
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| A blue and white garden |
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| A Conostylis flower glowing against Nullarbor soil |
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| Goodbye to the Starflowers or Calytrix of WA |
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| There are dozens of different Emu bushes in the west |
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| One of many varieties of Spinifex grass in Australia |
Road trains and grey nomad caravaners make
up most of the traffic on the Eyre Highway as it snakes its way across the
Nullarbor Plain. The few large stations run sheep at about 4/square km, but we
did not sight any in 1200km.
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| The beasties of the Nullarbor are small compared to those in the Pilbara (usually 3 trailers to terrify you as you overtake them at 125-130km/hr!). Yes, that's our van in the front. |
However, emus, red kangaroos and wedge tail
eagles were seen as well as snakes and bob-tailed skinks sunning themselves on
the asphalt and playing dodgems with the speeding vehicles. Road kill wombats
were a sad roadside sight
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| Emu and chicks at Eucla Telegraph Station ruins - dad takes care of the childcare |
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| One of several snakes seen sunning themselves on edge of Eyre Highway - up to 100km without a bend |
Isolated roadhouses are spaced about every
250km with distinctive names like Mundrabilla, Cocklebiddy and Nundroo – supplying
food and fuel for vehicles and travellers, as well as basic camping spaces and
motel rooms.
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| Gary checking which way to go - but still got confused! |
Edward John Eyre would certainly have liked
this support during his first terrible crossing of the Nullarbor in 1841which
cost the lives of three of the five members of his exploration party. Gary’s
‘location gene’ was malfunctioning as usual as he failed to guess the correct
direction in which to drive onto the highway leaving a roadhouse – we could
have been back in Perth on several occasions!
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| A land of large distances |
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| Yep...no trees here! |
The pesky fly seems to be the most
successful local animal – trying to crawl into your mouth, nose, eyes and ears
if you are brave enough to leave your car to stand on the edge of the massive
limestone cliffs of the Great Australian Bight – they only abate when the prevailing
s’westerly wind blows long and hard along this coast causing drivers to hold
onto their steering wheels tightly.
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| The dramatic limestone cliffs of the Great Australian Bight |
The strong wind may assist the tragic AFL
supporters of the Fremantle ‘Dockers’ draped in purple and white, as they drive
the 3500km to watch their beloved team in their first grand final match in
Melbourne!
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| Mundrabilla Roadhouse welcomes the Fremantle Dockers supporters travelling to Melbourne for the AFL Grand Final with such optimism! |
Once we had crossed into South Australia, the
highway hugs this coast for a further 500km before reaching the Eyre Peninsula
at Ceduna. The side trip to Head of Bight was worth it – three huge female
Right Whales and their calves were still lolling in the shallow waters below
the cliffs, although most of the pod of 60+ animals, had departed for their
journey back to their feeding grounds in Antarctica.
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| One of the three mother and calf Right Whale pairs remaining at Head of Bight.. |
The changes in scenery mirrored that in the
west – first the salt bush covered limestone featureless plain gave way to
mallee woodland on sand dunes which gradually morphed into huge paddocks of
wheat stretching as far as the eye can see. A sunny foreshore campsite at
Streaky Bay, on Eyre Peninsula for two nights to recharge the batteries ready for the final 2000km
drive home is one of our favourite campsites.
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| A rare, fine, windless day between Geraldton and South Australia |
Ruined stone cottages remain as evidence of
the struggle of early C19th settlers who failed to thrive in this difficult,
semi arid agricultural region, particularly north of the Goyder Line (the
northern reliable limit for cropping in SA, plotted by Goyder in 1865).
A four day deviation to the Clare & Barossa Valleys to
sample some viticultural delights took us through some magnificent farming
country with cereal crops stretching to the horizon finally giving way to
vineyards.
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| Rapeseed or Canola crop adds colour to this agricultural landscape |
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| Typical Clare Valley vineyard landscape |
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| Clare Valley vineyard and home |
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| Anticipating first wine-tasting at Clare Valley - temptations abound! |
A final swing through Broken Hill, Nyngan
and Dubbo will complete this epic journey of approximately 16,000km over the
past 3 months in our trusty VW campervan – (it’s twice the distance of London
to Beijing!).
The final leg is familiar, well travelled
territory for us from former trips, but we are now pleased to reflect that in
recent years we have actually explored our wonderful continent around its
coastline, as well as on stunning inland routes through western NSW & Vic,
central QLD, northern SA and the Northern Territory.
We hope you have enjoyed sharing some of
the journey highlights with us.
Gary and Bronlyn, Barossa Valley, October 2013
