Nullabor to Esperance

We’ve been on the road now for a week travelling onwards from Penong stopping at roadside camps each night and finding them to be great.  We stopped on the Great Australian Bight and took some great photos. It certainly is an awesome piece of coastline and the edges are very steep and the top of the coast so very flat.
We’ve followed the Eyre Highway stopping a little while to use up as many of our fruit and vegies before the W.A. border where we had heard they were even more particular than we had experienced earlier. One couple told us they had an old potato sack which they used as a floor mat for many years and had not seen a potato for many more before that. Gone – also an old sack used to wrap a bbq plate – gone!
However after Sue cooked up a number of vegie dishes and we ate the bananas (at $12.00 a kilo, we weren’t giving them up!) we managed a clean bill of health only losing a few potatoes and a tomato after having the car and van searched enthusiastically.
The Nullabor was a very long straight stretch especially the 147 kilometre stretch known as the longest straight stretch of road in Australia. Even after you pass that length of bitumen it seems there is still much more without too much shape. We stopped a couple of times to refuel with Ian carefully working out how much we had to buy to get to the next stretch .With prices ranging from $1.57 at Nundroo up to $1.97 in some places they were important calculations!
On Sunday night we stayed at a great campsite and joined our fellow campers for drinks at 5pm, a familiar occurrence when everyone shares their experiences and hints for the road ahead. It’s not necessary to share names at these meetings, we always forget them but on this occasion one traveller introduced himself only to be told “don’t worry about that, the men are all mates and the women are love” so took care of that!  We were joined by a young German couple who arrived in a cloud of black smoke which the mates in our group quickly diagnosed as trouble! Shortly after the car stopped the young man jumped out and crawled under the car, looking for …… absolutely no idea what, perhaps a miracle which would stop the huge clouds of black smoke emanating from his car and using twice as much fuel as he had to get to the next town. After seeming not to solve the problem he came over to us as in carefully chosen words asked if we could sell him some fuel as his fuel consumption was far in excess of what he could carry! Fortunately Ian was able to assist with the 5 litre jerry can of fuel we keep for the generator and one mate said he would look at the car in the morning before they set off. We all assured them we would not leave them stranded and would proceed in convoy to make sure they made it to Norseman.
The check of the car revealed a problem the mates couldn’t fix so the convoy set off and sure enough after some distance just when we were confident they would make it – they didn’t. One mate had a long distance aerial and help was summoned. We left them rather forlorn but at least safe as they waited for the Automobile Association.
On to Esperance for us and a park after seven nights on the road!

Temperature got to 36 degrees yesterday – beautifull!