
Ok, bit of a delay in writing this - sorry. Anyways, back to the road trip. After the last post, which I wrote at around 8am at the SA/WA Border Village after already covering 300km, I kept on trucking for the day. I’d fueled up at the Border Village, and this saw me through the rest of the Nullarbor to Norseman, WA, where I stopped for fuel and a greasy spring roll (a man can’t live on Chiko rolls alone, you know) then turned right and headed north towards Coolgardie.
The Nullarbor had been flat and straight, until Balladonia, where it starts heading uphill into the Fraser Ranges - however, the most boring part of the drive was this stretch from Norseman up to Calgoordie and then west into the setting sun. As compensation though, the moonrise seen through my rearview mirror was magical.
Anyway, long day much abbreviated, I made it as far as Southern Cross, where I stopped for a feed at another truck stop (chips and gravy, washed down with an iced coffee milk). Still feeling chipper, I pushed on to a rest area about 80km out of Southern Cross, where I pulled over, crawled into the back of the troopy and passed out. I’d covered a long, boring 1408km since setting out pre-dawn - that’s from point C to D on the map above .
A brief 4 hours later (3am WA-time) I was on the road again - trying to nail the last 340km (D to E on the map) to Perth before peak hour set in on the approaches to the city. I didn’t manage to avoid peak hour totally, but shortly after 7am Friday morning I pulled up outside Janes mums place in Claremont.
So just for the record, I’d managed to cover just under 1750km in just over 24 hours - woohoo! Again, if you wanna browse the map, click here.
Overall, the worst part was probably the sheer mind-numbing boredom of some of the remote stretches of road - and it’s made worse by not having access to radio stations. I found that when I was getting radio reception (particularly ABC Radio National or their news radio service) time went a lot quicker, as you get to occupy your mind a bit. The best part of the whole drive was probably having the sheer size of our country brought home to me in a big way; other highlights included the 3 wedge-tailed eagles by the side of the road, the road trains, the sky, the sunsets, the moonrise, and the roadhouse diet (mmm, Chiko rolls - but seriously, the best quality roadhouse food I found on the trip was at a place called Mozies at Ceduna).