With the Spencer Gulf part of the trip now over and done with, it was time for a little stop over in Streaky Bay, then it was off to WA via the Nullarbor.
We weren’t sure where to stay between Port Lincoln and the start of the Nullarbor. There were a few options, but a lot of people recommended Streaky Bay, so that was good enough for us!
Wednesday, April 26th – (Day 20)
STREAKY BAY – The plan today was to head to Streaky Bay, with a quick detour through Coffin Bay on the way. All up we were expecting to be on the road for 4 hours roughly.
Before setting off, we had a Coles order to pick up, plus we needed to fill up with Diesel. That didn’t take too long and by 10:30am we were on our way. Today was Game 5 of the Wolves-Nuggets series, a loss here and the series would be over. So the game would keep us entertained on our travels.
Turns out Coffin Bay was a complete waste of time to stop at and wasted half an hour of our day. It was basically just a one road town with not much happening. So we continued our journey with a little stop in Elliston about half way to grab a pastie and a pie.
Stopping for lunch in Elliston 
Linnie enjoying Murphy’s Haystack
The mobile phone network was patchy along the way, but we listened to most of the Timberwolves game. In Elliston there was about 5 mins left in the game so we watched the broadcast on the phone. It was an epic, with the Wolves attempting to send the game to overtime with a last second shot, but it was not to be. Eliminated in 5 games! This was to be the last Wolves game on our trip, the end of an era!
Along our journey we stopped at Murphy’s Haystacks which was a really cool rock formation in the middle of some random paddock. We spent about half an hour here wondering around, then it was time to head to Streaky Bay as the weather was deteriorating.
Sure enough, it started to rain pretty heavily when we were about 5 minutes out and rather than setup in the rain, we drove into town to grab some supplies and have a look around. The rain stopped eventually and we had time to setup before it got dark. However it started raining again so we had to cook tea inside.
The caravan park was nice enough, but we got stuck up the back near a bunch of loud kids. A shame, as we tried to book a beautiful waterside spot, but it was not to be.
Thursday, April 27th – (Day 21)
The morning was spent being pretty lazy around the caravan park, so not much happening here. After lunch we decided to walk into town and do some work at a cafe, but unfortunately they shut at 2pm so we had to move on.
We watched the end of the Heat-Bucks and Kings-Warriors NBA Playoffs on the phone at a nice spot by the water. We even attempted a game of love letter, but the wind ruined those plans. Before heading back, we did some shopping and got some food supplies, then walked back to the park along the beach.
Unfortunately we made a discovery of a few ants in the caravan, then looked under the kitchen seats and they were everywhere! God damn it! We assumed these were stragglers from Port Lincoln so hoped surface spray would do the trick.
Also, this caravan park had a mice infestation so that was something else we had to deal with. Luckily they never got inside the caravan (that we know of).
Tonight there was an epic sunset by the water which we admired for a while. But other than that, today was probably the laziest day of the trip so far, so not much to report!
Friday, April 28th – (Day 22)
Our last day in Streaky Bay. There’s not really a lot to do here. It is a beautiful little town, but it is basically only one street and the caravan park is pretty dusty.
Today was a lot like yesterday, we lazed around for most of the morning then walked into town again. We got a doughnut from the bakery and then went for a walk along the pier. It turns out Streaky Bay is home to jockey Kieran McEvoy, so we got a token photo next to his statue.
After that we went for a little drive out to the Whistling Rocks boardwalk. Now this was a cool spot to see! It’s a coastline that gets absolutely belted by ocean waves, however there is a little cave that has a blowhole and makes a loud whistling noise. It was well worth the trip.
For the remainder of the afternoon we prepared a few meals and got all our fruit and veggies sorted so we didn’t get done by WA Quarantine when we crossed the border. We definitely didn’t want to go through a kerfuffle like in South Australia.
We decided to get an early night as tomorrow we hit the Nullarbor and a potential 7+ hour drive. The plan is to stop at a few places along the way for a look, so it will be an early start tomorrow.
Saturday, April 29th – (Day 23)
EUCLA: The day was finally here, our first time driving across the Nullarbor. We woke up about 7am and with a big drive ahead of us, it wasn’t long before we were off and running.
First stop was the Shell service station to fill up. Then we plugged in the coordinates of Ceduna into Google Maps which would be our first little stop. Unfortunately Google decided to take us the long way and wanted us to go on some dirt path, so we had to reverse which cost us about half an hour. Super annoying!
After arriving at Ceduna, we got a pasty and coffee then went for a little walk around the town. This is the place we were initially going to stop at instead of Streaky Bay, but I think we made a good choice.
Now it was time for the long part of the trip, a 5 hour drive to Eucla with not much in between. We were told the Nullarbor was going to be long, straight and flat without much scenery, but you had to see it with your own eyes to fully understand. It’s just a long stretch of straight road with barely a tree in sight.
Along the way we stopped for fuel once, plus took a stop to look at some cliffs, before arriving in Eucla around 4:45pm, which we learnt was actually 4pm given the 45-minute timezone difference.
The next hour or two we spent setting up at what was a pretty crappy camp area, as well as cooking a couple of meals and using up the rest of our veggies.
Given we had no television network or much internet, we thought we’d go to the small pub next door to watch the Carlton vs West Coast match. We took one step inside and there was a bunch of old fellas with mullets telling yarns, while the only tv in the pub was playing Jump by Van Halen, while a pokie machine was ringing in the background. It felt like we had jumped in a time machine and arrived in 1985.
In the end we just went back to the caravan, listened to some of the game on the radio and did our washing up and dishes in a little laundry. We were pretty tired after over 6hrs on the road so hit the sack pretty early.
Sunday, April 30th – (Day 24)
NORSEMAN: This was the day we were dreading, the longest drive of the trip. Our original plan was to stop at Balladonia at a roadhouse, before heading on to our stop in Kalgoorlie. That route was going to take 5.5 hours.
Or the other plan was to continue right through Balladonia and stop in Norseman which looks a bit more livelier, plus would only mean a 2 hour drive to Kalgoorlie the next day. The bad thing about this option is it would be 8 hours of driving today. We’d see how we felt at the time.
We kicked things off with a load of diesel, then a nice and easy trip through quarantine. We’d finally reached WA! Like yesterday, it was basically just a straight road with nothing around and not many decent stops.
Madura was one tiny stop on the way. We stopped here to get fuel, which was really starting to get costly now. It was up to $2.70 per litre at some places and really cutting into the budget.
To make matters worse we had no finished The Martian and we had no phone reception, or any radio stations to listen to. All we had was the Dream Theater song Endless Sacrifice loaded, which cut out at 9m59s. So we just listened to that on repeat about 5 or 6 times before we got phone reception.
Finally we reached Balladonia but as expected it was pretty rubbish, so we thought we’d just suck up another 2 hours and get to Norseman for the night. We finally arrived there about 4:30pm or so and setup camp there. It wasn’t the greatest park, but definitely much better than a roadhouse.
The rest of the night was spent having a shower, listening to the end of the Pies-Crows game and watching Succession. We’d finally hit WA!
