Nullarbor Plain Crazy
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2008
1
86
98
Trip End
Jun 14, 2009
Mundrabilla,, Australia
Friday, March 27, 2009
As you can probably imagine, or probably not actually, it's a difficult drive. The sun plays tricks on your eyes, your arms are tense fighting from struggling with uneven surfaces, dodging road kill and battling the bespoke side winds etc. Your legs start to get restless as the strain of keeping the accelerator in the same position for hours at a time sets in. Last but not least, your arse aches a fair bit too. And your neck. And your shoulders...
You get the picture, right?
There are things you can do to break the tedium however. Being in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around can have it's advantages. After a brief check of the near redundant rear view mirror this morning I decided to make an unscheduled stop. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, once again my inner naturist was screaming at me. Before you could say Billy Connolly, I was off again, running up the middle of the highway in my Birthday suit. Due to the lack of traffic this morning, I couldn't see much sense in getting dressed again so continued to drive wearing nothing but my flip flops and sunglasses. Katie kept asking me what it was like and it didn't take long before she too was wearing nothing but her seat belt. On the rare occasion that we passed another car, we just waved politely before cracking up into hysterics, as long as you directed the flow of the air - con carefully, it was great fun!
We had to dress eventually because we had to stop for fuel. We decided never to let the tank get to less than half full on this trip, not knowing where the next petrol station/roadhouse would be. I decided to break the rule on this occasion though, because when I had opened the fuel cap and inserted the nozzle, I was approached by a large, greasy, bearded bogan (Aus slang for country folk) of a bloke who grunted something about needing my driving license before he could turn on the pump. Stick it up yer jacksie pal. Driving license my arse! Obviously business is so good for him out here he can afford to be fussy with paying customers. To top all of this, there were bloody wild dingoes (dingles) roaming all over the forecourt! They're not bloody scary at all, I don't know what all the fuss is about. I've seen scarier guide dogs.
We made it to the border of South Australia (SA) and West Australia (WA) before re - fuelling and this time, the fruit police got really serious. There is a huge border patrol inspection bay where you are instructed to stop and get out of the vehicle in order for the fruit police to carry out a thorough search for any illegal immigrant tomatoes or asylum seeking satsumas or worse....bandido bananas! They found nothing and we were free to continue. Considering the fruit police probably eat nothing but the confiscated fresh produce all day we couldn't help wondering why the fruit fiend had such a big arse?
WA is exactly the same as SA so far, we eventually pulled in to a designated stop with allocated camp fire areas for the night. It was extremely hot until about 7.30pm and the flies were an absolute pain in the arse but they all buggered off when the sun went down to make way for the mozzies. Yay! We made an improvised BBQ and had pork chops and played cards before an early night. Nice.
