Cocklebiddy to Esperance
Trip Start
Mar 14, 2009
1
12
34
Trip End
Ongoing
Esperance, Western Australia, Australia
Monday, April 6, 2009
We were up and at it early but, even so, the flies were dense in the air around us as we packed up the tent. Rhiannon performed the customary oil, fuel and coolant checks, which never fail to impress me - one could easily be fooled into thinking that she knows what she's looking for. We needed some petrol, but decided to wait until we found it cheaper elsewhere, since the price in Cocklebiddy was some 60c per litre more expensive than in Adelaide (a mark up of 50%). Now, while I do appreciate that it costs them money to bring the stuff halfway across the desert, I would argue that they would have to be shipping it from Pluto to justify their exorbitant prices. I believe that it the cost may have something more do with the fact that travellers across the Nullarbor have little choice but to pay since they need fuel. Further, I think shrewd shopkeepers are playing on the travellers' terror of breaking down and being found days later, lying in a pool of their own regurgitated witchetty grub vomit, as red and shrivelled as chillies left to dry in the midday sun. Moreover, I suspect that they have systematically calculated the point at which travellers say 'Oh crap, we're well below a quarter tank, we'd better stop at the next roadhouse' and then they make the fuel prices at the next roadhouse 20c higher than the last roadhouse. So not only are you being ripped off, but you are cursing your stupid, blind optimism, in driving past, as you did, all those other marginally cheaper petrol stations.
And so the first time I ever put fuel into the tank of a car was with a big, red jerry can, standing by the side of the road in the desert sunshine; a Kodak moment if ever there was one. Except neither of us could touch the camera, since we'd sloshed petrol all over our hands (and the car and the ground) before we noticed the yellow cap that needed removing before the petrol will go down the nozzle and into the tank. But don't worry this was no breakdown, but a calculated use of some of the spare 20 litres that we'd bought at a more reasonable cost, and which Doris had lugged all the way from Adelaide. That fuel got us to Norseman, where petrol is reasonably priced, but beans on toast are not. Norseman - a town to which I would not exile my worst enemy; a town which makes Middlesbrough look like New York City; a town in which tea is the colour of Off White Dulux and the clean public toilets were my absolute highlight.
From Norseman, we bade goodbye to Route 1 and the Eyre Highway across the desert, although the road to Esperance and the coast seemed as lonely to me as the Nullarbor had been. Overall, I would say that I agree with whoever told me that the drive was 'the best trip they never want to do again' but largely because the days were as empty as the scenery and not, as I had thought, because it was a difficult or arduous undertaking. I can only imagine the hardship endured by those who first made the crossing, including the British explorer, Edward Eyre, after whom the highway is named and, later, those who headed west in hope, after the discovery of gold at Halls Creek, WA. For those travelling on the bitumen road today, the only real dangers come from fatigued drivers, wildlife on the road or in straying from the main route. Certainly, our drive from Lhasa to Everest Base Camp, when in Tibet, was a much more challenging journey, both in terms of the roughness of the terrain and in the length of a trek through country that was as desolate and deserted as can be imagined.
Driving to Esperance, as the countryside undulated around us, we caught sight of salt lakes, gum forests and flat, red plains. I have been amazed by the variety of scenery we have encountered and also by how strangely familiar some of it has been to me. In the space of a hundred kilometres, I saw sub-Saharan savannah turn into rural Devon complete with rabbits lolloping about, which in turn morphed into some tropical island's lush forest. We saw parrots that were like the Jamaican flag made bird - they were grass-green with a yellow band around the neck and a black crest. I shouldn't like to cast aspersions based on crude national stereotypes, but they showed characteristics of having dabbled with a certain stupefying substance common on that island, since flocks of them sat in the road, blissfully oblivious to oncoming cars. We had several near misses before tragedy struck. I'm not sure, since I've blanked out the trauma, but according to Rhiannon in the seconds before we hit them I screeched at the windscreen 'Fly, birds, fly', but they failed to heed my warning. A series of thumps on the chassis and a poof of feathers receding in the rear view mirror, like Jamaican confetti, and it was all over. As Rhiannon said, through the hand she'd clapped over her mouth, one should never swerve for wildlife or a more serious accident may result. I remember my dad telling me that very thing when, on one of our few driving lessons together, I swerved into another lane of traffic to avoid a dog.
The rest of the long journey passed without incident and we arrived in Esperance, a small town on the south coast, with just about enough energy to put up our tent, just sufficiently conscious to recognise that we were doing so on lovely soft grass. Tucked up in bed by 9.00pm, we were sure we were in for the restful night we both needed. Try and guess what happened next.
