Category: South Australia

Australia Day, and what better way to celebrate it than hitting the Nullarbor. That was always my plan, anyway. I figured it would probably be a bit quieter over a holiday weekend, but as I drove up north from Adelaide to Port Augusta, the traffic sure looked heavier. Perhaps it wasn’t an original idea? Fortunately, by the time I was turned in the right direction and out on the Eyre Highway, the crowds had completely dissipated. I think I only passed about three cars and had three others pass me over the entire day, which did seem awfully light.

It is a little frustrating to drive from either Adelaide or Alice Springs to Perth because the road network forces you to drive hundreds of kilometres/miles in the wrong direction before you can get on the main southern highway and head in the right direction. Occasionally, you see a 4WD track that looks a little more direct, but you never know how rough it might be. When driving from Adelaide to Perth, you have the ocean in the way. There is a ferry crossing that can make the journey more direct, but it is very expensive and only runs once a day.

So after driving a few hours northeast from Adelaide, even though Perth is dead west, I stopped by the last major town for a coffee before heading westward. The whole town of Port Augusta seemed boarded up on Australia day, but I did manage to find a bakery open with mediocre coffee and, oddly enough, a hair stylist open a few doors down. I’d been looking for a place to get a cheap buzz cut for weeks now, since I hadn’t been able to shave myself while on the road. Lo and behold, the hair stylist had a sign in the window, “Haircuts $10, enquire within”. That’s about half the lowest price I found anywhere else. Turns out they had a apprentice who would cut hair and then get it reviewed by her supervisor. Worked for me! Can’t go too wrong with a buzz cut, so I finally got my trim.

After a long day of driving through forests that were getting shorter and shorter, I started looking for a place to camp that was not along the highway. Most camping along the Nullarbor is a bit too close to the highway for my liking. With road trains barreling down the highway with 3-4 trailers in tow, you would think a plane was about to land on your tent from all the noise they generate. Fortunately, I pulled out my trusty camping book and found a recommended site about a 1/2-hour drive south of the highway, next to an amazing beach with huge surf (and a fair few surfers), surrounded by monster sand dunes and saltwater lakes. It was called Point Sinclair, and it was a really special place I would have liked to have spent more time in, but couldn’t. The swimming was a bit disappointing due to all the sharp, holy limestone just under the ocean’s shallows, but I did manage to find a spot for a few dunks anyway. The place was run by some old, aging surfer/hippie who seemed to take great pride in keeping it as comfortable and clean as he could.

The Drive

So I headed off from Adelaide to Cooktown, Queensland, after getting that last rabies shot in my arm, intending to camp for the night in the Mount Crawford Forest Reserve, just about an hour outside of town. Well, so much for that plan! I arrived to find a big sign reading “No Camping Between 1 December…” and another autumn date. Australia takes bushfires very seriously, and every state seems to handle their response differently, but it appeared as though South Australia just shut down its campsites. Western Australia would have simply banned campfires. Oh well, I decided to keep heading out towards the east as I was planning to do the next day and hone in on the region I was planning to travel through the next day.

Lucky for me, I stumbled across a really nice little place along the banks of the Murray River. For those of us living in Western Australia, we get a little tired of endless news stories about the Murray and Darling Rivers, but they are two of Australia’s largest rivers and valuable sources of water for a large sector of the country’s population in the east. The camp I found was actually a sister camp to Adelaide Shores (part of a franchise), but it had far more natural features and was right along the river. Just across the river was Murray River National Park, though the current was a bit too swift to even think about swimming across. Although the temperature was hovering around 40ºC (104ºF), I was able to immerse myself underwater along a sandbank until my core temperature dropped low enough to doze off in my tent after sunset. Very nice!

So I arrived in Adelaide bright and early Tuesday morning and only had to wait a few minutes for my car to be unloaded from the train. I had one last rabies shot to get from The Travel Doctor in town on the following morning (just the way the schedule worked out), so I decided to pop into town for breakfast and find a few new things to check out that I missed on my last visit in 2004. For breakfast, I revisited a cafe I discovered years ago, connected to Adelaide’s Central Market. The Central Market is a great old market, much like Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, with lots of independent fruit and vegetable sellers and butchers — but curiously no Amish! I stocked up on super-cheap peaches, just coming into season here, as well as other snacks for the road, before having a nice breakfast at an adjoining cafe.

Afterwards, I found my way up to Adelaide’s Botanical Gardens to have a free snoop around when I discovered a massive wombat dead in the middle of a side path. It was so big I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but when I reported it they acted like it happens all the time there. They were very nice gardens to walk around, but you would feel the heat beginning to build – so I thought it best to hop into a few free museums while I had the chance.

One annoying thing about popping into cities on these trips with a car is having to worry about car security, parking, and whether your meter is about to run out. It always leaves you feeling a little on edge while you’re snooping around. I did find that most of Adelaide’s museums were all set up together in the same “cultural precinct” area, so it was easy to make my way through the Immigration Museum, Art Gallery (aka museum), and South Australian Museum before my meter ran out. All were very nice but a bit on the small side.

Once the temperature started to cool a bit, I headed out to the campsite I reserved at Adelaide Shores. NOT my idea of perfect camping, but about as cheap accommodation as you can find in the city. The nicest thing about it is that it is located next to the beach and an extensive network of cycling paths. Having thrown my mountain bike in the back of the car, I took it out for a spin along the coastline for about an hour. I ended up in very trendy Glenelg, which seemed to mimic L.A.’s beach communities, where I had myself a nice dinner.