For my final day of driving in Australia, before I hop on the plane for the rest of my adventures, I decided to continue driving down the 4wd Balladonia Track towards Esperance for a quick visit to Cape Le Grande National Park and my favorite beaches in Australia. I wasn’t expecting the 4wd track to continue for as long as it did, but it was quite an exciting drive and passed through one of the largest forests of its kind in the world. I never saw a soul along the way, but I did come to one very old homestead built in 1890 with hearth out front that was being lovingly restored and pretty cool to check out.
1890 Homestead along Balladonia Track1890 Hearth along Balladonia Track
While the Balladonia Track was a more direct way to Esperance from where I had camped, it certainly was much slower going for a while. As I continued down the track the road continually improved and even became sealed/paved well before I intersected with Fisheries Road just outside of Esperance. I eventually made it down to Lucky Bay, where you will find the whitest sand in all of Australia, and partook of a bit of body surfing. I think Lucky Bay also has some of the best body surfing in Australia as well. Afterwards I decided to try out a new exit from the park, driving the 22kms up Cape Le Grande Beach next door. I got advice from a park ranger who warned me what to look out for, but the trip was successful and I made it to the end without any problems. I did witness someone in a 2 wheel drive low rider car with a girlfriend who appeared as though may have not made the best choice in trying to drive on the beach (which normally has pretty hard sand), but he did have other people fishing nearby to help him out if he needed it. Not sure I would do the drive again because you never get to really appreciate the gorgeous beach you’re driving on when you are constantly obsessed with soft sandy bits that might bog your car.
Afterwards I popped into Esperance for a coffee and a rejig, and then hopped on the long road straight back to Perth. When I got to Raventhorpe I met up with a big police sting operation tracking car speeds and breathalyzing drivers. I was quick to point out that in the eastern states we were no longer required to blow in a straw – only count to ten – which probably came across as being a bit cheeky. Usually one of my favorite drives back to Perth, it did seem a little dried out and less beautiful than usual.
When I finally got to the outskirts of Perth, I met up with a few friends who were out on a mountain biking adventure over the weekend for some dinner in Armadale. Took the opportunity to scrub down my car while I was there.
Sometimes I think the Nullarbor, as much as people complain about crossing it, is one of the last undiscovered frontiers of Australia. There seem to be endless roads shooting off north and south of the Erye Highway to interesting places. There are spectacular cliffs along the southern edge of the continent and huge caves underneath. There are a number of bird and whale watching sanctuaries along the way as well. Other roads in the area lead to historical paths that once carried many more people. I found the road to Cook and followed it up to the Old Erye Highway, which runs parallel to the current Eyre Highway but chose not to follow it due to its roughness and remoteness.
Once you cross out of South Australia and into Western Australia, you find yourself descending down off of the plateau you’ve been driving on top of so you continue your journey along the coastal flats that are rimmed by cliffs to the north. Eventually you drive back up to the top of the plateau again to see spectacular views out across the coastal plane. Soon afterwards you reach the ninety mile straight, which is just what it sounds like – ninety straight miles of perfectly straight road. Not my favorite part of the drive, I must admit, because it can be quite trance inducing.
Nullarbor Plateau View
During the drive in Western Australia you come across a few signs about a mysterious timezone known as Central Western Time that nobody seems to recognize. The last time I drove across the Nullarbor I dismissed it as some relic from another era, but this time, as I crossed into W.A, I had my GPS watch contact the satellites to adjust it to Perth time. Lo’ and behold, the GPS system actually recognized that Central Western Time as legitimate and adjusted my watch accordingly! It is an odd time, 45 minutes earlier than Perth. When I drove past the signs and had my watch connect with the satellites again, it changed the time again to Perth time. Very odd since this time doesn’t seem to be recognized by anyone else. Most organizations just recognize one timezone for Western Australia. On the train there was “train time”, but that was an hour off from Perth time.
By the time I got to Balladonia Roadhouse I knew it was time for me to get off the highway for a night’s rest. Some friends had recommended traveling south down a 4wd track across the street, so I hopped on it and starting looking for possible campsites far enough south of the Eyre Highway to not be within earshot. I did manage to find quite a few places, but chose a nice quiet one to settle in for a night of bush camping.
Interesting to compare my drive this time with the drive I did last time in 2004. Now I’m driving an SUV which uses a bit more fuel than my little Corolla did. I seem to be carrying MUCH more stuff than I did last time, which is a bit of a pain. Among the items is my mountain bike which has stayed in the back the entire time up until now due to various reasons (including security, fuel economy, and nasty road surfaces).
I have the aid of numerous GPS devices, but as far as navigation is concerned, they are really only best for micro views of where you are going and are a but cumbersome to step back and get the big picture of where you are going for the day. Map books still lead the way on getting big picture views of what is around. On the other hand, the GPS has been very good for sussing out all the service station options in small towns (where I have saved quite a bit tracking down the stations the locals use on back streets). They are also good for finding accommodation, shops, libraries, and other things.
It’s also been nice to have 4wd capabilities for some of the roads I’ve been on and very nice to have cruise control. MP3 player as well? I actually had one of those installed in my little Corolla the last time I did a long road trip. Lots of hi-tech stuff including my laptop – which makes it much easier to get photos on these blog posts! Most libraries I’ve found have free WiFi available these days.
Lots of fun with time changes on this trip. Along the train ride over east there was a special time zone called “train time” which was 1 hour earlier than Perth. Then you arrived in Adelaide and the time was 1/2 hour earlier still. Then I drive a relatively short distance to Victoria and the time moves another 1/2 hour forward to equal Melbourne and Sydney time. It stays that way up until I camp in Kinchega National Park in New South Wales, but when I double back briefly to visit Broken Hill the timezone changes again back to Adelaide time (or so say the road signs). When I eventually get up into Queensland the time will go back an hour from Sydney and Melbourne time. That means Brisbane is 1 hour later in time than Sydney and Melbourne, even though it is well east of them:
To get started on another around-the-world tour, I thought I would do what I did last time and explore parts of Australia that I haven’t had the chance to visit yet. Because I’ve seen so much in the west I thought I would take a different tack from driving or flying and catch the Indian Pacific train from Perth to Adelaide with my car on-board. A lot people I know have always been interested in seeing what it would be like to ride the train over 43 hours through some of the least populated deserts in Australia.
Cars loaded on Indian Pacific for journey from Perth to Adalaide.
I chose to take a cheap sleeper seat to save a few bucks and see how tolerable it would be. The trip turned out to really be great and a lot more interesting than you would think for rolling through endless views with flat surfaces and no trees (via the Nullarbor Plain). The trip was really quite comfortable – even for us spendthrifts. There were 50 of us riding the cheap way (from very young to very old) and we had one train carriage for doing whatever we wanted (sleeping, eating, relaxing, socializing) and two other cars with some restrictions on what we could do there. One of the other cars was a lounge and the other a diner. Sleeping was not permitted outside of our main carriage and only their food could be consumed in the dining car. Otherwise, we could do pretty much whatever we wanted in our 3 cars and had quite a bit of room to spread out. The lounge car was only available for an additional fee of $15 for the trip. For some reason this put off most of the passengers I was riding with – which resulted in me and about 7 other people having the whole place to ourselves. It had big comfortable seating and plenty of windows to view out through.
View of the Indian Pacific Lounge Car (Red Class) while train shoots through wheat belt region outside of Perth.
The food was really quite good and only about $13 a meal. I had a very nice Thai Chicken Curry the first night and a nice homemade Chicken Pie meal the second night. They cooked up Big Aussie Breakfast for the morning and had a range of sandwiches and snacks that could be purchased all day. The pricing was comparable to what you would normally pay anywhere (or even possibly cheaper).
The train was huge and contained 37 carriages overall (including 2 carriages full of automobiles in the back – including mine). This may have had something to do with “The Christmas Train” event having happened on the last trip out to Perth a week earlier or it may just be the norm. Aside from our cheap “red” class there were gold and platinum classes with formal dining cars and proper sleeping quarters. Now that I have had the chance to ride overnight trains in proper beds vs seats, I have no regrets about the red service they were offering. I could never sleep that well on the trains in Thailand and Egypt due to constant irregular motion of the train rocking the beds, but these Indian Pacific sleeper seats could be reclined to almost completely flat and had tons of leg room. I actually slept quite well in them once I figured out how to get on my side. I think perhaps we have all slept in cars while growing up and might somehow find seats more natural to sleep in when motion is a constant factor.
The train runs over 2500 kilometers between Perth and Adelaide, but continues on to Sydney – connecting the Indian Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. Before we arrived in Kalgoorlie for our first stop the train needed to pull over and allow freight trains and smaller passenger trains pass through from time to time. Once we got past Kalgoorlie there were minimal interruptions and a steady progression at about 115kph (according to my trusty GPS watch). For one (almost) 500km stretch the train travels down a perfection straight stretch with no bends at all in the track.
Unlike the road that runs across the bottom of the continent, the Indian Pacific route rides about 150km north through the heart of the Nullarbor Plain. While traveling from Perth to Adelaide the train needs to stop 3-4 times to deliver mail to people who live in the Western Australia parts these very remote areas. When traveling through the South Australia section of the trip it stops to pick up mail from a few places. When traveling west the train drops mail in South Australia and picks up mail in Western Australia. Each mail drop represents about 35 people sprawled out across hundreds of square kilometers. In addition to mail, the Indian Pacific is also used to pick up people from these remote regions so they can visit doctors in major cities or tend to other business they need to tend to in person. And then every year they send through Christmas train that stop to entertain young children and people living in these remote areas with music and Christmas treats. The conductors on the train have come to know quite a few of these people living on large pastoral leases because they are often their only physical contact with the outside world.
One of 3-4 mail drop locations servicing around 35 people scattered across 100’s of square kilometers in the Nullarbor Plain
The locals share tales of camels on the loose and dingoes surrounding their homes and eating their water pipes to get water out of their plastic irrigation pipes in the dry seasons. There were many kangaroos to be seen hopping away from the train as well as livestock who just roam over the rails. I asked one of the conductors whether they ever get hit and he acted like it was a fairly regular event. Putting up fences in such remote areas just isn’t worth it. Of the stops the train made, we were only permitted to get off at two of them, both for fuel and water: Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and Cook in South Australia. Kalgoorlie is still a sizable town thriving off the gold industry, but Cook is more or less a ghost town now with only a 4 residents. Cook was originally set up to service all trains with fuel and water with a school, hospital, swimming pool, golf course, airport, etc with 35 inhabitants — all at government expense but it with dissolved when the train networks were privatized. Cook has reached 48C (118F) at times but it was merely 23C (the mid 70’s) where we were there.
The Indian Pacific only stops twice for passengers to get off, this one in Cook, South Australia.
Along the Nullarbor Plain you would see the odd radio tower or tiny community. Everything seemed to rely on solar panels and rainwater tanks for survival. At one point we even came past a fresh looking brand new sizable airport in the middle of nowhere. Staring off into the horizon in any direction often brought strange parallax illusions of small objects racing in different directions because it was hard to judge distances. Even with all the desolate views out the windows, I still found myself quite mesmerized by the eerily beautiful scenery.
Looking back towards Perth while crossing to Adelaide.
Yes, I’ve finally made my way back to Perth — after a choppy flight from Bangkok. Choppy enough for half the crowd on the plane to burst into applause when we finally touched down. Perth can get pretty windy at times and it was a real roller coaster coming in.
The weather here right now is perfect: just like those cool dry Canadian summer days of yore. Perth’s having an unusually cool summer this year. Hasn’t hit 40C (104F) yet (according to the taxi driver who took me home from the airport)!
After 27 takeoffs and landings, I have finally found my way back to where I started my journey on August 1st: Perth, Australia. The air and streets seem super clean, the humidity is very low, the sun is very bright, and the people drive annoyingly slow and stay in nice neat traffic lanes. I’m having to get used to life with western toilets and toilet paper again. And I’m still not used to drinking tap water without having to purify it first. On the other hand, it sure seems quiet around here — without the hustle and bustle of Cairo, Delhi, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Singapore. It will take some getting used to!
At long last, I’ve found myself back in Fremantle. Home again, home again, jiggedy jig! I spent my last day hiking through Porongurup National Park and my last night night away in Walpole on the southwest coast of Western Australia — in the heart of the giant Karri forests. Of all the places I’ve visited around Australia, it is still one of the most beautiful, although a bit cold this time of year. I actually found a quarter inch of ice on my windshield in the morning and couldn’t get it off (since we don’t have ice scrapers here). I had to resort to turning the car into the morning sun and running the defroster for a while.
The past few days in Fremantle have been quite hectic, with six weeks of mail to catch up on and serious cleaning and repacking to do. With about nine hours to go before my redeye flight to Auckland, New Zealand (via Sydney), I’m happy to say I’ve finished all my errands and made everything I’m traveling with fit into my backpack.
I will be spending the next three weeks in New Zealand and will write from there soon!
I’m spending my second night in a youth hostel in Esperance. Yesterday I was the youngest resident (with several retirees). Today I’m the oldest. Ahhh… you’re never too old to backpack.
A farmer staying here told me yesterday, that there are big bucks to make selling “Blood and Bone” fertilizer, and that’s what the kangaroo collector was probably doing with them in South Australia. He also told me how road train drivers approach livestock when they’re on the road — usually aiming to knock them on the edge and not hitting them full on (which would cause too much damage to their trucks). Ah, the joys of road kill talk…
The weather has been very stormy for most of my stay here, but it has just begun to settle down. To take refuge from the rain, I spent some time perusing the local museum. The coolest exhibit they had was what is left of Skylab, which fell here in 1979. It was really interesting to see all the bits, some of them huge, and read all the newspaper articles. I can remember everyone worrying about whether it would fall on them back in the U.S. I also remember NASA claiming that it safely landed in the Indian Ocean — just before the people of Esperance announced that actually it fell on them. There were big things in the exhibit like the freezer, hatch door, and a giant cylinder. It’s a miracle none of it landed on anyone’s head.
The weather did manage to clear up enough for me to see the outdoor sites as well. The “Big Sur” type drive is really spectacular with many an endless beach with lots of white sand and huge rocks. The local national park has pure white beaches that seemed to run for dozens of miles. There were also whales in the neighborhood, but I didn’t personally see any.
Tomorrow I will head for Walpole (in the thick of the Karri forests south of Perth) to spend the night before making that final last 5 hour leg back to Perth on Sunday.
After my night sleeping on the state line, I got up bright and early and soldiered back to the car for another long day of driving. One of the reasons I decided to sleep at the border village was because it was actually on the South Australian side and there was a Agricultural Inspection Station waiting for me to get into Western Australia. This was the fouth zone I’ve had to cross into where I was expected to throw away all my produce and I was getting a bit sick of it. The other zones were around Kununarra, the Northern Territory state line, and the lower parts of South Australia. I still had some oranges and apples I bought at Adelaide’s Central Market, so I had them all for breakfast before getting started on my journey.
This drive had a few more trees than the Nullarbor, but it also had the distinction of holding Australia’s longest straight stretch of road — the Ninety Mile Straight, which got a bit boring. I actually found it a bit dangerous because oncoming traffic seemed to appear out of nowhere. You would get tired of contantly looking in the same place for too long and find it hypnotizing, so you would try to keep your eyes moving around, looking from side to side, just to stay awake. And then pow, there would be a truck barrelling down on you.
I finally arrived in Norseman in Western Australia in the mid-afternoon, where the tourist center greeted me with a free hot shower and free private camping spot 22 kms south of town. It was quite nice, private, isolated, and beautiful with lots of thick bush. From there I made the final few hours of driving this morning to get to the southern coastal town of Esperance — which is actually only about 8 hours away from Perth.
Esperance is supposed to be beautiful, but it’s been pouring rain ever since I got here. I’ve checked into another single room at the YHA in anticipation of another nasty storm front passing through. I think it’s probably already here. Esperance is famous for having lots of big beautiful beaches here with pure white sand. They have a bay full of islands and a local national park with some good hikes (I’ve been told). There is also a scenic drive nearby that it supposed to be like Big Sur. I’ll let you know when the weather clears.
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