Category: Western Australia

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 Eyre 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 descend from the plateau you’ve been driving on, so you continue your journey along the coastal flats 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 favourite part of the drive, I must admit, because it can be quite trance-inducing.

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 recognise. 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 recognised 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 recognised by anyone else. Most organisations just recognise 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 travelling south down a 4WD track across the street, so I hopped on it and started 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.

Today’s Drive

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 of people I know have always been interested in seeing what it would be like to ride the train for over 43 hours through some of the least-populated deserts in Australia.

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 be really great and much more interesting than you would think, with endless views of flat, treeless plains (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, socialising) 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 left about 7 other people and me with the whole place to ourselves. It had big, comfortable seating and plenty of windows to view out through.

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 trains in Thailand and Egypt due to the constant, irregular motion rocking the beds, but these Indian Pacific sleeper seats could be reclined almost completely flat and had tons of legroom. 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 kilometres 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 had to pull over from time to time to let freight and smaller passenger trains pass. 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 perfectly 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 travelling from Perth to Adelaide, the train needs to stop 3-4 times to deliver mail to people who live in the Western Australian parts of these very remote areas. When travelling through the South Australian section of the trip, it stops to pick up mail from a few places. When travelling 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 kilometres.

Most of the way to Adelaide (before my GPS watch battery died)

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 attend to in person. And then every year they send through a Christmas train that stops 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.

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 that just roamed 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 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 was dissolved when the train networks were privatised. Cook has reached 48C (118F) at times, but it was merely 23C (the mid 70s) where we were there.

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 passed a 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 mesmerised by the eerily beautiful scenery.

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 an Agricultural Inspection Station waiting for me to get into Western Australia. This was the fourth 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 constantly looking in the same place for too long and find it hypnotising, 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 centre greeted me with a free hot shower and a 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.