Skylab

I wandered off to the pond this morning, searching for the frogs that croaked in the night.  There were quite a few signs of other animals around (where we camped near Kalgoorlie there were none - amazing what a difference water makes) and I found the biggest tadpoles I have ever seen.  Like a wiggling sugar plum.  They didn't look they were wanting to move very much!

We packed up and left early, which is amazing for us.  Our first stop was for fuel at the Balladonia roadhouse.   This place in the middle of nowhere came to international attention when the NASA Skylab crashed to earth in 1979, trailing bits of debris from the coast inland.  President Jimmy Carter phoned the roadhouse to apologize for any damage, and the Dundas Shire Council issued NASA with a littering fine. (It was a great time to talk to the children about how the orbit of a satellite needs to be continually managed which requires fuel and  redundancy in all the systems to keep then reliable and appropriate costing and long term planning for re-entry to avoid embarrassment – Grant)

We wandered through their free museum, with interesting displays on the camel trains that used to make up the trans-Australian railway across the Nullarbor, and the beginnings of the dirt road, started in 1941 so that the military would have a complete coast road around Australia for WWII.  Now, of course, the road is bitumen and an easy drive from Norseman to Ceduna.

As we were leaving we saw Tony and Val lining up for petrol.  We are tag teaming along the road!

On our way towards Caiguna we passed a Jayco expanda caravan on the side of the road.  It was parked down in the gully, no wheels, and door and hatches pulled open with coat hangers and suitcases spilling out onto the grass.  It was the exact same model as ours, and it was tempting to look for spare parts!  But we were not sure about the circumstances that led to the van being there...maybe it had been left while the owners went to fix their car, or repair a tyre from the van, and others stopped and vandalised it while they were away.  Val and Tony told us later they got quite a scare coming up to the van, but when they saw the south Australian number plates, they realized it wasn't us.

Just outside Caiguna (they have names like towns, but all they are is a roadhouse), we pulled over at the Caiguna Blowhole.  After the blowhole we saw on the coast I thought this was where water spouted up out of the ground, but it turned out to be an opening to one of the caves under the Nullarbor plain.  The air 'blows' in and out of the cave and close to the hole it was quite cool. (Cooper and I went into the cave underneath and it looked like it went a long way in if you were keen to do a lot of crawling – Grant).  

Next stop was Cocklebiddy, population 8, where we stopped for lunch and the loo.  They had an aviary full of budgies and quails.  There were also a few baby budgies in a cage inside, and the lady I spoke to said they'd had a few hot days recently where the baby budgies were just dropping out of the sky.  They've had the largest flocks flying over this year than they've had for forty years, and sometimes it's just too hot for the baby birds. (Apparently they have a 6 km cave dive which sounds like a very risky sport.  This cave is now closed.  A landslide trapped 13 divers for 36 hours in 1988 - Grant).  The nullabour has a number of large caves.

 

We stopped beyond Cocklebiddy at the start of the road out to the Eyre Bird Sanctuary.  There was an information board warning of rough roads, and after seeing what had been done to the other caravan left on the side of the road, we weren't real keen to leave ours behind anywhere.  Plus we don't have much time to get across the Nullarbor before Christmas, and the four hour round trip would be way too long...so, we kept going.

Just before Madura, we pulled into the Madura Pass lookout that gave views of the Hampton tableland, that we've been driving on, and where it drops down to the Roe Plain.  It was a stunning view.

We drove past Madura and stopped for the night beside the road at Jilah Rockhole.  We never found the rock hole.  It was overcast tonight, with a few drops of rain. Cold outside.  There was a very yucky toilet with a few red back spiders spinning webs on the walls and beside the toilet.

Nadine came in the van soon after we'd stopped and had a big drink of water.  'Aah,' she said 'it's always nice to have a big drink when your tongue's all hard.'  Sometimes Nadine gets her words a bit muddled up!
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Vicki