Our Third day on the road heading to the start of the Canning Stock Route at Wiluna
The great thing about AirBnB is that they do provide some provisions, so there was plenty to eat for breakfast. This particular AirBnB was a comfortable old house that had plenty of character. Excellent landlady who had put heaters in all of the bedrooms that took the chill off the rooms and get us warm overnight.
As usual up early, and on the road by 6:00am.
Our first stop for fuel and for breakfast was Ceduna, some 3 hours drive from Kimba. On our way out of town we stopped at the Ceduna Oyster Barn for what else local oysters, bloody fantastic
It was overcast when we left Kimba and we had showers on and off although these diminished as we got closer towards Ceduna. As we got further into the desert areas we had magnificent blue skies.
The Nullarbor Plain, the name is from latin and literally means No (null) Trees (arbor), is a section of the Eyre Highway which is just so straight the entire length, in fact there is one stretch of road that is signposted “90 mile straight”, as there are no curves let alone corners for the 145 Kilometres of the 90 Mile Straight.
The trip is very boring for driver and passenger alike as we head west on these very straight roads. That is until we are about 150Kms east of the WA border, this is where the Eyre Highway is adjacent to the the Great Australian Bight where there are some spectacular views of the Indian Ocean in the area of Bunda Cliff.
I don’t know why but the staff at the quarantine point at the SA/WA border seemed to have some sort of attitude problem, the complete opposite to the staff at the quarantine point coming from NSW into SA. Anyway apart from being slow and really taking their time there was nothing to be found, we have done these quarantine points so many times that we know not to take any fruit or products that are subject to quarantine restrictions.
We arrived at Cocklebiddy in the late afternoon about 4:30pm, and as we got out of the vehicles we realised how cold it was, with a very strong wind so reduce the low temperature even more.
Cocklebiddy is just the Servo, caravan and camping area as well as “motel” rooms. These rooms have seen better days, but the air con worked so this was cranked up to warm the room to a decent temperature. This is the coldest place we have stopped at so far, pleased that as we are on the run to get to the CSR as quickly as we can, we are not camping, although we would have coped quite OK if we had to pitch the tents.
Interestingly enough when we checked in we could pay by card (or cash), however there was a $10 cash deposit for the TV remote. In our room the TV was hanging on the wall at a bit of an angle on a single shelf bracket. The one “wardrobe” in the room would have been impossible to use if we wanted to as the doors would not open it was so out of square.
As is usual at country places the meals are HUGE, no matter what you order, although basic and usually pretty darn good. A few of us went for the Bangers (3 very large) and Mash. Definitely no second serves needed.
We realised today that one of the reasons we are making such good time each day is the time zone changes as we head west, this will have a reverse effect as we head back at east. Another of course is straight roads with low traffic so we could push on and overtake not being held up by slow traffic