Dingoes had woken Chris twice during the night, with their distinctive howls to one another. The only other sound heard was the early morning wake-up chorus from the native birds. A cool morning greeted us as we stepped outside the Tvan in the early morning sun, which struggled to generate any warmth in the things it touched.
Heading east meant that we would be passing through a quarantine checkpoint just prior to arriving in Ceduna. The details about what can and can’t be taken through the checkpoint can be a little confusing, depending on the date of the website you reference. Rather than hand over our fruit and veggies we decided to eat as much of them as we could for breakfast and lunch, then restock once through the exclusion zone. Hence we both worked our way through a generous bowl of strawberries and yoghurt for breakfast. Our new best friends from Beaumaris wandered over and offered us a tomato and an avocado as they would also be passing a quarantine inspection on their journey west. Sadly we declined, explaining that we were in the same predicament.
We packed and said our goodbyes, retracing our tracks from Koonalda station back to the Eyre Highway to continue our homeward journey. The highway follows the coastline closely in parts and there are numerous official and unofficial side tracks to lookouts where views of the 80-metre cliffs that run for nearly 800 kilometres around the arc of the Great Australian Bight can be observed. We followed one (official) sidetrack to observe the towering cliffs and surf pounding at the base. It never ceases to amaze how the flat, dry saltbush covered plains just drop suddenly into the turquoise ocean below.
The Nullarbor Roadhouse was soon upon us, and just beyond the roadhouse was a sign declaring we were entering the western side of the treeless plain that gave the Nullarbor its name. We had been encouraged by our new best friends (over a cuppa around the campfire last night) to visit the Head of the Bight Whale Centre, so when the turnoff approached we decided to check things out. The centre is located at the most northerly point of the Bight where the towering cliffs give way to sandy beaches and windswept sand dunes that are currently marching inland at 11 metres per year, helped along by the prevailing winds.
After paying our entrance fee we followed the boardwalk down to the cliff top and along to the west where a young Southern Right whale calf was sticking close to its mother. They were about 500 metres away but easily spotted by the naked eye whenever they broke the surface, with their black colour contrasting with the blues of the ocean in the morning sun. We spotted another pair off to the east but they were possibly 1 to 1.5 kilometres away. We returned to the main building and had a coffee with scones, jam and cream. It’s fair to say they were the best scones we have ever had (while crossing the Eyre Highway).
After morning tea we returned to the boardwalk and found that the whales had moved in much closer to the observation area. We took turns looking at them through our binoculars, marvelling at how large and graceful they appeared to be with not a care in the world, just taking it easy in the pristine waters at the “head of the bight”.
On leaving the whale centre, the treeless plain gave way to the first signs of broad acre farming with wheat growing in what looked like very marginal land that hadn’t seen much rain for quite some time. We pulled into Penong, the windmill town, for lunch and fuel, parking in the shade near the windmill museum for lunch. The creaking of the various windmills in the breeze reminded us of a time many years ago when we were camped on the coast in Queensland and a squeaky windmill kept us awake during the night. We shared our lunch with a seemingly unlimited number of bush flies only too happy to stop by and say hello.
The countryside beyond Penong became quite undulating after the flatness of the Nullarbor Plain. It was mallee country, with large wheat farms dominating the landscape and towns dominated by the silos required to store the harvest before it could by taken by rail to the port at Ceduna. We were caught at a railway crossing while a train with four locomotives hauling 62 ore-carrying carriages passed (yes, we both counted them). The quarantine station west of Ceduna was our next stop, as every vehicle travelling east was inspected by polite staff members. We handed over a well-travelled watermelon and a half-eaten lettuce, as everything else had been consumed at breakfast or lunchtime.
We turned off the Eyre Highway just east of a small town called Poochera and followed a series of dusty gravel roads to our final destination for the day at Pildappa Rock. On first sighting, we immediately though it looked like a mini Uluru, but on closer inspection we were reminded of Wave Rock in Western Australia. We circumnavigated the rock looking for a suitable campsite where we set up for the night. The sun eventually set, revealing another star-filled outback sky above us.
