Mon 4 Nov 2013 – The Nullarbor

We set off from Norseman about 10.00am and, at first, there were plenty of trees but, after a couple of hours, the vegetation became sparse. It's a really lovely day, blue sky, sunshine and warm - 38.5C by 2.00pm.

We stopped at Balladonia where there's little museum in the Roadhouse, as most of the pieces of Skylab landed around here when it fell to Earth in 1979. Apparently President Carter personally rang the Roadhouse to apologise and offer to pay for any damage. The tiny town was suddenly inundated with reporters, and visited by Miss America, who was appearing in a Miss World competition in Perth. The largest pieces of Skylab were taken back to Perth and displayed on the stage during the Miss World competition, but it was so heavy that the stage collapsed!

We were interested to see that the Eyre Highway is not just the only road across the Nullarbor, but also the emergency airstrip!

On the first part of the road, there were small stone cairns every so often. We couldn't work out their significance, but some of them had been dressed up.

When Rodger was driving, he got the longest straight stretch of road in Australia, 90 miles long and the land was very flat, with dry, bushy vegetation of blue bush and saltbush. There were lots of white rocks sticking up, which I thought were sheep, until I looked more closely.

Even though we're not near the Border yet, we had to put our clocks forward 45mins for Central Western time, which is strange as there wasn't a Central Western time zone in the North.

We drove about 600kms and, well before sun down, found a rest area, with a toilet, where we can stop for the night, as we have seen many dead kangaroos today and don't want to be on the road at their feeding time.