Hooray for WA Day 16 Just past Norseman to the start of the Old Eyre Highway in from Border Village (680km)

Hooray for WA

Day 16

Just past Norseman to the start of the Old Eyre Highway in from Border Village (680km)

We were lucky overnight, with no rain falling, but another grey day dawned with the sun trying to peek out through the clouds. We were on the road by 8.30am

One of the attractions of this stretch of road was the rock sculptures on the side of the road. Someone (or ones) have spent time building rock piles and dressing them or decorating them with clothing. We had spotted some of these on the way over, and agreed to try and get some photos on the way back. Luckily, the road was not too busy, so it wasn't too difficult to safely back up or do a quick U turn to capture the shots. Luckily we had a very patient driver.

Trevor performed some first aid-replacing the head!

At one stage, as we drove along we saw a dark shape on the road ahead and slowed. As we came closer it became apparent that there was a big brown cow on the road! She was sitting down on the road and had 3 traffic cones placed around her. As we went past she rolled her eyes dolefully at us, and we could see her legs stuck out in strange directions and bloody injuries. Clearly she was not going to be moving under her own steam. We figured that she had probably been hit by a truck, and hoped that the truckie had gone to get some help for the poor cow, who must have been in a lot of pain. There is no photo of this as we all hope to be forgetting this as soon as possible.

5 km out of Caiguna we pulled in to have a quick look at the Blowhole. This is just one of many caves on the Nullarbor which form in the limestone rock. Air travels between the caves as pressures change, and has been measured coming out of one entrance at 72km/hr!

We ate lunch at Cocklebiddy before heading on to enjoy the view of Madura from the lookout (and find a cache) before we continued east along the plains below the escarpment.

We visited the old telegraph station at Eucla, now blanketed in sandhill halfway up the walls, standing quietly as a relic of times gone by.

 We were hoping that this might be a potential camping spot, as it was close to sunset by now, and we prefer to make camp before dark. Unfortunately there was no opportunity to camp here, so we continued on, crossed the border and drove past Border Village. As the dirt track which is actually the Old Eyre Highway left the main highway we followed it.Its hard to believe that this single track used to be the main access between east and west.

A few km on we spotted a small track in the light of our headlights, and followed it into the bush. It opened up into a wide open space. This was our lovely overnight spot. We sat around a warm fire and ate the last of our fresh dinner veggies tossed with left over cooked pasta and sausages with a little spice. Tomorrow we should cross the quarantine checkpoint (just outside Ceduna) , so most of the fresh fruit and veggie will need to be eaten by then.