Hooray for WA day 4 May 24th Nullarbor to Balladonia

We woke to a fresh wind and the sunrise this morning and opted to forego our planned cooked breakfast due to the wind.

This meant we had a quick pack up and breakfast and were on the track early.

We saw our first signs of other life (other campers) about 30 km along the old Eyre Highway, which is really a rough dirt road now in this part. Those who opted to make this trek without the benefit of support many years ago were indeed adventurous souls.

what sort of car was this?

the old Eyre Highway

About 70 km along we came to the old Koonalda Homestead (now abandoned). We were impressed by the fact that you can still walk in to the homestead itself complete with windows and doors so the pests haven't taken over and made it horrible. It's not hard to imagine what a difficult life it must have been out here. It seems they sold fuel from the old pump and possibly towed vehicles off of the highway (lots of wrecks rusting in the area around the homestead). The shearing shed and yards look pretty rough on the outside,but you can still get a feel on the inside with the shearers stands and holding pens.

old bowser

Some of the old car bodies

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old shearing shed

Inside the shearing shed

A 12km added trip out to the caves (where they go their water from) revealed a huge cavern in the rock (dry at the bottom).

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We took the newly graded track out to the new highway from here, Saving the rest of the discoveries along the old one until the trip back.

A short trip out to the cliffs showed no whales, but beautiful blue water and the ever impressive cliffs reaching up from the water. Pity help anyone shipwrecked around here. These look unscaleable.

The Border Village roadhouse offered very expensive fuel ($1.54/litre) , hot and cold (regularly) showers and hot, ordinary food. The long awaited cuppa was appreciated.

The fruit fly inspectors took our half zucchini and spring onion, but let us keep our roasted almonds. We are down to bottled, canned and dried food until we hit a decent shop.

We hadn't remembered the step down onto the plains just beyond Eucla through a rocky pass, but enjoyed detouring on to the same "table" to look down over Madera 150 or so km later.

Despite the fact that we kept on driving the hour got ealier (twice!!) with the time changes heading west, so we were able to put in over 700km today.

With rain becoming steady and threats of storms overnight we decided to ring ahead and booked a room at Balladonia Motel. The weather immediately improved, and as we drive the last 80 km the kangaroos are starting to make their presence felt in the dusk as they grab a bit of moisture from the road and saunter casually on their way.

We've seen a dozen or more wedge tailed eagles today mostly feasting on roadkill. They take a while to get their heavy bodies moving, but then look amazing in the air.

We finished off the day with a little jaunt into the back blocks of Balladonia, trying to find the Afghan Rocks campsite in off of the road that we had read about.   Well, we found some unusual rocks and a bush track, which we followed for a few km, and eventually came out just out of town through a gate with a station name Noondoonia. Not really sure if we should have been on this track, but no harm done.