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Once again we were driving at night, although not ideal, we had actually planned it this way as we’d made arrangements to have dinner with Cam & Lisa who we worked and played with when we lived in Adelaide 20 plus years ago and this time we got to meet their kids Sophie & Jordan. A quick pasta, long overdue catch-up and some freebie lunches for the next day from the restaurant as they kicked us out at closing time, it was time to be on our way again. It was great to be able to see them after such a long time. The kids were fast asleep when we’d got to camp and we just lifted them to their beds and we all crashed. Port Augusta was next on the agenda as we needed to have Tinfish serviced. While Tinfish was having a spa we had a look round the town, that was 10 minutes killed and then after lunch by the river we went to check out the library so the kids could do some school work and I could try and crack on with designing the website! We managed to find a camp site (that is stretching the term a little, more like a car park) next to a pool, so to cool from the rising temps we spent the following day mostly splashing and enjoying the water.

With South Australia virtually on our doorstep from Sydney (!!?!!) we didn’t plan much time to explore the State and as Alex and I had lived there for a year previously, we had already done a lot of exploring around the region and we were keen to press further west.  We crossed the top of Eyre Peninsula over to Baird Bay as the following day was going to hold A LOT of excitement for us all. In true Towns style, we took a while to find the perfect camping spot, we found it, right next to a sign saying ‘no camping’!

We started the evening with Lexi and Reo acting all mischievously and secretively. They were taking things from the van and running off into the communal area up the hill. They said they had a surprise for us, so they set up our chairs on the beach for us to relax and off they went. They’d gone off to cook us tea. We enjoyed sausage and chips with a few veggies. The kids were so proud of their cooking and serving up dinner, it was a fun evening and we finished off the day by sitting on the beach watching the sunset. Every day I see little changes in them; growing up, more confident, becoming competent in tasks that they’ve only tried since starting on the trip, and the physical changes of them getting taller, becoming stronger and capable of taking on more responsibilities as we have time to teach and guide them. We still have many struggles on a daily basis, but moments like these when it all clicks, we laugh out loud and have fun together far outweighs the other times and it re-energises me, fills my bucket again and reinforces all the reasons for taking the time out.

The following morning started with a delicious pancake brekkie, again cooked by Lexi, and we pulled our wetsuits, masks and fins out and headed down the beach to our days activity, snorkelling with seals and dolphins!! The excitement was palpable. On the way out to the seal habitat, we had the safety brief and the do’s and don’ts. The guy who was going to be our guide, Mick, began talking about the Bronze Whaler shark that had been in the area just the week before, suddenly little ears plucked up, faces creased into worried smiles and the questions began… Reo assumed he was joking, Lexi did not, but Mick spoke to them like they were adults not understanding that children need modified language and the kids eyes grew to the size of saucers. Suddenly the snorkelling didn’t seem like such a good idea in their eyes. The looks from me and Alex trying to convey that the kids really didn’t need to hear it were totally missed and in the end we told them it was fine and that there were no sharks there that day – and joked with Mick that if the kids decided not to go into the water now I’d like a refund! As soon as we saw the seals, everything else was forgotten and getting up close and personal with these creatures was the only thing on their minds.

We jumped into the water and we were immediately surrounded by 3 seals. They are as quick as lightening when zipping through the water. While the kids were a little nervous initially, understandably as the seals were as big if not bigger than Reo, the frowns had been turned upside down and they were soon splashing around and having a lot of fun. It was really amazing to see the seals up close and personal and it felt like they were just as interested in us. After we’d been in the water a while, the seals decided to get friendly and began nipping at legs and arms as they flailed around the water, the kids then got a little more anxious and decided to sit out on the boat for a bit. It wasn’t long before Lexi was back in with Mick pulling her on a floaty so that she could get really close. Mick dives with the seals every day and knows how to handle them. His wetsuit had holes from where the seals had been playfully nibbling him and he expertly got one of the seals close so that its head was out of the water and face to face with Lexi. This completely boosted her confidence again and off she went snorkelling and it was Reo’s turn to then say hi. We had a ball and it was hard to know which way to look as the seals swam between and around us, we were in the water non-stop for over an hour. Once out of the water, I suddenly realised how chilled I was and the cup of hot chocolate was perfectly timed as I sat down to swap stories with the other punters.

We motored a little further out of the bay and again had the safety talk of do’s and don’ts, (the usual, don’t ride the dolphins, swim as fast as you can if you see a shark ) as we prepared to jump in as soon as the skipper saw a pod of dolphins. The long appendage strapped to Mick’s leg was not lost on Lexi as she announced to those around her that it was to keep the sharks at bay! Funnily enough, we all stayed very close to Mick as we jumped back in the water and straight away saw the graceful manoeuvres of the dolphins. They shot past quickly and disappeared into the blue. We waited a while and Mick began to swim off in vain as if to try and catch them. Obviously we didn’t want to become chum, so we tried to follow but there was a fair swell and little legs swimming in the sea don’t propel little people forward very quickly and Reo’s answer to this was to climb on my back. Funnily enough, mummy doesn’t propel herself through water very quickly with 25kgs on her back! The dolphins didn’t return so we got back into the boat until we spotted them again. The second time in the water the dolphins hung around and we got to see them more closely, it was hard to tell how many there were, and there was a baby swimming close to its mother which looked cute. It really was an amazing day which completely exceeded my expectations, for me it was the best day of the trip so far.

We headed to the north of the bay that afternoon to Perlubie Beach. A beautiful beach where we camped on the shoreline, along with 100’s of others. We squeezed ourselves between 2 caravans and set ourselves up for a couple of nights. The following day we vegged, ventured to the blow holes and then vegged while trying to shelter from the wind. Kids loved playing in the sand, Reo found a couple of boys to slide down the dunes with and we ended the day with the most amazing sunset. It was then time to leave and head for Ceduna, the official start of The Nullarbor Plain [deriving from the latin nullus, “no”, and arbor, “tree”].

We fuelled up and had been told about a great little fish and chip stop, so a few cheeky oysters and fish and chips later, we were ready for the long road in to nothing. Alex and I have already travelled a fair amount of Australia but we’ve never crossed the Nullarbor so I was keen to see what it was like. It really is a lot of ‘nothingness’, the world’s largest limestone karst landscape 4 times the size of Belgium, however it’s an experience like no other. It makes you appreciate how big Australia is and its filled with some fabulous sights. A couple of fun facts; The Nullarbor Plain is approximately 1675km or 1100km depending on where you read the info (and no we’re not that geeky that we set the odometer to check it ourselves) 😊, its official name is The Eyre Highway and if you’re a keen golfer, you can play on the world’s longest 18 hole golf course which stretches between Ceduna and Kalgoorlie. Just beware of the snakes on the green.

To say this was a treeless plain, there were quite a lot of trees to be seen amongst the low-level bluebush and mulga scrub. We didn’t travel too far before we pulled off to find our camp at The Mexican Hat, which was to be our 1^st camp alone since leaving Sydney, happy days! Just like our last bit trip, I longed for the vast expanses of nothingness where we’d be by ourselves, but they were few and far between. Australia has a lot of them, and we’ve planned to visit some later in our itinerary, so I was excited about what the road might hold. We first had to get there and at one point felt we were lost but we continued on the dust tracks in the direction we thought we needed to go according to Google Maps. No sooner had Reo piped up “we haven’t got stuck yet” as Alex was driving through the sandy roads, we did! Quite proper stuck too. Out came the shovel to begin with, and when a bit of digging didn’t work, the maxtraxs came out to be christened. 45 minutes later we managed to get ourselves out and to make sure we got there before the sun had set, I drove the last leg .

We had hit paradise; only us, a beach all to ourselves, nestled in the sand dunes and nothing but shrub and sand as far as the eye could see. That may not seem like paradise to many, but Alex and I crave to get away from the main stays and go remote and its actually really hard to go anywhere now without someone else being there! Normally we plan to stay places at least 2 nights at a camp as the kids struggle with constant change however for the Nullarbor, we had planned a night at each camp as we were limited on the amount of water and food we could carry, we’d talked it through with the kids to set expectations and to try and minimise any melt downs. I am finding that our planning may not be as well structured as it has in the past, as we loved our camp so much we extended our stay for another 2 nights. Morning schooling with Reo consisted of collecting shells from the beach to do maths and writing some of his site words in the sand – that probably took a few hours as trying to direct Reo in any direction only works when he wants to do it. The kids played happily in the sand all day long, Alex fished, we had our first fire in a long time and I read and made my first sourdough bread. I felt we were finally starting to relax into a groove. The first fish that Alex and Reo caught was a ray, not great for eating and hard to take off the line to return to the sea but they did come up with the goods in the end and caught a few King George Whiting which make tasty titbits and an easy lunch! Thankfully we had snatchings of 4G and Alex managed to find a great YouTube video on how to filet a fish!

With limited supplies, we bid a fond farewell to our little piece of paradise to continue our journey west. As the kilometres sped by, the terrain changed quite dramatically, nothing but bare, flat land as far as the eye could see. Our next stop was to visit the Great Australian Bight Marine Park. The Bight is a wide embayment of the Indian Ocean indenting Australia’s southern coast protecting a globally important calving and gathering area for endangered southern right whales. Unfortunately we weren’t there at the best time to see them but the scenery itself is pretty spectacular. A little further on we hooked a left to peer off the vertical limestone Bunda cliffs, 120m high, a wrong step would send you plummeting to the choppy ocean below. Along the road there are turnoffs to explore and you can walk right to the edge of the cliffs. We passed one family with 2 young (under 4yrs) kids all set up to camp on the edge of the cliffs. I like my remote places but they had more balls then us as I wasn’t comfortable to camp with our kids on such high cliffs. Reo was quite adamant when we got to the marine park that he wasn’t doing a walk, hike or stroll so I told him today would be just a ramble. I wish I’d had my drone out more to play with and be comfortable using as I would have got some amazing shots off the cliffs. We continued the long road west and found a historic homestead which had been established mid 1800’s and operational for over 100 years and was now part of the National Park. We arrived with the sun low in the sky so managed to get the chairs out just in time to witness the most spectacular sunset we’d seen yet.

Reo woke us the next morning so we could all enjoy the “sunset”, the colours were amazing, it got me thinking about how far we’d already travelled from the East. There were a group of other people camping too, they were a team who had come from all corners of the planet to carbon date some recently found aboriginal rock art which they reckoned was about 40,000 years old! We had a wander around the homestead, the house had been preserved in its original state, remnants of the garage, petrol bowser and lots of old cars & trucks which were fascinating to look at were still on show and the barns and pens for sheep shearing. Having been to a few farms now the kids recognised the layout and equipment and Lexi showed me round like I was a tourist. It was then time to tick off another State. First off we had to consume our body weight in nuts as we’d been told they weren’t allowed across the border, along with other food we knew we couldn’t take. We pulled out all the items we were unsure of and played innocent as we approached the officer. As it happens, all nuts except for walnuts in the shell are fine, at least we were regular for a few days! It was also time to adjust our clocks again by 1.5 hours from SA time. Our next stop had been recommended by James and Tammy, keen cave divers, who know this region well and directed us to Weebubbie Cave – I would have gone purely for the name. This was our first proper no amenities camp and we’d encouraged the kids to go to the loo at the border otherwise it would be a ‘shovel job’; this appeared to be music to Reo’s ears and no sooner did we get to the cave, he needed the shovel!! In a ceremonial burying and marking with a rock, he was quite pleased with his achievement. We also went through another time zone which we had no idea existed. Just a mere 45 minute shift, for a 200km stretch before heading into official WA time. It was a little strange and depending on which clock or watch you looked at we now had had 3 different times to choose from (SA, Nullarbor, WA). It threw us a little as we really didn’t know what the real time was for a bit, but it certainly helped with our “up and out” motto as we would choose a time to suit our needs…. “Towns time”!

We detoured back to the main road via Abrakurrie dry cave and had a walk down to see how far we could get in, but after nearly stepping on a partially decomposing kangaroo and the trees getting more difficult to climb through, we got to a point where we’d probably have an accident getting down to the bottom as the boulders were big and there was no clear way to the entrance. Not a place you want to have a serious accident or end up like said kangaroo. Negotiating the trees back to the highway was interesting, following a dirt track and hoping the Google Maps was taking us in the right direction; jury is still out on whether the detour was worth it. The further west we got, the more remote it felt, even though we knew our destination was getting closer. Sections of the road also serve as the emergency airstrip for the flying Doctor.

After a roadside stop we had our best “Up n Out” yet and were on the road by 7.30am (depending on the clock you were looking at!). We’d decided to drive to Norseman, the end of the Highway as we were low on water and food. We had the “excitement” of driving the straightest stretch of the highway the ’90 mile Straight’ with not a single rise or bend for the whole stretch and it was a long day driving in the end. We’ve not had that many times when it’s been a full day in the car, but the magic of audio books has transformed the doldrums of these long days to the point the kids want to stay in the car when we’ve found camp to continue listening to the story!

We’d done it – 1675km or 1100km depending on which you believe, 6 nights, 5 freshly caught fish, 4 fires, 3 time zones, 2 showers & 1 freshly baked sourdough – we’d crossed The Nullarbor….. and it was SO worth it!!

Upon reaching Norseman, we fuelled up, utilised the free shower at the petrol station, stocked up on some basics and as we were about to try and find a camp, passed the local open-air swimming pool with 40 mins to spare before closing. After being couped up in the car all day, we parked up, threw on our swimmers and splashed and played until we were politely asked to leave. It was now 6pm so we decided to have a pub tea before deciding on what to do next, whatever that next was, we would be driving to it in the dark, again….!