Australian West Coast Bike Ride
Newsletter No 9- John and Ted have arrived in Murray Bridge
18th October 2004

News of the adventure from Esperance
accross The Nullarbor

A lot of time, a lot of miles and a little of communication since our last report, BUT, the Nullarbor has been conquered! What a huge achievement, but we have come off it with excess baggage, at least 600 million sticky black flies each on our backs! The one miserable factor on what can only be described as an amazing stretch of varied and quite beautiful landscape - perhaps being spring we have seen it at it's best.

Backtracking:

Esperance W.A. - What a wonderful place and what fantastic people - hopefully we have left behind even more really good friends to add to our growing list. The cold miserable weather hung around, but at least the rain eased somewhat after Ravensthorpe - the surrounding lands opened up into the cereal crops and canola fields, but still the non-stop trucks carrying nickel and wheat to the port at Esperance made for careful pedalling. The volume of trucks has to be seen to be believed - often the same ones passed us time and time again on their return runs. This South-Coast Highway is also a major route for the caravanning tourists so it was a very busy little single lane road.

Esperance Esplanade welcome

The two Esperance Rotary Clubs met us with a very warm welcome and on a variety of bikes to do a ride along the Esplanade on our arrival - this somewhat cut short with a fierce coastal storm looming. However we were wonderfully hosted and looked after and given every opportunity to familiarise ourselves with their lovely area on our rest day. The coastline is truly magnificent with multi bays and off-shore islands - the rain squalls and wind not allowing us to see the customary whales.Both Clubs supported a wonderful dinner auction in our honour, with very generous guests raising the most fantastic sum to add to our coffers after paying ridiculous amounts for over 20 sides of lamb, many fish boxes with the loveliest of fresh fish packs, kilograms of scallops, sundry donated goods and even a hotly contested John Deere Tractor and Header fought for by Katrina and Sue!(They said this was the only way they would ever see this new equipment on their farms- even be it scale model toys).

The thoughfulness of Rotary followed us 3 days later on arrival in Norseman, whereupon we were greeted by a representative of Lions who had been contacted by Esperance Rotarian John B. trying to arrange fresh food drops for us out on the Nullarbor. This didn't quite work out due to transporting difficulties, however the offer of support was just great.

Rotary Lookout Esperance

The sun and warmer weather came back after Esperance - but a night of camping at Salmon Gums saw Ted crawl out of his tent to break off the icicles after a night of minus 5 deg.- luckily our last really cold night. At Norseman we prepared for a trek of 17-19 days of no shopping and limited water supplies to cross the Nullarbor to Ceduna - camping out all the way, but again surprises - we had no problems in any direction and stayed several nights attached to roadhouses - isolated little establishments in the middle of nowhere! Our 80 kms a day let us study the long straight Eyre Highway and surrounding stony scrubland and saltbush and enjoy every section. Again many big trucks - some carrying huge loads over 6 metres wide, plus convoys of caravans, but the promised famous westerly winds deserted us and mostly fairly brisk easterlies tested John & Ted to the limit. The end result however, was that the section was covered in 16 days - great effort by the bikes.

The long straight road.

The Nullarbor started with eight days of repetitious countryside, viewing the 1979 Skylab memorabilia at Balladonia (their claim to fame) and tackling the 146 km "straight road", before a change in coming down off the plain at the Madura Pass, with three days then following the escarpment of the Hampton Tablelands and much prettier scenery and sharing the road with the Flying Doctor's emergency strips, with a climb up again on September 22nd saw us into Eucla for a rest day. A great little spot and a day of view out onto the lovely blue ocean, a very interesting visit to the Met Station and the old Telegraph Station on the beach (now almost submerged in the dunes).Next day we crossed the WA/SA border - after 3 months to the day in WA - then the really spectacular scenery emerged along the treeless plain and the Nullarbor Cliff fringe - multi view points from the cliffs out over the Great Australian Bight.One hairy night on the Bunda Cliffs - a "bush" camp without the bush, we had the opportunity of camping within metres of the sheer cliff-face, but with a strong wind off the ocean we backed off a couple of hundred metres and set up in a gravel dump. About 1 am a weather front passed through, the winds turned to storm-force northerly, the caravan rocked and rolled and at 2 am we were out chasing our loo tent heading for a parasail out into the Bight! No time for cameras!

The ultimate campsite

A lonely porta-pottie out on the plain next morning left us grinning. Luckily the bikes had been well tethered (a nightly safeguard). Four days after Eucla suddenly the western end of the SA agricultural region opened up and the wheat fields started.How refreshing and green. A couple of good stops at grain silo communities, an undulating and good road with the bikes achieving their 80 kms plus per day and then we were at Ceduna on September 29th for another well earned rest day and a few running repairs for John's bike. Nowhere along this stretch had we encountered punctures so that luckily has not been a problem, just a few parts wearing and/or loosening. This is the Labour Day long weekend in SA so Ceduna was gearing up for their annual Oysterfest and we witnessed lots of activity and preparation - pity we weren't a day or two later! From Ceduna the route is still the Eyre Highway across the Eyre Peninsula, and after 3 days so far it is wheat growing communities all the way. A total of approximately 6 days should see us in Port Augusta - a full circle for the support vehicle having passed through there on the way up to Darwin at the commencement of the ride. How long ago was that!

Weather is just super- warm clear days - several of them over the 30 deg mark but mostly mid 20's - couldn't ask for better.