Dave and Ces do the Nulla

Time to hit the road again, and this time it was the big one. At the outset, as we joined the convoy of grey nomads and their campers and caravans, I was a little perturbed at being one of the few travellers not sporting a sign saying "Hi from Derek and Sharon from Morphetville" or some such thing in large letters on the back of my vehicle, however upon mature reflection, considering the state of my driving, perhaps anonymity was best. The classic Nullarbor drive really consists of about 1200 kms bookended by Ceduna and Norseman, and we decided to tackle this in a fairly relaxed way, sharing the driving, having plenty of walkies stops, and breaking the trip twice, overnighting at Eucla and Balladonia.
Before setting out we had a bizarre encounter in Ceduna, a very pretty town set in an attractive coastal area. Earlier in the day we had retreated gagging from the local pizza shop when we discovered a mouse having a jolly game on the shelf behind the lady attempting to take our order, but when we went for our post prandial, we came upon a young asian girl who was kneeling down on the nature strip, embracing another young blonde girl who was laying akimbo, and unmoving in the dirt. When we approached, we could see that the young blonde girl had wet herself, and that her companion was cradling her head, and preventing it from hitting the concrete. We naturally offered our assistance, making the assumption that the fallen girl was undergoing some form of fit. Just as we arrived, the blonde girl revived, and sprang to her feet. She was very pretty, I am guessing about 20 years of age, but possessing the most unnerving stare, and all she could say was "I am very sorry, I am very sorry" Of course we assured her that there was nothing to be sorry about, but she locked arms with her companion, and marched purposefully away, so we shrugged and resumed our walk. Unfortunately, no sooner had they crossed the road, than the blonde girl let out a series of the most appalling screams, not just child like indignant screams, but full blown horror film screams, which I am sure could be heard all over Ceduna. She then proceeded to take all her clothes off, so in a few seconds she was standing stark naked at the side of the road, whereupon she started to run down the middle of the road, continually screaming, leaving her friend and us in her wake. She ran past a motel, and within moments a gentleman emerged, carrying a blanket, and calling after her by name, which let us to deduce that this was'nt the first time that this had happened. Later on we found ourselves directing a police car in the direction of the screams. How sad. Makes our little problems seem rather insignificant.
After this little bit of excitement, we set of on our adventure. The Nullarbor has had some bad press, which I suspect it may have deserved when the entire distance was unsealed, when cars were less reliable, and particularly when people crossed at the height of summer with the temperature always in the 40's (except when it hit 50), but today the road surface is excellent, much better than anything we have been driving on in Tassie, the longest distance between fuel is 200 kms, there is lots of traffic to hail if you get in trouble, and our average daily maximum temperature has been about 19. In addition, the Eyre highway only crosses the classic Nullarbor - no trees plain for a relatively short distance, and for most of the drive I found the landscape changeable and interesting. On one of our walks during a break , Cecile disturbed a beautiful small snake, which she only just avoided standing on, and we watched it wriggle past her foot and into a small shrub to hide. At one point we returned to the car, to find it enveloped in a cloud of swallows who were pecking at the remains of insects we had slaughtered en route .I was too late with the camera to capture this beautiful vision, but was distinctly unimpressed when I discovered that the birds had left their calling cards all over the car.
Eucla was a point on the overland telegraph, and the sand covered ruins of the repeating station reminded us that while it may have been the high tech internet of its day, it has gone the way of Ozymandias, as will we.
Balladonia's claim to fame is that when the Skylab space station decayed in its orbit, its fiery remains landed in the area, and parts are exhibited in the museum. For a time locals led groups into the area, inviting tourists to collect bits for souvenirs. The then American President, Jimmy Carter telephoned the local roadhouse to apologise.
One interesting feature of the drive was the Nullarbor golf course, with 18 communities along the 1200 kms each providing one golf hole.
The end of the journey was at a charming town called Norseman, named after a horse whose pawing at the ground whilst tethered revealed a gold nugget, making his owner a fortune, and starting a gold rush.
My one regret about the crossing was that our toy car did not allow us to travel along tracks to access points of interest along the way. Incidentally, since leaving the Northern Territory, where the 130 km/hr speed limit, and long straight roads caused fuel consumption to rocket to 7.0 l/100kms, our average had steadily fallen to 5.8 l/100kms for the whole trip. Now however the average is heading north, and is sitting at 6.1 l/100kms for the 51,000kms which we have done so far.