Lost In Time

I awoke early in Ceduna courtesy of the trucks trundling past my door. No breakfast was available where I stayed but there was an excellent truck stop nearby that put on a massive breakfast for $17.50. I however had other ideas. The Ceduna Hotel had signs up saying they did breakfast from 7.00am - 11.00am on Saturdays for $17.90 (all you could eat - hot and cold buffet) plus they had the added benefit of a much nicer view. It turned out breakfast could have been free (I couldn't find anyone to pay, I am too honest - they only charged me $10.50 anyway) and the view was great. It put in a much better mood for the drive ahead. 

The weather department said the rain was coming so I fired up the Vectra, got on the Eyre Highway and cranked her up to 140kph (approximately). It was fascinating to watch the temperature gauge go up while the petrol gauge went down. I can get about 750 kilometres out of a tank in highway conditions. I filled her up the night before with the last of the cheap petrol (to put it into perspective I paid $1.90 a litre in Border Village and it was dearer again at the Nullarbor Roadhouse if you chose to partake). I'm told Norseman is the next place you can expect to pay a reasonable price for petrol. 

I passed through Penong then made a 50 kilometre detour into Fowler's Bay. It had a pretty enough outlook but the township was nothing much to speak of. If you were a keen fisherman it would be good place to spend the week I suspect. I wouldn't bother with the detour again however. Then I passed through Nundroo and on to the Head of Bight. Which was magnificent.

Head of Bight is the best whale watching vantage point on the Great Australian Bight. It has a huge viewing platform looking over the Bunda Cliffs (which stretch unbroken for 200 kilometres to the Western Australian border).

Sadly there were only 4 whales doing their thing (July and August are the best months I'm told) and my camera wasn't capable of catching them. However I had the binoculars with me and was happily entertained for 1.5 hours watching mother nature do her thing.

From there it was only a further 20 kilometres to the Nullarbor Roadhouse where I stopped for lunch. It was nothing but a roadhouse where you could get accommodation, meals and fuel. Plus the famous signs were readily nearby for photographic purposes. 

After lunch I motored on stopping at the many lookouts to take in the Great Australian Bite. I had wanted to stay at Eucla about 12 kilometres inside the Western Australian Border but the entire town was booked out (there is only one place and the town only has 100 residents) so I am spending another night in South Australia albeit by only about 50 metres. I checked into the Border Village Roadhouse and will try and figure out what time it is. 

In South Australia the time is 30 minutes behind the eastern states. So if its 6.30pm in Sydney its 6.00pm in Adelaide. When you cross the border into Western Australia 6.00pm becomes 4.30pm. Easy enough you would think. But Noooooooooooo. Border Village, Eucla, Madura, Cocklebiddy and Caiguna have there own time zone. Its not official but all of these places conform to it or so I'm told. Technically its GMT + 8.45. Accordingly instead of being South Australian time (6.00pm) or even Western Australian time (4.30pm) they are what's called Central Western Time and it's 5.15pm. So when I checked in there were 4 clocks behind the counter, not for Sydney, London, New York and Tokyo but for Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Border Village. 

I wanted to play a hole of the Nullarbor Links here today. But the weather has finally caught up to me and it has been bucketing down. Hopefully I will get a chance in the morning.

The roadhouse is back from the road a bit but you can still hear all the traffic. The bed I would describe as being the "chiropractor's friend". It will keep them gainfully employed for some time. I can smell Western Australia from here and I most certainly can see it. Tomorrow will see me in another state. I am planning on stopping at Balladonia where there is another hole on the Nullarbor Links to play plus a museum that holds a big display of Skylab stuff. You know that famous NASA space station that crashed in the outback in 1979. We'll see how well that goes. I think a few beverages may be in order to cope with traffic noise. Well that's my excuse anyway.