The last thing I grabbed before we left Kalgoorlie was my Nullabor Links Golf Card, the only guaranteed diversion on our 1200 klm run to Ceduna in South Australia. The 18-hole par 73 golf course spans 1365 kilometres with one hole in each participating town or roadhouse along the Eyre Highway. The course starts at the Goldfields Golf Course in Kalgoorlie, the first two holes luxurious by comparison to what I knew was coming. Some holes were part of an existing bush golf links, which in itself was an eye opener. You gotta be keen to negotiate bare earth fairways and sand greens every Saturday.
Clearly part of the deal were synthetic greens that ranged in size from a bed sheet to somewhat more substantial. Some holes were, shall we say, more improvised than others. Cleared scrub at the back of roadhouses was the most common, and the roadhouse owners took full advantage of the wide open spaces to make some of the holes a ‘take-a-cut-lunch’ expedition. Nothing focuses the mind on hitting straight like the possibility of dingoes and death adders lurking just off the “fairways”.
This is no chip and putt affair. This is what you see from the tee at the hardest hole. It’s called Skylab. The reason? You have to launch your ball into the stratosphere to clear the trees and then hopefully it plunges back to earth somewhere near the hole.
Anyway, getting ahead of ourselves, so….back to Norseman. We arrived back at our own launch pad knowing a storm front and westerly winds were on there way. Norseman is another gold mining town founded by a wandering miner, whose horse kicked up a gold nugget after being tied up for the night. If it’s that easy, considering what Tamika paid for the metal detector, we should have just gone down to the local knackery.
Sure enough, just on dusk, the heavy drops arrived and continued on and off for several hours. The next morning, westerly winds whistled through the trees. It was the scene straight out of Castaway. Turning onto the Eyre Highway we hoisted our TV aerial with improvised spinnaker attached and… “This could work Wilson!!”
Balladonia, Caiguna, Cocklebiddy, roadhouse after roadhouse. Lonely outposts in an unending landscape. There seems to be some dispute as to where the Nullabor starts and ends depending who you talk to. The much touted ninety mile straight stretch passed almost unnoticed. Not a straight line to the horizon, more undulating, coveted by salt bush and small trees on either side. It wasn’t till we got to the Madura Pass that the plain opened up below us and we became part of the Nullabor experience.
Once we cleared Madura, the range of hills that we had been travelling on became our constant companion as we headed towards the border. Water is a scarce commodity on the plain. We had stocked up at Norseman and were keeping a careful eye on the gauge. Imagine the delight to find a water station in the middle of nowhere, a few k’s out of Mundrabilla. Rain fed and so, unreliable, we still managed to top-up two days more travelling time and relax a little.
We had been free camping for over a week by now. There are plenty of places to camp and light a fire. Even the road trains take a nap at night, the highway almost deserted for hours. The westerlies were still whipping us along and really helped with the fuel consumption. There were times were were averaging 20mpg. I pitied the poor RV’s heading west against the wind. They probably were grateful for every roadhouse that hove into view.
After three days and 700k’s, we climbed back onto the ridge and arrived at Eucla.
