Day 3

Adelaide to Streaky Bay

My brother has a tiled roof house but I still had a suspicion that there was rain about & when I got out of the house it was confirmed, but it was only light & my experience told me that it would probably be gone by Port Aguta or even the Mid North area of SA. So I did not put on my wet weather gear just wore my usual leather jkt, leather chaps, gloves, boots etc & headed up the old main south road as I had done many times before when I lived there. But it was never like this, in charge of a real bike heading to the notorious Nullarbor in the rain. The rain put my experience to the test & found it wanting, I was wrong, sort of. The rain kept on & I put on my wet weather gear at a bit beyond Snowtown, wanted to get past Snowtown as an innocent lad can get into deep trouble up there I’m told.

I had stopped at Pt Wakefield for a bite to eat & a cuppa but again was fairly disappointed but really one should not expect too much from Australian roadside gastronomy, except maybe food poisoning. At Pt Agutta I went into town & got myself a good coffee & a pizza; life was rosier the rain had stopped to boot. When I went to fuel up I met my first couple of Ulysses or a as a biker I know a couple of Uselessness. They were both on some sort of Yamaha’s & had been up to Cober Pedy on there way back to central Vic, they were very well equipped pourers with every known gadget known to man & woman. I was about to see lots of them on there way back east after there pow wow in WA. After PA the land changed dramatically from wheat & sheep country with some hills in the general background to salt bush & craggy outcrops to just salt bush. As I traveled across the top of the Eyre Peninsula to my eventual night stop this developed into big paddock wheat country & finally of course the Australian Bight.

Due to my late start I changed my course a little bit & cut out the venture down to Port Lincoln. I got into Streaky Bay just on sunset, nice little town, good fish & chips but fark’n dear.

 

Day 4

Streaky Bay to Madura, WA

Well the rain was over & it was a beautiful day heading out of Streaky Bay & all towns west. I dropped in to see a friend of my wife’s in Ceduna, didn’t realize what a big town it was. To my way of thinking this was the start of the Nullarbor Plain but on the plain itself one really realizes that the name is apt. All the low tea tree type vegetation is not Null – Arbor. There is one disused service station past Ceduna which could trap you if you are not doing regular fuel stops. I never really went past about 200 – 250 klms before filling.

I met this sight at the border service station & lots of other “big” things on trucks being shipped one way or another across the big brown plain.

The actual Nullarbor itself is uncannily weird in its total lack of anything resembling a tree, just scrub up to barely knee height.

I started hooking up with some hot rods that were on their way to an Easter Rod show in WA. We’d meet at a service station & then maybe pass each other & meet up again further up the road.  I made a late push for Madura to get a few k’s in but then realized that the rods were in front of me & they may book out the motel, hope not.

At one stage it was just about dark & I had a single headlight approaching me on a slight bend & as it flashed past my suspicion confirmed that it was a bike. At this point of the evening it had started to get quite cold & I was about 100 km to Mudrabilla for him as I was approaching Madura Pass. This rider was in a check shirt flapping in the wind, open face helmet & no sunglasses crouched over the bars on a Harley (I think) & he was absolutely screaming around this bend. Hope he made it to Mudrabilla with out hitting any of the local wildlife on that cold night.

After all my concern I did get a room at the Madura Pass Motel (Resort maybe what they called it) but it was a dump, by far the worst one of the whole trip. Good night though at Madura as the rodders had their own musician with them. They are good bunch, & I suspect their entertainments man is a piss head along for the ride & why not go for a blast across to Perth In a supercharged v8 drinking beer.

The view to the East on top of Madura Pass, this pic was actually taken on the way home on the wet day & the bike is lookin a bit dirty. It rained for another 4 hours this day

Day 5

Madura to Southern Star

This is a great stretch of road as the topography changes quite a bit. not long after Madura Pass you come to the 90 mile straight & from there on the road is still quite straight but starts undulating & depending on which way u look at it is good to come over a rise in the road with bush on either side & have the road disappear into a set of parallel lines on the horizon. I tended to ease of a little bit on the juice as I approached the crest of these rises as there could be anything on the road out here, then as the road is clear take it back up to 120ish. After Norseman the road has some nice curves but also mine entry/exits, which I gave a little bit of respect to, not in my party repertoire to be screaming around a bend in the road at those sort of speeds to confront a 3 trailer road train using the whole road to get out of the mine road. I figure my skills are not up to holding the curve while moving onto the dirt. Skipped Kalgoorlie & went through Coolgardie but ended up at sunset riding into it so I had to actually stop as I could not see a thing. Set off again to Southern Cross at dusk then as dark came on I flicked on my high beam but the high beam was about 10 meters up the road. Could not move the headlamp & did not feel like going into the bottom of the pannier to get out the tools so just went into SC at a slower pace.

Day 6

Southern Cross to Perth City

Cruised out of SC reasonably early as I had Perth in my sights. Just on the edge of town there were a few of cyclists having b/fast at a picnic bench. There appeared to be two tandem bikes there which was interesting to me (I am a cyclist also) but I did not stop as I was getting destination syndrome. Had a coffee & a bun at Merredin for brekky. Can’t remember where lunch was but I have eaten some crap on this trip & not just on the Nullarbor where it is crap & dear. The last few hundred k’s to Perth are good & coming through the hills as they call them in WA was fun to do some bend work but lots of speed limits as they do near the city, gotta follow them as well I suppose. Hit Perth & had to pullover to take off a few layers to get cool down on the sand flats in the burbs of central sand gropersville.

 

Will write up the trip back with more pics