18 - 21 May

We crossed the WA border first thing on  Thursday morning, went through the quarantine station where they open up your trailer and look through your car quite seriously, and then kept driving driving driving. We gained 45 minutes as we crossed the border, and then another 45 minutes I think at Caiguna – I never knew there was this extra 45 minute time zone in a couple of towns of eastern WA – so we decided to make the most of it, slog on and keep going to Balladonia. None of the roadhouses are anything particularly enticing to stop at anyway – even though the scenery is pretty amazing, in the vast expanses of flat nothingness, just little scrubby bushes (and probably a fair amount of wildlife underneath that I guess). I’m not sure what I was expecting about crossing the Nullarbor, but the roadhouses are pretty unattractive old run down motels so they don’t really seem like a nice place to stop after that driving. The pull-ins beside the road are also quite heavily littered so aren’t particularly nice either. I was a little bit nervous about water too, even though we’ve got 2 jerry cans as well as our tank, as every roadhouse has a sign up saying ‘don’t ask for water’ (fair enough too, some of them have to get it trucked in) so we weren’t quite sure how long it had to last us, or how long before we got to somewhere that had enough for us to fill up.

We were also all getting pretty sick of just staying one night before packing up and more driving and wanted to stop somewhere for longer. We ended up staying at the Balladonia roadhouse in their ‘caravan park’ (ie large open space next to the roadhouse) which was fine. We asked the guy working behind the desk if there were things worth seeing around about and his response was “nah, I’ve been for a bushwalk this way and that way [indicating with thumb] and it’s pretty much just bush”. It seems like the people who staff it are mainly backpackers who do it for 3 months to make good money to finance the rest of their trip. He’d only been there 2 weeks so could hardly be expected to have seen much I guess.

Yesterday we had to decide whether to take the shortcut Balladonia road down to Cape Arid which is 4WD only, or go the long way via Norseman and Esperance. Everyone says that Cape Arid is really beautiful and remote, but the main query was the state of the road since they’d had quite a bit of rain the few days before. We rang a few people and no-one really knew, but one nice National Parks guy said that we would be able to work it out pretty quickly once we got onto it. So having asked Jane to keep an eye on our Spot tracking we headed off and it turned out not to be a problem – it wasn’t so much the ruts with water/mud in them that were a problem (we could drive around them) but the corrugations which made it a real bone rattler of a ride the whole way. We came in via Condingup to try and buy a few food essentials and continued on to one of the more remote campsites down here, at Seal Bay. Everyone’s right in that Cape Arid is stunning, with beautiful remote white sandy beaches, the only thing is that we’re here at the wrong time of the year. It started raining not long after we went to bed, that wouldn’t be so much of a problem but the wind was blowing an absolute gale so Nick and I were up a couple of times during the night adding poles and guy ropes, tightening things and trying to move to the car broadside to the tent to act as a windbreak, as the tent has a real lean and some rain gets in in the corners next to the kids’ beds. So it wasn’t a very restful night – although luckily the kids slept soundly through the whole thing. The other thing we were aware of all night was the noise of some frogs, well we think they were frogs, who kept it up from the moment it got dark all through the night. They were persistent little buggers, through wind and rain (maybe they like it that way) and never gave up their chorus – mostly all in time with the occasional one a bit out. Their sound was like something between a broody hen and a formula one car in the distance. All night. I had mixed feelings of admiration for their persistence through that weather and wishing they would give it a break!

We’ve had a short walk amongst the sand dunes and along the edge of the beach this morning in between showers and the seas are huge and impressively intimidating. This afternoon I think it will be some boardgames – we’ve put up two of the annex walls for the first time this trip to try and give us a bit of wind protection, and have our favourite Broome Chicken dish marinating to warm us up tonight. Might have to come up with a desert as well in this weather… Happy birthday Colette!