Cobar tomorrow, and then perhaps Dubbo, and then I think we’ll be there. Meanwhile, there are a lot of posts and photos to upload and backdate. However if I stay much longer enjoying the generously provided wireless access of the Brokem Hill Junction Hotel, along with its fine cold beer, I will perhaps be unable to type very well anyway.

More later..

First internet access since we left Hamelin Bay, almost the breadth of a sea girted land ago. Lots of entries to catch up on, but before then I just wanted to make a quick comment about the apparent digital divide in Outback Australia.

More accurately I should say the “Accessible Outback” – this being how Broken Hill, NSW describes itself. It is here, in The Junction Hotel in Broken Hill that I type this entry. The beer is cold, the wireless is fast and free, the barman has a sense of humor, the bar stools are comfortable and the tables clean. What more could you ask for? So, if you are in Broken Hill, and you are looking for wireless access, may I recommend heartily the Junction Hotel at 560 Argent Street.

Apart from The Junction however, a search in Broken Hill for accessible broadband is not without challenges. It goes something like this:

Me – “Hi. I saw your sign that says you have internet access.”
“Yeah mate.”
Me – “Great. Do you have wireless?
“Wireless? Yeah mate, we’ve got both AM and FM wireless out here.”
Me – “Eerr…I mean wireless internet access. Do you have a wireless network?”
“Oh. No. Just those couple of machines over there you can use for $5 a minute. The Internet is down anyway.”
Me – (Thinking – Oh no….must be those evil Russian hackers causing chaos. There must be mayhem out there as a generation goes Twitterless and students everywhere have to try to use an encyclopedia to finish their homework. And here I am in Broken Hill missing it all.) “Do you know anywhere in town that has access?”
“Ummmm…..you could try insert-name-here-of-business“

Then you could walk to said business, and have the whole conversation again. Five attempts later: Bingo. The Junction.

Gotta love it.

And what to make of Broken Hill’s moniker as “The Accessible Outback”. I figure it is sort of like “The outback that isn’t quite the outback, but at least it is a bit easier to get to”. Marketing genius. Pure, unadulterated marketing genius.

Approaching Broken Hill from South Australia a dust storm brews above the desert. This one did nothing but boil itself out above the plains. Whilst Sydney still remembers with awe the red dawn of The Great Dust Storm of 2009, this daily lifting of the topsoil into the air serves as a daily reminder of the thinness of the soil and the sparseness of any roots to hold it. It is a thin crust upon which we travel and tread.

At the border between WA and SA is a quarantine station for travellers heading West. No fruit and veg’ must be carried into Western Australia, due to the risk of importing fruit fly into the West of the country. For travellers heading East there is a fruit fly exclusion zone starting at Ceduna. While it is tempting to smuggle that lovely banana or apple across, it is very important for the agricultural economy to follow the rules. Eat it, dispose of it, and declare it.

Just West of the SA/WA border we stopped for a photo opportunity overlooking the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. Thoughtfully provided for travellers were a number of rubbish bins, many of which had been scrawled on by those making the crossing in an “I was here – 2007” kind of way.

However amongst the marker pen scrawl one thing caught my eye and my curiosity tweaked I crossed the 15 metres or so to the bin for a closer look – a small note had been taped to the side of the bin.

Now that is entrepreneurship!

Unfortunately, we’d already eaten the last banana, and cooked our last spuds on the BBQ at Eucla.

Eucla has much to recommend it. For a start, it is not Caiguna. The Eucla roadhouse is spacious, clean, nicely appointed and sits up on the high ridge overlooking the distant dunes and the Southern Ocean.

Though the meals cost much the same (not much change from $10 for a vegie-burger) you at least get a few slices of beetroot along with the tomato and lettuce as a salad with the burger. There is also nice sit-down restuarant for the more well heeled traveller ($28 for “Seasonal char-grilled vegetables in a tomato sauce, with penne pasta).

Behind the bar/restaurant/take-away is a beautiful garden decked out with nice outdoor table and chair settings. Even better from the point of view of dinner, there is a gas BBQ and a few wood burning BBQs available for free use. The wood fires are not able to be used this time of year due to the blanket ban on the lighting of fires outdoors. The gas BBQ on the other hand needed just a clean up and we were ready to roll. Ask at the bar for a damp cloth to wipe down the tables, some paper napkins to wipe down the BBQ plate, crank on the BBQ to get the plate nice and hot, and then sacrifice half a bottle of your beer and wipe it all off with the paper napkins and “Bob’s ya uncle – looks just like a bought one.” Behind the BBQ pit is a pool, though we failed to notice that until it was too late for a swim anyway.

As Eucla was our last stop before hitting the quarantine zone, the BBQ was a handy resource indeed. We fried up the last of our potatoes, onion and garlic, which made a nice side dish to our burgers. Canny travellers i.e. those that have visited Eucla before, will take full advantage of these BBQs as you’d be able to cook yourself a great meal without spending a small fortune in the restaurant. Note that no BBQ tools are provided, but the bar will happily loan you cutlery and plates.

From the point of view of the kids, the best aspect of the garden surrounding the BBQ pit was the frog pools. The gardens include half a dozen landscaped ponds, heavy with lush water plants and home to a trillion, million, zillion frogs. Brown frogs, green frogs, spotty frogs, big frogs, little frogs and ones that might be a Prince in disguise. They hopped across our feet and sang us a lovely froggy chorus as we ate.

An entirely unexpected sight as we climbed back over the sand dunes from the beach, below the Eucla roadhouse was half a dozen lovely old Triumph cars. Stags, TR6s, TR8s and GTs. As it turned out, the Triumph car club was having a huge rally in Perth, and these drivers were on their way across the same route we had just travelled, on their way West. I hope they made it safely, Triumph Stags in particular are infamous for overheating.

This is going to take a lot of washing of the car.

I guess that my vegan karma is somewhat diminished by the trillion bug deaths I have caused on this crossing (and the two blue-tongue lizards I could not avoid who were warming themselves on the road, and the Notched Pigeon that flew into the roof box – I tried to avoid them I really did).

It became apparent that there is a Code of Conduct to be followed when driving through the empty expanse of the desert.

Namely, the Nullabor Desert Driver’s Wave.

The N.D.D.W. requires a simple lift of the right hand off the steering wheel in greeting to a driver coming in the opposite direction. If feeling particularly laconic, it is acceptable to just lift two fingers of the right hand.

There are subtle rules to the Official N.D.D.W. Protocol.
1. Always perform the N.D.D.W. to a driver towing a caravan, a trailer that looks like it is full of camping gear, or in a car with a roof box on it. They are likely to be fellow travellers.
2. It is not necessary to perform the N.D.D.W. to the driver of an oncoming 4WD, if the vehicle has no van, trailer behind, nor roof box, and the driver is wearing a wide brimmed hat whilst driving. Said driver is likely a local. They may or may no return your greeting. They are in fact probably going pig or roo shooting, or looking for left over bits of Skylab.
3. N.D.D.W’s should also be given to oncoming motorcyclists. Your greeting will usually be returned by way of a subtle nod of the helmet, though some may wave back with their left hands. See Protocol Rule 4 for exceptions.
4. Don’t bother waving to a motorcyclist on a Harley. They are too bad-assed to acknowledge the N.D.D.W. and are probably members of an Outlaw Biker Gang.
5. It is not necessary to greet the drivers of Road Trains with the N.D.D.W. You’ll be too busy getting the hell out of the blast of air that slams into you at 240 kms/h in their wake to take any part of either hand off the steering wheel.
6. If you see a cyclist do not perform the N.D.D.W. in greeting. Instead, pull over and prostrate yourself in total respect and bow your nose into the desert dust until they pass into the shimmering distance.

Just before departing the UK I did the Palace to Palace with my good friends Tim and Dave. 46 miles (in just a few minutes over 3 hours) and a good time had by all of us. It was a particularly special bit of male bonding from my point of view to do this with a couple of mates just before leaving Blighty for ever.

The Palace to Palace ride sort of pales into insignificance however compared to the idea of cycling across the Australian Outback. I’d already had a brief chat with a young Chinese couple at Balladonia roadhouse (did I mention how lovely Balladonia roadhouse is? They have a museum. And a pool) who were on their way from Adelaide to Perth, a distance of approximately 2700 kms, or 1682 miles. Which is more than 36 times the petty distance of the P-to-P ride.

Those two intrepid adventurers where planning to take 23 days to complete the journey. Awesome, that is a lot of riding every day for three weeks solid. Parts of my body that shall remain unmentioned here are aching at the thought. That said, part of me is thinking about this….you only live once.

Tim, Dave, if you’re reading this start training and ask the wives if you can go for a little ride. You’ll be back in a month or so.

Here’s another fella doing the crossing the hard way.

What you can’t see on this photo is that there was a Danish flag stuck on the back of the trailer. What a great motivator – you’ve bought an air ticket into Perth and then one back home to Denmark from Adelaide. It’s a fixed ticket and therefore set for a particular day. You just gotta keep going, churning those pedals every day.

And I just set up a play list on the iPod to keep me pedaling for 3 and a bit hours.

If you have a medical emergency in the Australian Outback, say like getting bitten by a Desert Death Adder, your only chance of survival is rescue by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. As the name suggests, this is an emergency medical service that operates a small fleet of prop’ aircraft. Most roadhouses have a little charity jar to collect funds to keep the RFDS going. They are the Australian Outback’s equivalent of the dedication and total respect yaghties have toward the coast guard. They are heroes. Hard working. Life saving. Under supported.

More information can be found about them here.

If they need to fly in to save your sorry snake bitten life they land where they can. There are no handy airports out in the outback. So its clear the highway and landing gear down.

When you try to draw too much water out of the arid landscape of the desert in order to water crops and farm animals, you stuff up the levels of the underlying artesian water table.

The result is a salt lake like this one, and a lot of salted up dead land surrounding it.

And a broken dream.

The unforgiving desert is full of broken dreams like this one.

On the way into Albany you’ll find this lovely Tourist Information bay. As you can see, it is just jam packed with useful information for the visitor.

By the way, the two pieces of paper you can see in there say something like “This Information Bay is constructed courtesy of the Albany Lions Association”.

Back in England we always kept a jar of salt handy to kill the slugs and snails that attacked our vegie patch. In Hamelin Bay they obviously breed snails a little more hardy and salt resistant though. These little fellas sat happily salt encrusted, munching on the juicy stems of a dune plant, just beyond the sand.

One thing I won’t miss about England is limescale, from the “hard water”. You expected me to say “the weather” didn’t you? Well, the weather just is. Whinging about the English weather is just cliched. Limescale on the other hand deserves to be highlighted as a phenomenally nasty and horrid aspect of Blighty.

There’s just something really off putting about opening the lid on the kettle to fill it up for the morning cuppa, and seeing all those scaly bits grunging off the (inappropriately named) stainless steel. You can’t help but think; “If it does that to the kettle, what is it doing to my insides?”

Fortunately, limescale is easily and cheaply removed from everything (but your insides) with a soaking in white vinegar. Forget fancy lime scale removing chemicals, just get a bottle of the cheapest white vinegar you can find and soak.

This is a hand Woman’s Weekly Home Goddess Tip of the Week that clearly is unknown to people in Augusta. Just passed Augusta is Cape Leeuwin, the most South Westerly point of land in Australia, and the point where the Southern and the Indian Oceans meet. A few hundred meters back from Cape Leeuwin lighthouse are the remains of the old water wheel, used in the 1800’s to power various aspects of white settler industry. The water from the wheel used to come from a bore, tapped into the artesian water table. The water table is much depleted now and to keep things happily touristy and the timbers of the water trough suitably moist, water flow is now augmented by an electric motor.

The wheel meanwhile no longer turns, being thoroughly encrusted by scale. Someone needs to soak it in a humongous bath of vinegar – that’d do the trick faster than you could say “Lime scale begone.”

I think these basically speak for themselves…

I don’t know what insect has caused this bulbous growth on the plant stem, but I’m hoping it doesn’t do the same thing to human legs.