From Albany, I finally joined Highway 1. This road loops all around Australia and I’d be predominantly on it for the next three weeks. It felt like I was doing something completely different, riding the highways. On the tracks, you have to be constantly focused, looking out for any bad sections and trying to spot the posts dictating the route. Now, however, I could zone out easily, not get lost following the same road all day and just stay aware of the trucks occasionally overtaking. This meant progress was good, often riding 160 km a day with a strong tailwind.
The only detour I could take was riding through the Fitzgerald River National Park, which was a welcome exit off the highway. It was an incredibly quiet road towards the coast and I managed to get a swim in on a beach to myself. There wasn’t much else to see before Esperance and I arrived on the cycle trail wrapping around Pink Lake. This lake was an attraction twenty years ago, known for its deep pink colour and flamingos, but now it’s just a grey lake.
I spent a good morning in Esperance, washing my clothes, charging up everything and visiting the final proper supermarket before I hit the Nullarbor. I left with the bike feeling very heavy but with a few days of proper food and lots of fruit and veg, knowing I wouldn’t be getting much the following week.
The 200 km to Norseman was tough, riding into a headwind. Finding somewhere to camp was incredibly easy with forest on either side of the road in lots of sections. Now water was the main concern, with only one place to fill up on this stretch. It required a fair bit of planning ahead to know how much to carry and for the first time on the bike, I was really having to conserve water.
Norseman was quite the frontier town, feeling very empty except for the car park outside the IGA shop full of Land Cruisers towing caravans. Here, I bought more supplies, loading up with nine days of food to take me the 1,200 km to Ceduna. This time the bags were really overflowing, with bread having to be strapped down to the top due to no room. Along with all this food, I loaded up with 4 L of Coke, 2 L of milk and 10 L of water, my theory being if you need to carry the fluids, they might as well have some calories in them. I was in a bit of a rush to leave with darkness quickly approaching and it was quite a surreal moment setting off onto the Nullarbor, something I had wanted to do for a few years, riding past the kangaroo, camel and emu warning signs and one for no services for 189 km. I only rode about 10 km out of town and camped out by a salt lake with a very colourful sunset.
Day 2 was 150 km and very easy riding with a good tailwind. I was only stopping for a quick bite of food as anytime I’d not be moving, I’d get swarmed by flies. I very much felt like I was just a minor amusement for the cars passing by; just something to look at besides the vast emptiness.
On Day 3, I managed to load up with more water at Balladonia Roadhouse before making the slight left turn onto the longest straight road in Australia. The roadhouse had a small museum attached with a chunk of the Skylab space station that had crash-landed onto the property. I felt I had gotten used to the road trains now and would know when to get clear of them. These 60-metre-long trucks were most of the traffic on the road and always a bit frightening when they’d overtake me, occasionally forcing me onto the dirt beside the road when there was an oncoming vehicle.
Day 4 was much the same, just riding, with the only notable stop being the Caiguna Roadhouse where fortunately they had some showers, which was nice to cool down but felt a bit pointless when you put the same dirty clothes straight back on.
Day 5, I was given a few oranges from the binman who I met at one of the lay-bys. This was a continuous job, driving out to the WA-SA border and back from Norseman, emptying all the bins along the side of the road. Most of the rest areas were still full of used toilet paper and litter, being pretty horrible places to stop and only about 3 metres from the highway.
Day 6, I descended onto the treeless Nullarbor Plain. This relatively small hill felt significant after so many days of flat riding and it felt very strange to feel the bike speeding up under me as I dropped down. I crossed into South Australia and got my first views of the Great Australian Bight. This was an inspiring place and very much felt like the bottom of the map, with the cliffs stretching as far as I could see and nothing out into the ocean. Crossing the Nullarbor Plain was easy with 50 km/h tailwinds the whole way, despite a small amount of rain.
Day 7 and the winds and rain picked up even more throughout the day and into the night. It was too windy to even attempt to put my tent up. I found a shelter at a rainwater tank with a tin roof to collect the water. But the cylindrical water tanks provided little shelter. I ended up sleeping on the ground beside a camper’s Land Cruiser under the shelter and got little rest.
Day 8 and I passed through the Dingo Fence, the longest fence in the world, and the desert transformed into bushland. Now the wind was coming from the side, which made every passing road train very tense as the wind would stop once they came alongside and then I would get sucked towards them.
Day 9 and I finally made it to Ceduna, heading straight to the supermarket and buying way too much food. Refuelling outside the supermarket, I met Andy, a Brummie that had lived out in Australia for the last thirty years but hadn’t lost the Birmingham accent. He was heading west and hanging around Ceduna, trying to wait out the wind. He was very envious of my 180 km days with the tailwind; I can’t imagine the challenge of heading the other way, fighting the wind for nine days.
It was nice to have someone to debrief the Nullarbor to. The cliffs were one of the craziest views I’ve ever seen, but the rest of it was pretty bleak. The views from the side of the road were not beautiful but dirty, with decaying kangaroos rotting alongside and lots of litter and used toilet paper almost everywhere I looked. I loved the camping spot each night, dragging my bike 100 metres from the road and having an amazing sunset and quiet camp in untouched bushland.
Will Scam 