Nullarbor - Border Village: 145km, Border Village - Eucla: 13km, Eucla - Mundrabilla: 62km
Nullarbor: Nullus: 'No', Arbor: 'Tree'
Worlds largest single piece of lime-stone. Visible from space.
Occupying some 200,000 square km's.
Big, hot, dry and bloody tough to cross by bicycle.
The sky clears, the wind turns and Tom Mackie peddles to freedom!
In fact, I really was in luck this time, because as the sky cleared, the temperature remained fairly low. This allowed me to carry a little less water as I was not working as hard to stay cool, and was therefore not drinking nearly as much as I had been. And the wind! Oh the blessed wind took pity on my pathetic struggles to push forward, and turned just enough to help push me in the right direction. With the wind my mood also took a change for the best. After days of head-winds, it becomes a little difficult not to take it personally. The scenery looked just a little prettier, my legs felt just a little stronger and I was able to remember why I was putting myself through this strenuous expedition.
This stretch of road was particularly spectacular because it runs very close to the edge of the world. That is, it runs very close to the Great Australian Bight. With cliffs of that size overlooking sparkling oceans as far as the eye can see, one could be forgiven for thinking that it is indeed the end of existence.
Countless lookout sites are accessible via short dirt tracks, although the bight can quite often be seen from the road.
I pulled into Border Village for a quick bite to eat, but hurried through as I wanted to rest at Eucla, which I had read was far nicer.
I found myself snagged in the quarantine check-point for some time, turning my trailer inside-out to prove my innocence in the fruit-smuggling trade. People laughed and took photo's as my bike looked rather ridiculous in the huge truck inspection bays.
I gave myself quite the stomach-ache in Eucla as I ate myself silly in a thoughtless feeding-frenzy, and spent the next hour or so curled up on a quiet stretch of grass beside the road. I was buggered.
From Eucla the road to Mundrabilla was fairly uneventful, although beautiful with the ocean to the left and the table-top ridge to the right.
Sadly it was dark by the time I rolled into the Mundrabilla road-house. The lights of the road-house shone out clearly in the darkness, and I could see it from kilometers up the road, like a heavenly glowing oasis for food. By this stage I was very hungry.
The road-house was old but full of charm, and had a small bar within feeding ice-cold stubbies to passing truck-drivers. By luck I met a pair of drivers who were unable to drive their 'oversize' trucks at night. They were real characters. Huge men with loud, booming voices, but warm friendly personalities. We sat, drank and laughed together for hours, and they insisted on buying my beers which they claimed could be billed to their logistics company (seems unlikely but hey I'm not their accountant!).
It was nearly closing time when somebody asked me where I was staying... Oh crap! I hadn't even thought about a camp-spot for the night.
It was decided that I would sleep up on the trailer of the truck, utilizing the 90 ton hunk of steel as shelter. It really was a strange feeling rolling my mattress out to sleep high on a truck within my steel cocoon. But none-the-less, I was out like a light.
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