Two days of driving

After skirting north of Adelaide, SR and I undertook one of Australia's many lonely highways: the Eyre, which stretches most of the way from Adelaide to Perth. We were bound for Esperance, on the south coast of Western Australia, which meant we had two solid days of driving ahead of us. Since we decided we should switch drivers every couple hours or so to minimize fatigue, I thought it would be fun/interesting to take a picture of the road and surrounding landscape every time we made the switch. I think I might have missed a couple swaps, but if you want to feel like you're driving across the western half of Australia way faster than we did, scroll though this block of pics. (Or if not, skip down to the next text you see for the pictures of things that interested me enough to snap additional shots.) What I like best is that you can see the rain following, and then finally giving up on us, and then the stark contrast when we enter the "nullarbor" (i.e. "no trees") plain, and then see it end just as abruptly before we finally, on the last shot, get to the type of landscape that I had been imagining would surround us the entire trip.

Okay, now here are the pictures I would have taken regardless. I'd assumed these signs refer to the attempt to stop animal pests in fruit and veg in cars/trucks from one part of the country from reaching another part of the country and infecting valuable (particularly wine) crops. But it turns out they are warning people not to go even one or two kilometers above the speed limit--which is likely to get you a fine here (very unlike the "nine you're fine, ten you're mine" unofficial rule on American highways). In any case, I find them kind of hilarious.

We also had to cautiously cross some pretty intense road flooding as the rain in South Australia went on and on.

When we reached the town of Kimba, we'd officially driven halfway across the country (though not consecutively; I'm counting our initial drive from Sydney to Melbourne).

And Kimba was also home to this giant galah bird (giant attraction #2 for SR):

Shortly thereafter we rounded a corner to find real life giant birds; a group of emus gathered nervously at the edge of the road, trying to decide if it was safe to cross. Strangely, they were unfazed by our large vehicle and stayed 10 feet away as we drove past, but the moment we exited the vehicle to take their picture, they flipped out and ran away.

Not sure I've ever seen Tina (my name for my GPS unit, for anyone who has not read any of my past posts about her) report that the next time I should turn is in 745 MILES.

And I'm not sure I've ever seen a road sign like this. Added to the wombat and kangaroo fun is an alert for CAMELS. Yes, the world's most successful wild camel population is in Australia (where they are not native). We didn't see any on this drive but are very hopeful we will down the line.

Maybe my favorite sight of the drive was the Bunda Cliffs. They span 200 kilometers of the southern Australian coastline, and though we arrived after dark and didn't know how close we were and how spectacular they are, we spent one night with the campervan parked a five-minute walk from this viewpoint, visited at sunrise.

On to the border between the states of South Australia and Western Australia, where yet another giant awaited: Rooey, the Border Kangaroo.

And finally, at the end of our two full, long days of driving, driving, and more driving, we grabbed a shower at a service station in Norseman and then turned off the Eyre Highway south toward Esperance, stopping as the sun set and the moon rose above the campervan to rest for the night in a perfect, Australian landscape.