Travels to and from Perth

Driving over to Perth is now a regular occurrence for me and I will describe my current timeline and activities. After I travel over next, most likely early next year, I will post a complete set of explanatory photos on my Flickr site.

Day 1

After packing, I leave home and fill up with petrol at Barry’s service station. From there it is a quick drive up the road to the Western Highway. There is little to comment on while traversing the highway (freeway until just after Ballarat and single carriageway thereafter) until I arrive at Kaniva. Here I stop for refreshment (if I say chips, Australians and English will know what I mean, but for Americans it was fries). After that, there is little to see until I resume freeway conditions just outside Tailem Bend, and I keep those until I arrive at the suburbs at the foot of the Adelaide Hills. A quick right turn into Portrush Road and then another right into Main North East Road and soon I arrive at my sister’s.
A total of seven and a half hours driving, seven hundred and ten kilometres and usually about sixty-three litres of fuel.

Day 2

I leave my sister’s about 0745 and fill (or top up) with petrol, leaving to actually set out before 0800. After getting onto Grand Junction Road, it’s only a short time until I turn right into Pt Wakefield Road. Three hours later I pull into Hungry Jacks (Burger King) for the last meal I have until I arrive in Perth. Within twenty minutes I am back on the road and start on the Eyre Highway. An hour and a half later I stop in Kimba (well, with that much to drink, you’d have to stop too). Then it is another three hours until I arrive at Ceduna, after seven and a half hours driving, seven hundred and seventy kilometres and usually about sixty-two litres of fuel. I usually have an ice cream here, as this lowers the price of the petrol by another two cents per litre.

After leaving Ceduna I am driving along what is commonly called the Nullarbor. In truth that only refers to the section about twenty kilometres to the east of Nullarbor Station. At first travel is through grain farms, then grazing properties (which include the Yalata Aboriginal Reserve). The town of Penong, about seventy kilometres west of Ceduna, is the last town until Norseman, nearly twelve hundred kilometres from Ceduna. There are services (usually motel, café, hotel and fuel) at places such as Nundroo, Nullarbor, Border Village, Mundrabilla, Madura, Cocklebiddy, Caiguna, Balladonia and Fraser Range, while Eucla has police, ambulance, nurses and a meteorological depot. The speed limit along the road is one hundred and ten kilometres per hour (both day and night, a bad thing) with ninety along short sections at Eucla and Madura and a stop at the border when travelling east to west for plant quarantine. It is possible to travel ant an average speed of over one hundred and eight kilometres per hour legally.

Depending upon road and weather conditions and traffic, I usually arrive at the border about 2115. After a quick inspection, I leave at 2030 (clocks go back forty-five minutes). Then I decide whether to fill up at Eucla or Mundrabilla – and that is determined by the time when each closes. The cost of petrol at both of these can be up to twenty-five cents a litre cheaper that at the other places and they are both approximately halfway to Norseman.

After filling up, it is usually dark. My decision as to what to do is determined by the visible population of kangaroos. If there are none, I continue driving until I take a rest. If there are a few, I lower my speed to about eighty kilometres per hour and continue driving until I take a rest. If there are many, I drive slower until they become too dense, and then I stop to sleep until nearly dawn.

Day 3
I reach Norseman between 0500 and 0900, depending on the evening before. If it is after the Shell station opens, I refuel there. Otherwise it is the BP. Either way it is a brief stop and then I leave the Eyre Highway and turn north onto the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway. Here the scenery includes salt lakes and hazards include road trains of ore entering the road. After one hundred and sixty-five kilometres and just over an hour and a half, I enter Coolgardie. This now has significance for me as an aunt was born here. There are about a thousand people here now, a far cry from its mining boom. It is now only an hour and a half until Southern Cross, where I stop again for a few minutes. Now I am on the home run and within four hours I am at my destination in Perth. This can be anywhere between midday and 1600. The driving time from Ceduna is about eighteen hours and the car consumes about one hundred and sixty litres of petrol.

While driving over, the vehicles seen are:
Cars, often overloaded with too much equipment, yet not properly prepared;
Cars and Four-wheel-drives towing caravans, spread between families and “grey nomads”;
Motorhomes, varying in size from small converted minivans through to “fifth wheelers” and converted buses and full-sized Winnebagos;
Light trucks carrying specialised loads;
Heavy trucks including semi-trailers (22 wheelers) with one trailer, B-doubles (34 wheelers) with two trailers, B-triples(46 wheelers) with three trailers, road trains (semi-trailers with “dogs”) with between one and three trailers.
Heavy and oversized loads include mining machinery and specialised factory components, as well as boats, caravans, water tanks and trucks!