Awoke early and eventually got up at about 6am! Half the vans had already left and as usual we ended up being last out. But still managed to be on the road by 7.30 (although as it turned out this was really 8.15 in the Eastern WA timezone that we hadn’t adjusted to.
Ended up driving 674km to Norseman – our longest day yet – arriving about 4.30pm. The Nullabor isn’t as flat or featureless as we expected but certainly lots of straight stretches of road, particularly the 146km between Caiguna and Balledonia (Australia’s longest straight road). Despite numerous warnings of stray camels, kangaroos, emus and wombats – not a skerrick of wildlife spotted all the way across apart from the occasional stumpy-tailed lizard. Also lost the previous day’s tailwind and had to push into a cross-on all the way – probably played havoc with our fuel consumption.
No evidence of human habitation here abart from roadhouses dotted at infrequent intervals across the plain.
Absolutely no mobile coverage between Eucla and Norseman. On further inspection of the Telstra coverage maps, the little chain of hotspots across appears to follow the rail link instead of the road.