Thursday, March 20, 2008

20th of March 2008

I’m just to good at this, in Adelaide after 2 days! Did the Perth-Adelaide stretch crossing the Nullabor starting Tuesday morning and arriving Wednesday night, thats 2700 kilometers! Like going from London to Moscow in two days.
Started out good with cloudy but not to cold weather catching a free ride with a bus from Midland up into the hills of Perth, after that I rode with a Mazda RX6 which really dont happen very often. 3 more rides and Im standing on the red dirt by the road just outside Coolgardie about 600km east of Perth and the sun was starting to set on me. After waiting there about 1.5 hours with less then 10 vehicles passing Troy comes along.
Troy is a cool but quite a nutty kiwi truck driver. He drives a 26 metre long truck between Perth and Melbourne. When Troy is bored he drives on the gravel on the side of the road just to create huge dust clouds for the cars behind him. During night he likes to turn off the lights and just have the warning sirens on and then he tries his best to hit the Roos that graze along the road. Luckily? they were all smart enough to jump out of the way when we came along . He also likes to honk the horn alot when driving in the middle of nowhere during the nights (No he wasnt on drugs, just been on the road for quite a while I guess :P).
So the first night I spent a couple of kilometers west of the South Australian border by an extremly remote beach getting about 2 hours sleep before we kept on going.
Troy also told me some interesting stories about truck drivers and I got to experience the radio wars they have first hand. So next time Ill think a little extra before I get into one!
Ive seen my first Dingo just on the west side of the treeless plains of the nullabor, spot it in the photo :)
Sadly it was during the middle of the night that we drove the 146.6 kilometers long straight, Australias longest and probably one of the world longest straights. But took a complimentary photo at another place for you too look at so you understand how interesting the roads are between Perth and Adelaide.
So I turned up in Adelaide around 4 AM this morning, checked into the only hostel that I could get ahold of during the evening (didnt have phone coverage once between Perth and Port Augusta which is 3 hours north of Adelaide). Been walking around Adelaide some today, not much to see here so tomorrow im gonna try to get a ride to Kangaroo Island southwest of Adelaide.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very nice simon. Great to read of your travels. Keep it coming and stay safe! Phil