Travels with Verne and Roy

Ten days from Perth to Brisbane; stars of Southern Cross; Five Norseman of the Apocalypse; the Great Australian Bite; suddenly losing it at Cocklebiddy; everyone has to be somewhere

It was time to go somewhere. Almost anywhere. We were still waiting for our bridging visa travel facility to be approved, five or six weeks after it had been lodged. Until then, we couldn’t leave Australia, simply because we wouldn’t be allowed back in.

So when the opportunity arose for Roy and me to drive son Carl’s Prado and camper-trailer across the continent – Carl was determined to have it there, one way or another! – we took it. (He, Carl, had just been promoted on a two-year contract to a role in Brisbane QLD, and was in the process of moving there with Carrie and the grand-girls, Mia and Holly.)

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How long does it take to drive across Australia?

Ten days seemed a reasonable time to cover the 4,400-odd kilometres from Perth on the west coast to Brisbane on the east coast. We would share the driving as we’d done before, on a two-week road trip from Brisbane all the way north to Cairns in June 2021; and from Perth to Monkey Mia and back in June this year, 2022.

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Day 1: Perth to Southern Cross (369km)

Heading along the Great Eastern Highway from Perth through Wheatbelt country to the small town of Southern Cross, it seemed only polite to stop for fuel and coffee at the roadhouse at Meckerling, as the original town was swallowed by an earthquake in 1968.  But no – the electricity was down, due to storms, so we pressed on to Merriden instead.

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Review: The Palace Hotel, Southern Cross (6 Orion Street, $160)

The proprietor of the heritage-listed Palace Hotel in Southern Cross, built in 1911, is an Irishwoman who takes no prisoners: probably an essential attribute when it comes to keeping her wayward clientele in line.

(She’d warned Roy in advance that she ran a small team, and that we could check in either before 2pm or after 4pm. A booking website also warns as follows: “Zero tolerance venue. When negative responses are given [on TripAdvisor, for example] it is usually because we do not tolerate anti social behaviour. Rare to find in Australian country hotels.”)

We liked our room, Number 4 of four on the ground floor of the original heritage building – all high ceilings, monochromatic palette, a comfortable queen bed and an enormous bathroom with a spa bath. (Whose jets didn’t work, I mentioned; but they weren’t supposed to, responded the boss triumphantly: “We don’t sell the room as having a spa bath.” )

As you’d expect from a hotel that has 47 dongas*, the bar and restaurant (open seven days a week) does a roaring trade with local and passing workers.

Signs strictly instruct: “No worker’s boots beyond this point”. To be certain of dinner, you have to get your order in by 6.30pm; and it can take up to an hour to arrive, as was the case with ours. Never mind: look at these prices! Four dollars for a glass of wine, or $7 for a pint of whatever the beer of the month is.

* In South Africa, a donga is a narrow ravine caused by soil erosion. Here in Australia, it has been defined as portable one-room accommodation.

Dinner at the Palace

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My prawn-topped grilled snapper with chips and salad was fine – though the fish was a bit overcooked, as often happens; and Roy was downright gloomy that his otherwise fresh and beautiful-looking veggies with his snapper were hard – as often happens at a tavern. (Landlady: “We always cook them al dente – I boil my veggies for one minute, and will continue to do that while I still have teeth.” Right, then. All the better to bite you with!)

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Star of the Southern Cross

Founded by gold prospectors in 1888, the town is named after the Southern Cross constellation. Here’s another local star: Peter Carlson, who did his best to find me a USB adapter for my Mac.

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Day 2: Southern Cross to Norseman (352km)

Though I’d never driven the Prado, let alone towed a camper-trailer, it was time to bite the bullet.  If anyone else could do it, why shouldn’t I? So I pulled off with my heart in my mouth, reminding myself to breathe and to hold course in the face of intimidatingly thunderous road trains.

 

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Coffee at Coolgardie

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Today something of a ghost town, Coolgardie was a thriving gold rush centre in the late 19th century and is now doing its best to be a tourist destination. Take, for example, the Ben Prior Park and Outdoor Historic Museum below – great for families with kids.

With a cold wind blowing, Roy was even less inclined than usual to trawl the long main street with me. As usual, I reported back that various historical signs talk about the numerous hotels that once lined its broad streets, and that its population of gold prospectors supported eight newspapers!

The lady at the IGA, opposite the picturesque old Returned Servicemen’s League building, pointed me back down the street to a café, located next to the art gallery and operating out of a small caravan with a sheltered garden. “If you get to the bar, you’ve gone too far.”

Roy had already sniffed it out, and fuelled up with not one but two double-shot flat whites. (As we move east through WA, he is learning not to ask for his standard long mac, topped up: that is a peculiarly Western Australian animal.) Those advertised scones were good, by the way!

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Norseman WA

Another gold mining town, Norseman’s Goldmine was the second-richest goldfield in WA, next to the Golden Mile of Kalgoorlie, and is Australia’s longest continuously running gold-mining operation.

Are these the Eight Norsemen of the Apocalyse? No, they’re the Tin Camel Roundabout! – a nod to the camel trains that were a common sight in these parts during the late 1800s.

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Review: Great Western Travel Village, Norseman (1 Prinsep Street, $179)

Friendly Jules at reception gave me me the key for number 15, but Roy and I had to hang around waiting for it to be cleaned – around 45 minutes after the 2pm check-in time.

There were no self-catering facilities in our rather sparsely furnished room, apart from a fridge and a kettle. No shower enclosure, but just a plastic curtain, to Roy’s disgust. Just one bedside table and lamp next to the otherwise comfortable queen bed; and the TV was a small computer monitor.

Fortunately, dinner at the motel restaurant turned out fine. Steaks with either veggies or salad and chips ($36) were cooked to a turn. Sweet service, too from an Italian girl, who discovered that yes, they did have Colman’s Hot English Mustard, and brought Roy a bowlful big enough to season hundreds of roast beef sandwiches for at least a platoon of British Grenadiers.

When I asked for olive oil for my salad, the message from the relief chef was that this wasn’t an Italian restaurant, but here, try this coriander/lime/sugar concoction. Our waitress confessed that she too was missing olive oil, and seemed both unaware and disinclined to believe that it was available at all in WA… let alone that the state produces its own first-class olive oils from hundreds of olive groves, right alongside the famous vineyards in Margaret River, the Swan Valley and more.

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Alternatives

As a dining alternative, Jules had suggested the Norseman Hotel. But that was back in town – easily walkable in better weather, but the wind was cold and unpleasant.  And once he’d parked the Prado with trailer attached, Roy made it cleat that he wasn’t driving anywhere.

And here’s the other alternative: the Art Deco-style, Railway Tavern, possibly still undergoing restoration/refurbishment. Like the heritage-style Norseman Hotel, it’s centrally located on the main village street. Nearby are the usual denizens of a rural settlement: hardware store, IGA, post office, and Thai restaurant. (Naturally.)

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Day 3: The Nullarbor, Norseman to Cocklebiddy (437km)

Norseman is where you turn on to the Eyre Highway and begin the 1,200km-odd drive across the Nullarbor Plain – described as a stretch of semi-arid desert that stretches from the goldfields of WA to the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. (Interestingly, the name comes from the Latin nulla arbor, meaning no trees.)

It’s also home to the world’s biggest expanse of limestone rock: over 1,200km from west to east, and 200,000 square kilometres.

That doesn’t mean there’s no life here. I don’t know what I was expecting, but you get the feeling that this so-called desert, covered in blue-bush and malga scrub, is home to rich ecosystems teeming with diverse plants and animals. And after the recent rains, it was alive with wildflowers.

Roadhouse Blues

As usual, I did the first two-hour stint of driving – from Norseman to Balladonia Roadhouse. (I prefer it that way.) From here onward for the next few days, until we arrived in Ceduna, roadhouses offering meals, fuel, accommodation and camping are all there is. There are no towns, no villages, nothing. Just road trains, like these:

Apart from roadhouses, the long, straight road is punctuated with rest stops – some providing just off-road parking for anything up to two hours; and others designated as 24-hour stopping points.

There’s no reason not to stop at each roadhouse, so we did. The one at Balladonia offers all the usual “servo” (service station) meals, which would no doubt kill you over time, but also “bean coffee” that brought a smile to Roy’s dial. (He even ordered a second one to go. This looks like becoming a habit.)

From Balladonia, there is access via 4WD to the start of the famous cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. Though we were most certainly in a 4WD, any suggestion on my part that we should veer off into the dusty unknown, merely to see a view of the sea, would likely have earned a Great Australian Bite from my husband. So I refrained.

90 Mile Straight

Similarly at Caiguna Roadhouse, soon after which you pass the sign marking the start (or end) of the 90-mile straight, or Australia’s Longest Straight Road – 146.6km. To be honest, it didn’t feel particularly straighter than some other journeys we’ve done in this sprawling giant of a country.

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Review: Cocklebiddy Hotel/Motel ($150)

I’d been at great pains to inform Roy that Cocklebiddy Wedgetail Motel/Hotel and service station was all there was here, though the area is known for its interesting caves. Most notable of these is Cocklebiddy cave, a single 6km-long passage of which 90% is underwater. Sounds like fun.

So, the combined servo/hotel/motel you see in the photo below literally is Cocklebiddy, and – not being a spelunker (should that be splonker?) – he’d find nothing else of interest. Neither would he find any sort of connectivity. As it turned out, he hadn’t been listening to me, so all this came as a nasty shock. Thank goodness for his Kindle!

Personally unsurprised that the cheerful receptionist had no record of Roy’s having made a phone booking – I was in the room when he made it, and, what’s more, I recognised her chirpy voice – it was a small relief when she handed over the key to number 22 of the 30 motel rooms. Located in the out-facing row of the motel accommodation block, our room looked out over a bleak expanse of gravel and dust, with several parked road trains serving as merciful wind-breaks from the strong and chilly westerly gusts.

Suddenly losing it

Roy was bearing up quite well under the strain, I thought. Considering we’d just forked over $150 for a threadbare motel room with broken carpets, an iced-up fridge, and a bed that skittered about on its wheels under decades-old bedding, his demeanour was remarkably composed.

Hey, I wondered: is my husband mellowing in his old age?

But then he lost it, quite suddenly… all because of a teaspoon that he required to squeeze out a teabag. The absence of a teaspoon, to be exact. “What a shithole!” he finally exploded. Good thing there was whiskey in the bar.

 

In retrospect, we really could have driven on to Eucla today, and perhaps we should have. (Or, even more easily, to Madura, just 100km west of Cocklebiddy.) On such long, straight and well-maintained roads, the driving itself is pretty easy. And once you get to one of these roadhouse destinations, washed your coffee flasks, assembled lunch from your cooler bag full of padkos (food for the road), uploaded your photos and written up your blog, there’s not much to do.

Except contemplate your navel while reflecting that everyone has to be somewhere, and right now you might just as well be here as anywhere else.

Next up, watch out for Part 2 – from Cocklebiddy to Ceduna!

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