The return trip across the Nullarbor

The hard thing about this post is knowing where to start and finish, it seems there is so much stuff that I want to post that I’m confused (not an altogether unusual state for me to be in.)

First because I just know that both Merle and Val will expect some
comment on the football…. there was a brief time during the 2^nd quarter that I felt like talking about football… but it passed, for those who don’t understand that comment, the football team that Merle and Val support beat the team that I support in the pre-season competition, they proved to be the superior side pre-season… we’ll see what happens in the season proper!!

OK that covers the football, I have once again crossed the Nullarbor plain and arrived safely at Vicki and Rex’s home at Wudinna, it’s only a rest stop this time though as they are in Adelaide at the moment.

Getting here proved to be an interesting exercise, when I left Perth I went to visit some old friends who live on a property at Beverley, we had an enjoyable visit that lasted for an afternoon and night (late!!) then I said my farewells and left to commence my trip towards home, trouble was I left my mobile phone (which I hate with an almost violent hate) and my wallet there, I got 250 kms up the track before I discovered this so had to use a public phone to check that my wallet was there… it was!!... so I told Joan that I would have to come back for it as I needed my credit card to finance the trip home, at this time the money I had put in the phone ran out so the conversation ended.

With a heavy heart I turned the car around and headed back whence I had come, along the way most passing motorists wave to one another in the Australian bush so I was waving away too, one motorist even flashed his lights at me, what a friendly sort thought I…. you know where I’m going with this don’t you… I arrived back at the farm to find no one at home and about 10 minutes later in came Neil and Joan with the phone and wallet they had taken about 100 klms towards where I had phoned from to save me having to return the full distance!!!!

So I have… started a 2000 klm drive of with a 500 klm warm up run… wasted 6 hours and $50.00 worth of fuel… and caused my friends to drive 200 klm as well, a word of explanation… they turned around and chased me when they saw my Subaru steam past them… now I’m not going to say that I was annoyed and speeding, I’ll just say their Utility had never traveled that fast before and it still wasn’t fast enough!!!

After abject apologies for having caused them so much trouble I set off again, by now I was about 7 hours behind schedule, a little stressed, and tiring fast, so instead of the 800/900 klm I had planned on traveling I only got about 500 klm (plus the wasted 500 klm) along the track and had to stop for a couple of hours sleep as I was starting to get very noddy.

I believe I may have also damaged my, “no animals were hurt in the making of this trip reputation too”, a little swamp Wallaby charged the car and collided with the side of it, I turned around and found him sitting in the middle of the roadway but when I got out to (a) take a photo of him, and (b) establish that he was unhurt, he hopped away seemingly alright… but he traveled much slower than he had when he hit the car at full tilt.. I’m hoping that he is OK, the car is unscathed so he must have hit it only a glancing blow.

As I didn’t have my Roo spotter Marcus with me I decided to tag along behind a road train for a while… let him clear the way of Roo’s for me, he maintained a pretty constant speed so it wasn’t any problem to sit 20 or 30 meters behind him, after a couple of hours of this however the back of the trailer seemed to be changing shape and generally being a bit hard to concentrate on so I stopped for another sleep.

This whole story has yet another aspect to it… I have the ability to get lost in any town with two or more streets… this is entirely the fault of my second wife!!!! Julie was an excellent navigator and would tell me what to do and where to go (even when we were in the car… Ooops, that’ll get back won’t it Wazza) consequently I just had to follow her instructions and I wouldn’t get lost, but then we separated and I have perfected the art of getting lost!!

Jacqui’s husband Walter has recently bought a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit for his car and after both he and Marcus bent my ear about the joy of never getting lost again I bit the bullet and bought one also, those of you who know about them will know how great they are and those that don’t can take my word for it…. BUT… there just had to be a but didn’t there, this is another electronic device that I have to learn how to use.

My first problem is quite closely related to my hatred of mobile phones (cell phones) one of the many things I dislike about them is “texting” not that I have ever “texed” but people walking blindly along the sidewalk, or anywhere else, texting someone they saw 4 minutes ago anyway… so I had to ring my favourite daughter to find out how to do this so that I could enter the address I wanted to go to.

The first address I entered was that of my son who I was going to stay with, Bruce lives in a fairly new suburb that I have visited several times (and got lost in EVERY time) so I was delighted when the charming female voice told me to drive carefully and to take the next RH turn, she then gave me precise instructions to proceed through several round-abouts taking the 2^nd exit, which I found amounted to going straight ahead, we were getting along like a house on fire until suddenly I came across…. a fire…. that had caused the highway to be closed, taking the detour that was on offer was fine until Sally the SAT-NAV started to tell me to take the next RH turn at every road that came up, other times she would tell me to make a U turn, now in lots of cases these were little gravel roads that obviously didn’t go anywhere… so I ignored her… many, many times, it seems that what was happening was that Sall wanted me to return to the original route, she was quite oblivious to the fact that there was a fire… although I told her so … A LOT.

The detour that we had been put on was “the OLD coast road” which I knew would get us to much the same place eventually and SHE should have just plotted an alternative route but SHE didn’t!!

Some portion of blame for this situation is no doubt due to my very brief acquaintance with Sall and was resolved by me putting the address in again with my current location as the point of origin.

Our relationship has been brief but stormy so far, but I do find that if I fluke giving the right destination and other details she feels she is entitled to, her directions while quite repetitive are in fact helpful in resolving the “I’m lost Syndrome” so there is some chance we will become compatible eventually, on the other hand I may well just be lost electronically as well as physically.

As usual I have lots of photos and probably more stuff to post but it’s getting late and I desperately need to catch up on my sleep so that will have to wait!!