Down to the Nullarbor

So after some good daytime exercise at Mount Augustus and a couple of restful nights we headed south to Meekathara and before long were enjoying 'smoko' or coffee break at the old Mount Gould gaol built to incarcerate sheep rustlers who hassled the early settlers 150 years ago.

Stunning desert scenery provided the back drop to our steady progress and memorable overnight stops in the desert added to the sense of adventure. Thus the picture perfect small town of Sandstone came as a surprise with well kept streets, a cracking pub and an interesting museum - a creditable effort to the 60 or so permanent occupants of this once bustling mining settlement. We enjoyed an excellent pub lunch before heading off once more in to remote country.

In the 1960's a certain Len Beadell had been contracted by the government to push routes through these remote areas with his 'Gun Barrel' Team and his legacy is a grid of dead straight tracks named after family members that are now graded annually and permit access to very remote parts of Western Australia. The Ann Beadell highway took us south east to Leonora where we again refueled and later stopped at Yeo Lake homestead.This was a beautiful but sobering place in the middle of nowhere that two brothers had tried to establish as a working sheep or cattle station - the simple tin hut was reminiscent of some of the bothies back in the UK and had a well with a hand pump and a rudimentary bucket shower that provided us with a good wash.

The weather had clouded over a bit and indeed after a night in the bush on the Connie Sue (Beadell) track we packed up in the first rain of the trip.
However things soon improved as we headed south under clear skies which led to a chilly night as we were now well south and east.

Reaching the Trans Australian Railway at Rawlinna was a milestone and we were lucky to see a vast freight train heading west with a mixed load of containers, pipes, trucks and minerals. However after following the line to Neale's Junction we struck south on a rough track once more stopping 90km north of Cocklebiddy for our coolest night yet. 

Thus we reached the Nullarbor and turned left heading east on the final leg of our 11000km journey. Huge road trains and fellow travelers were something of an oddity and the superb white dunes at Eucla near the sand smothered old telegraph station were a stark contrast to the desert scenes of the previous month. Similarly as we turned down to the remarkable cliff tops above the Head of Bight we marveled at the empty seas, distant horizons and glorious colours.

We are now off for a week exploring Victoria so I will hopefully post again before we depart for the UK next week to update the final leg of this superb trip. 

Locations will appear here 

and the latest crop of pics can be found here.