….. leads us back to our door. Not that we actually have a door because we sold our house before we left. Our caravan is our home for the time being. However, the time has come for us to cross the Nullarbor back to Western Australia. It’s a time I’ve been dreading as I’ve loved every minute of this trip and haven’t wanted it to end. On the flip side, of course, we will soon see children and grandchildren that we have really missed and that’s exciting.

We fueled up in Ceduna then continued on the Eyre Highway towards the Nullarbor Plains. We drove for several hours before pulling up at a deserted rest area near Yalata to sleep for the night.

We were up early the next morning and stopped at the Nullarbor Roadhouse for fuel. Our plan had been to fuel up earlier knowing that this is the most expensive place for fuel on the Nullarbor. However they were closed so we had no choice but to pay $2.99 per litre for diesel. We had camped here a few years ago when a cyclone followed us across the Nullarbor from WA. Luckily the weather was kinder to us this trip.

Some people dread driving across the Nullarbor but we love it. You drive for days through landscape that is arid with no trees (Null-arbor meaning No Trees), no communities or towns- just roadhouses every couple of hundreds kilometres. But it is fascinating looking at how remote and vast the plains are with nothing but desert and shrubs. Then every so often (in all remote parts of the country) you come across  the sign warning you that this section of highway is also the runway for the Royal Flying Doctor’s flight if they need to land in an emergency.

On our way, we stopped to look at the Great Australian Bight.

Before too long we were approaching Western Australia.  I had stocked up at the supermarket in Streaky Bay and completely forgot about not being able to take fruit, veg and honey across the border. What a waste!

It felt strange to be back in WA but we did notice a big improvement in the weather!   After a while, we stopped for lunch at Eucla.

When we had enough of driving, we camped overnight at the Madura Pass Roadhouse so that we could get tv reception for John to watch the AFL semi final. I couldn’t believe we had reception in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  We ended up going to the small bar in the caravan park and watching the match over a beer with some other travellers. 

We got off to an early start the next morning,  The long and winding road turned into the long straight road when we came to the ’90 mile Straight Road’ sign!

We pulled up at the Balladonia Roadhouse to fuel up and have a break. In 1979 debris from Skylab fell from space, landing around this area and some are on display at the roadhouse along with newspaper reports from that time.

As we edged closer to the end of the highway, we pulled in off the road just 50 kms from Norseman, to camp for the night.  We knew this would be our last night free camping.  From now on, for the last two weeks of our trip, we would be spending our nights in caravan parks or staying with friends. So we were very fortunate that it was a lovely evening and no other Grey Nomads pulled in.  We set a campfire and enjoyed the ambience of the desert with a gorgeous sunset followed by a myriad of stars. We talked about the highlights of our trip and agreed that there were no lows. Everywhere we had visited, every camp we had stayed, everyone we had met – were highlights.  We felt so grateful and happy that we had decided to do this trip. It was the most wonderful sixteen  months.

We had a lovely evening and woke to silence except for the songs of birds.  I wanted to remember the view from our bed as it would probably be some time before we are back in remote parts of Australia.