Tonight, we are guests of the Nullabor Roadhouse located near the eastern end of the 1100 kilometre long treeless Nullabor Plain.
We left Ceduna, 295 kilometres earlier at around 0930 and made our first stop st Penong. It is a small wheatbelt town on the western edge of South Australia’s wheatbelt.The surrounding area has dozens of windmills that pump the local water supply from a large underground basin. The town and the surrounding district is so dry that the underground water is supplemented by rain water and also water that is carted by truck from a supply located fifteen kilometres away.
One of the sights that we wanted to see was the Penong windmill museum. It has a display of old, new, small and large Windmills, including ‘Bruce’ the biggest windmill in Australia. This large windmill was originally constructed by the Commonwealth Railways to pump water for their steam locomotives.
This outdoor museum features a unique collection of around 20 donated and restored windmills collected from as far away as Marla, the Riverland and Alice Springs.
We followed an unsealed road from Penong to Cactus beach. This beach is apparently a famous surfing beach with well favoured wave breaks. It must be good as it would take a long time to travel here in the middle of nowhere if you were a surfer.
To get to the beach we had to drive across Lake MacDonnell, the site of an old gypsum mining operation. The lake is world-renowned for its striking, high-contrast colors. A dirt road causeway nicknamed “Watermelon Avenue” cuts directly through the water. When conditions are right, visitors can see a brilliant salmon-pink lake on one side of the road and a contrasting blue-green lake on the other. The vibrant pink hue is a natural phenomenon caused by a combination of salt-loving algae and bacteria.. These organisms secrete red carotenoid pigments in response to the lake’s extremely high salt concentrations.
The colours were not so bright today, but I have used Photoshop to simulate how they can really look when the conditions are right.
Like yesterday, the highway through this area passed by giant wheat farming fields with long roads that go into various homesteads.
Further on, the vegetation became similar to Mallee scrub with small multi-trunked trees and a layer of saltbush growing at ground level.
Just before we reached our next planned sighseeing feature, we came across a sign telling us that we reached the eastern end of the Nullabor Plain. For the next two days, we will cross this vast area of treeless plain.
A short detour took us to the ‘Head of The Bight’ – the most northerly point of the Great Australian Bight with its enormous sea cliffs.
We reached this place late in the afternoon and I could only spend an hour exploring the boardwalk and lookout point before it closed for the night. Southern Right Whales migrate to here at this time of the year to give birth to their calves. There were appaently eight of them in the water today but with my limited time, I could only get to see one. It was swimming quite unperturbed very close to the cliffs.
It was only a few more kilometres to the Nullabor Roadhouse. It is a popular place for people to stay overnigght in the simple and basic motel rooms, caravan sites or in RVs. A good number of road trains visit here although fuel is very expensive with petrol currently at $3.09 per litre and deisel at $3.48. Our dinners in the restaurant were OK but more like a basic home cooked meal. Our room is quite large but the TV remote has no batteries and the light in the bathroom does not work. The internet is free and there is a good Telstra data connection. I feel a bit as if we are camping.
