Day 179 - Nullabor to Ceduna

It was a better day today and reached 26 degrees in the afternoon.  The wind took a bit of a holiday until later in the afternoon, and this made our 320km drive to Ceduna a little more enjoyable.

Our first port of call this morning was The Whale Centre at the Head of Bight.  This facility has been established to view the Southern Wright whales which are prolific in the winter months.  We saw a couple of whales with calves but they were a long way away.  The whales were about 300m out from the Bight's cliffs.

021014 A photo of a photo of The Whale Centre from the air

021014 The Head of Bight Whale Centre

021014 These came down to see the whales too

021014 The Bunda Cliffs at the Head of Bight Centre

021014 The Bunda Cliffs up closer and looking west

021014 A Southern Wright Whale - but from a long way away

To the east of the Centre the cliffs gave way to sand dunes as far as we could see, as the coast turned southwards towards Ceduna and the western side of the Eyre Peninsula.

021014 Looking east from The Whale Centre - the end of the cliffs

The treeless portion of the Nullabor Plain seemed only to extend for about 50km from the Nullabor Roadhouse, much to our surprise.  There was a transition from no trees to few trees and eventually we were in woodland country as in WA.

021014 The treeless Nullabor Plain with the Roadhouse
on LHS and the Nullabor Homestead right of centre

021014 More straight road through Woodland country 
but after the Nullabor

It was indeed a day of surprises because all of a sudden we were in the midst of carpets of yellow wildflowers (maybe we'd turned right instead of left and were back in WA) and then driving through fields of gold - ripe wheat ready for harvesting.  We passed through many miles of these until we reached Ceduna, our next overnight stop.

021014 Wildflowers in SA too

021014 The flowers up close

021014 Wattles made an appearance again

02114 Then there was more wheat

At Ceduna we found, once again to our surprise, that this weekend is the area's Oyster Festival, so we will probably stay a few days, ostensibly to recover after our onerous journey across the Nullabor, but in truth, to check out some oysters and the Festival.

021014 Coming into Ceduna

If we miss out on the oysters here we could hold ourselves in check until we get to Streaky Bay or Smoky Bay, which are not too many more kilometres down the coast.

Some trivia:

• The old Ford we saw yesterday was a 1930 model
• They do take fresh food off you as you pass through the quarantine station at Ceduna.  We had cooked and frozen most of our vegies and eaten the fruit, but they took the little bit of lettuce we could not eat at lunchtime
• Even little lizards fight

021014 Bugger the whales, we are here for a battle - and they did

• They carry some big loads across the Nullabor

021014 Fortunately he was parked

• Even small can be beautiful

021014 This little fellow wished us goodbye from Nullabor this morning

• Do you need a car to tow a boat on the highway?

021014 Look Mum, no car!