Crossed the Nullarbor - TICK

We have crossed the Nullarbor! We drove 9 and ½ hours on the 1st day and about 5 hours on the 2nd day. The first section of the Nullarbor is so awesome – looking over the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight, the ocean looked magnificent! The music as we crossed the Nullarbor? Mostly the Glee Soundtrack! Kristy has an obsession with Glee at the moment – and she purchased all 6 discs of the first season of Glee! Although, at one stage I did manage to slide Counting Crows into the disc player, and when I was singing to “Round Here” at the top of my voice (as you do, and you know you do!) the car became so hot (or was it my singing?), that the empty jelly cup that Kristy had on the dashboard blew it’s lid with the loudest POP!

We stopped at a little place called Cocklebiddy to sleep the first night of the Nullarbor. Cocklebiddy is a trucker’s stop along the Nullarbor. Cocklebiddy has a population of 8 people (a sign also informed us that there is also 25 budgies, 7 quails, 1 dog and 1,234,567 kangaroos in Cocklebiddy). It was blowing a gale when we got there (apparently it was the tail end of the recent cyclone) and we were all tired, hungry and pretty much over all the driving. We set up Megan’s tent, and it was pretty tricky, considering the canvas became like a parachute (and boy, did that help our moods!!!!) In addition, the ground at Cocklebiddy was so hard that the tent pegs would not hammer in (another mood enhancer – ground too hard for tent pegs!), so in the end, Megan’s tent was set up over a dried up puddle, because it was the only place where the ground was soft enough (and we prayed in would not rain that night, because then Megan would be sleeping in a actual puddle). Nicole decided that she was not going to struggle with the setting up of her tent, so she slept in her car that night. Kristy and I had the van to sleep in, but because we have accumulated so much STUFF since we began travelling, we have to shift that stuff to the front seats or the ground outside, just so we can sleep. I think that I am getting good, strong arm muscles since we have started travelling, moving that stuff back and forth. It is surprising that we have so much STUFF though, because, believe me, we cull a lot of things along the way– I don’t know how it happens, that stuff just grows! Like some strange osmosis process!! It is just another one of those mysteries of life. Although, I did just purchase a printer, and one does have to ask oneself, was that completely necessary?

After the 2nd day of Nullarbor, after driving on the longest (146.6 kms) straight road in Australia (we were told it would be “Nullaboring”, but it wasn’t so bad. I mean, really, we have driven up and down the middle of Australia and through a number of deserts), we ended up in Esperance, W.A. Oh... My... God... Esperance, the beaches, STUNNING!!! I have never seen anything like the coastline in Esperance, it was better than the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. And the beaches! They are beyond description! The water is crystal clear, the sand so soft, everything is so clean, the view is perfect, it was just THE BEST!!! We swam at Twilight Cove and took 1 billion pictures. I am not even that much of a beach person, but I couldn’t wait to get my chubby, little body into that water. And then... just when I thought I would never see a better beach... we drove into the National Park and went to Lucky Bay. It is famous for its white sand. And that beach was even better! Four wheel drives are allowed to drive right up on the beach, so we did, and set up the van’s awning, and had a day of swimming in the most perfect water, sitting on soft, white sand, walking along the beach to a lookout, and eating a protein lunch (yes still on the Dukan diet), as we watched the waves roll in and looked at the most amazing scenery. You can actually camp at Lucky Bay, it is very much a bush setting (no shops close by), and I wish we had of organised it. Next time. Obviously, I HIGHLY recommend Esperance as a holiday destination, even if you don’t currently love beaches, you will after seeing the beaches of Esperance! P.S. Kristy purchased new bathers, which is lucky for all of us really, considering her old blue ones were see-through. Definitely too much on view for the others Kristy (Megan is gonna need therapy for the amount of time that she has seen Kristy’s bum crack anyway, she doesn’t need anything else to be traumatised about!)

We have stayed in Esperance for a number of nights, and each evening, Kristy, Megan and myself take our daily exercise (part of the Dukan law to losing weight) and we walk from our camp to the local pier and back (about an hours walk). Under the pier lived Fatty the Seal, and each night we would say hello to him. One night he was snoring on the sand and Kristy got close up and personal with him (and Megan has the photo to prove it!). Fortunately he didn’t wake up, because knowing Kristy, there definitely would then have been a seal injury happening if he had seen her. However, our Kristy did get another injury, a thong injury! She had her thong in her hand and a March Fly was buzzing around her, and so she started slapping at the fly with her thong, and ended up slapping herself about four times! You think she would have stopped hitting herself after the first slap! And, lol, Megan managed to snap a pic of this event! Well, these thong slap marks added to her look, because Kristy was sporting a cold sore the size of a small planet for most of Esperance!

The caravan park that we stayed in was great, except that our camp site backed onto a railway line and a main road. We eventually got used to tuning out the sounds of trains (and huge ones at that) and horns blasting. Oh, and those damn church bells that rang out every half hour – I won’t ever forget them! And we were not camped under a tree, so we had no shade whatsoever and WOW that sun can get hot in the afternoon! Oh, and the March flies would congregate where we camped (they are following Kristy), but apart from the trains, the traffic, the church bells, the flies bitting us and the heat... the caravan park was great!

At Esperance, we went on a tour of the Port, and that is one hour of my life that I will never get back again (lucky it only cost $5.00, however it was my first proof that you really do get what you pay for!) Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone on the tour in the first place, because I am not really into the statistics of big sheds, shipping, etc. And so I was very, very bored. I am sure if you like hearing about the amount of barley being carted around and sent overseas, or how much iron ore can fit in a shed, then it would be fascinating, but for me... no. So I did what any sensible, rational adult woman would do, and that is, I started texting Kristy and Megan to see if I could make them laugh. We were on a very little bus, (which, btw, was about 50 years old, and smelt like it! The usual minibus was in getting fixed, sigh) and it was very intimate tour (all of us up close) and therefore it was obvious if anyone wasn’t paying attention to the tour guide. But, my evil plan backfired, and the girls ended up making ME laugh, as they replied with wicked comments. So I couldn’t hold the laughter in anymore but I did manage to pretend I was coughing, because I didn’t want the tour guide to think I was laughing at him. E.g’s of our texting include, “I think my ears are bleeding”, and “I now understand the concept of dying of boredom” and “I heard him say exit and I got excited” and “let’s have a drink when we get back, I can’t be sober any longer”). Kristy and Megan took some photo’s on this tour (why????) but I wish we had taken a photo of Megan’s face when we drove into one shed that was filled with a salt-like substance, and he told us it was sulphur, and sulphur is the only thing in the world that Megan is allergic to!!! Poor Meg-a-sarus!

Oh, and on a completely different note – why does W.A have no pokies???!!! Megan and Kristy were SHOCKED, little gamblers that they are! And I do mean little, because the Dukan diet is working for some of us (regrettably, I am not ‘some of us’, yet I still persist! What am I doing????).

And on another completely different note – WHY is the supermarket at Esperance so cold? We needed thermal jackets just to shop!

Here are some examples of things I hear/see/experience when we are camping:

• Megan speaking to Kristy: She MEANT to say, “I am rubbing OFF on you.” What she ACTUALLY said, “I am rubbing UP on you.” Oh yes Megan, a completely different meaning with the exchange of that one little word!

• Kristy speaking to Megan about sharing the rotisserie roast chicken that they had purchased: If I can chew on your leg, you can have my breast.

• Kristy telling us about the bowel movement that she had that afternoon, as Megan is eating her chocolate pudding (99% fat free of course!).

• Kristy telling us the graphic story of how her eye was bleeding once because she had a leach in it, as the rest of us tried to eat our breakfast.

• Nicole yelling in her sleep, or frantically unzipping and zipping her tent up (she not only sleep talks, and sleep walks, she also sleep zips!)

• Megan saying this to Kristy when Kristy was grumpy to her: “Don’t hate me coz I’m beautiful.”

• Kristy telling us, “Look there’s a seat, to sit on.” Ahhh, yes, thank you for pointing that out, because I thought that seat was for standing on.

• Megan needing a new light-bulb for her lamp, and then putting the new globe in, and that didn’t work, and she was worried until she realised that she hadn’t plugged lamp in to the electricity.

• Megan searching for the hole in her air mattress, because it kept going down, and then noticing that she hadn’t put the stopper in.

We are all getting so, so brown. Oh and Megan got her hair cut! It not only looks great, but she did lose 2 kilo’s in the process (she has VERY thick hair).

Margaret River... HERE WE COME!!!!!