Motor Home Travels of South Australia Part 7

12 Guide books are somewhat creations of fiction, not that what they tell you is in a certain location isn't there, but they make everything sound so "you have to see this!" that we find that we pull off to see things that really aren't that impressive, including whole towns. So I guess guide books are really great elaborations of the truth. Reader, read between the lines. Today we head out across the Nullarbor Plains.  (null - "no", arbor - "trees") This takes up all of the middle portion of the south of Australia; similar to our prairies, but way different. Super dry, the vegetation ranges from scrubby bush, to scrubby trees, to scrubby grass….. you get the picture, almost 2000 km of a constantly changing vista. The scenery is lovely in it's own wild and natural way. The area is a wild life preserve too, but we only saw two pair of emus and too many road killed kangaroos to count. I guess the roos come out at night and are similar to our deer in that they run toward your lights as you drive down the highway. The semi trucks out here have great big bush bumpers on them (roo bumpers) and protective screens across the windshield, so it is obviously a problem. This area also has camels. No, you are right, not naturally, but turned wild from the camels brought in to haul freight from east to west Australia in the early years. The story is that now the Aussies are rounding the camels up (instead of shooting them) as they consume precious grass lands and are shipping them back to the Middle East because the Aussie camel blood lines are more pure and diverse than what they are back in the lands of their origin. Regardless, we didn't see any, which sucks. So the highlights of today, we stopped at the Head of the Bight, (the dipped in portion of Australia that looks like somebody took a bite out of it) which is a part of the coastline that has impressive 90 meter limestone cliffs, perpendicular to the crashing ocean below, very awe inspiring. For all of the days that we have been traveling beside this South Ocean, it has been rough and windy, not an inviting piece of water at all. Next is not a highlight, but a low light, crossing the border from South Australia state into Western Australia state. They have quarantine! This station is in the middle of the Nullarbor and is 525 miles east of the next grocery store (we are heading west) and they take ALL of our fruit and vegitables! The roadhouses (rudimentary truck stops) that are sparsely scattered between this point and Norseman (next town) do serve food, buuutt… refer to the mention of "truck stop"! I'm still, typing, so you can tell we didn't starve.