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Australia’s Nullarbor plain is a place of superlatives: the world’s largest and driest block of limestone; the longest unbroken line of sea cliffs in the country; the longest straight piece of road in the world. The caves are deep and the horizons are wide. But, for all that, tedium is still the most common travellers’ perception of the Nullarbor.

For many people it is an inexorable road – the Nullar-boring – defined only by its roadhouses, which break the 1200-kilometre mass into manageable portions. These roadhouses are the oases of the bluebush desert, greasy pies in the sky. They are the places where life on the Nullarbor – both transient and resident – makes its greatest expression.

Nundroo Roadhouse, noon: “None of us are that sane,” Sandra says, by which she means members of the over-40s motorcycling club, Ulysses. The Eyre Highway has been humming with motorbikes throughout the morning, club patches that read ‘Grow Old Disgracefully’ prominent among the riders. Goldwings are a favorite.

Like most, Sandra and Ken are returning from a Ulysses AGM near Adelaide, 3400 motorbikes that descended on the Barossa Valley. They are going home to Queensland the long way; around the country. While they ride, Sandra carries her dog, a miniature pinscher, in her lap. It wears a Ulysses dog blanket. This is the first time they have travelled across the Nullarbor.

“Before this we rode from Bourke to Broken Hill,” Ken says. “I was worried about the Nullarbor but it’s 100 percent on that road.” But they have yet to see the real Nullarbor. Nundroo is at the end of the wheat belt that extends across northern Eyre Peninsula. Between Ceduna and Nundroo the land has been cleared so efficiently it is virtually a man-made Nullarbor.

A woman steps out of the roadhouse and calls to her husband. “There’s no bread ’til the truck gets here.”
“When’s that?” he asks.
“The 10th of Never out here, I suppose.”

Yalata Roadhouse, 6pm: In the 1950s, a time of British atomic-weapon testing in the desert to the Nullarbor’s north, the Yalata Aboriginal people were moved from Maralinga to the Nullarbor. More than 100 kilometres of the Eyre Highway runs through Yalata land, so it should be an integral part of the Nullarbor experience, but there is a lot of prejudice about Yalata. People tell you they wouldn’t stop at the roadhouse because they don’t like its appearance. “I won’t be stopping there, they might steal my wheels,” Ken had suggested in Nundroo about the Yalata people. I sit in the restaurant for two hours and the only cars that pull in are those from the Yalata community. Camping at Yalata is free and it has the Nullarbor’s best showers and cheapest food. However, it takes more than a bargain to bridge some racial barriers.

Nullarbor Roadhouse, 2pm: The belief that the Nullarbor is entirely flat is misguided. West of Yalata, the Eyre Highway is a gentle, mallee-covered rollercoaster with only an undergrowth of bluebush to localise it. The end of the hills and the start of the true Nullarbor plain is almost instantaneous. The last trees, crippled by the notorious Nullarbor winds, surrender to a sea of shin-high scrub. From this treeless plain, only one thing rises – the Nullarbor roadhouse.

Sunil sits at a picnic table at the side of the roadhouse, wearing a lycra shirt and surrounded by bicycle panniers. His bike is attached to the rack of a nearby car. The Londoner set out from Norseman, at the Nullarbor’s western end, four days before to cycle across the famously bare plain, pedalling into a headwind partnered by a Canadian cyclist who had already ridden from Sydney to Norseman. By Balladonia, the first roadhouse out of Norseman, Sunil had had enough.

“I was just finding it too hard,” he says of the wind and his partner’s endurance. At Balladonia he saw a car pull in with a bike rack attached. Irish tourist Michael stepped out. “He just came up to me and asked if I could drive him to Adelaide,” Michael says. When Sunil walks away for a moment he adds, “I think he was very relieved not to have to cycle any further.”

The Nullarbor is a popular cycling road, especially with foreigners. Few Australians ride it but it has become internationally famous as one of cycling’s loneliest challenges. People run across the Nullarbor, even walk. An extreme land attracts extreme people. But Michael sees challenge enough in the Nullarbor without creating more. “It means a lot for me to see the Nullarbor because everything in Ireland is so small,” he says. “But this …” The sentence tapers off in awe.

Border Village, 5pm: This is the kitsch capital of the Nullarbor. Here you can be photographed in the pouch of a giant kangaroo. Or you can be photographed beside a sign that says you are 15,000 kilometres from Moscow and 17,000 kilometres from London. Or you can be photographed standing at the border. Or you can just drive on.

Eucla, 10am: Adam is not a traveller, he works at Eucla’s Bureau of Meteorology office. What more isolated outpost than the middle of the Nullarbor?
“I’m not confined here. I can go away whenever I want to,” Adam says. But to where, I wonder, when it’s a 300-kilometre drive just to the nearest post office?

Eucla is unique on the Nullarbor in that it has locals. At its prime, when its telegraph station (now a famous dune-covered ruin) was Perth’s main link to the outside world, it had a population of 70. Today it is around 60, due in part to the presence of government agencies such as the state-border quarantine control and the Bureau of Meteorology. “One bloke moved out recently because it was getting too big,” Adam says.

Mundrabilla Roadhouse, 4pm: It is the chicken and the egg. Do tourists not stop at Mundrabilla because truck drivers do? Or do truckies stop at Mundrabilla because tourists don’t? Or perhaps it is because Mundrabilla looks intrinsically raw, the ultimate no-frills roadhouse. The open yard at Mundrabilla is clogged with road trains. Drivers pull in to sleep. Some head for the bar to watch speedway racing on the television. Out back, a mini-zoo features animals with such dinky-di names as Andrew Peacock and Emu Export. Caravans pass but none stop.

Madura Roadhouse, 11am: The great caravan migration among Australia’s ‘Grey Nomads’ is in full swing, with Sydney and Melbourne retirees heading north to winter in warmer climates. There are two common destinations in this annual journey: Cairns, on the east coast, and Broome, on the west.

Kevin and Carol sold their Melbourne home at the beginning of 1999 and now live and travel in their caravan. So did Neil and Rosemary. Together they are part of the flock descending on Broome. They are not staying at Madura or any other roadhouse campground. ‘Professional’ Grey Nomads rarely do. Their caravans are entirely self-sufficient – solar power, showers, CD players – and they prefer the thrift of camping in highway rest areas. Neil and Rosemary are making the journey for the fourth time. Their route is unwavering. Across the Nullarbor they sleep and take breaks in the same rest areas as every other crossing.

For Kevin and Carol this is a Nullarbor inauguration. Is the Nullarbor boring to them? “It is, but I just sit there and do my knitting or crochet,” Carol says. “I look up for the signs. I miss it all.”

Cocklebiddy Roadhouse, 2pm: “You won’t want to stop at Cocklebiddy, it smells of piss,” I have been warned, but it smells the same as every other roadhouse – dusty outside and greasy inside. Because he is covered in oil and has three fingers missing on one hand, I mistake Mick for a long-haul truck driver.

“Do this run often?” I ask as he tinkers under the hood of his truck. “It’s the first time I’ve been across in my life,” he answers. I am encountering a disproportionate numbers of first-timers on the Nullarbor. Could it be a case of once bitten, twice shy? “I’m finding the Nullarbor quite relaxing,” Mick says. “I thought it’d be all desert, but I suppose it is near the coast.”

Mick’s truck is filled with his own possessions. He is moving from Dubbo to Perth, crawling across the Nullarbor with his truck stuck in 10th gear, speed unknown. “The dash instruments don’t work,” he says.

Caiguna Roadhouse, 4pm: On the Nullarbor, everybody bitches about the road trains. So who annoys the road-train drivers? “Caravans. They’re either doing 100 miles an hour or they’re dawdling,” Wayne says. “And foreigners on motorbikes. But there are plenty of arrogant truck drivers out there who don’t give a shit about anybody else on the road.”

Wayne is carting wool from a nearby property to Adelaide. It is due in the South Australian capital, 1600 kilometres away, tomorrow. “How do you stay awake?” I ask.
“Lots of coffee. Jelly beans. I’ll tell you what’s good…Crown mints and Coke. You suck the mints and get that fresh feeling, then you drink the Coke.” He shivers. “It keeps you awake all right.” Were it not for the wool, which requires constant tightening as it settles, Wayne would enjoy his annual Nullarbor run.
“A lot of people say it’s boring but because it’s a desert they expect sand. They don’t expect this.”

Balladonia Roadhouse, 10am: Among backpackers in Australia, the Kombi van is an anachronism. The modern backpacking vehicle is a Ford Falcon station wagon, usually blue for some unexplained reason. They are a common sight across the Nullarbor, with young travellers making the transition from east to west.

Balladonia, near to the site where Skylab crashed to earth in 1979, is not the roadhouse for them. Travellers call this final Nullarbor stop the ‘Ritz of Roadhouses’, mostly because it sells cappuccino and the staff wear uniforms, but also because of its prices.

Irish backpackers Shaun and Megan are not concerned. They are carrying enough food and water to stock several bomb shelters. “When you tell people you’re going across the Nullarbor they start to say things like, ‘be sure to carry enough water’,” Shaun says. “They frighten you. We’re carrying all this water and we’ve hardly drunk any of it. It only takes two days. You’re better off not talking to anyone and just doing it.” About the Nullarbor, Megan is succinctly Irish: “It’s grand.”

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