The Road Trip Begins
Trip Start
Apr 08, 2011
1
46
Trip End
Nov 09, 2011
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Monday, April 4, 2011
Balladonia is an Aboriginal word meaning "big rock by itself", and the area was settled in 1879. But it was 100 years later that the area gained worldwide attention when the re-entry of the Skylab space station left a trail of debris across the countryside.
We rented the room from a Dutch traveller working at the roadhouse, he told us the room we had selected was a dungeon....not the best start... then he corrected himself laughing saying it was a donga??? I didn't know which was better as I had no idea what a donga was. Apparently it's the accomodation they use on the mines. The room was fine even if the area at the back of the roadhouse looked like the set from Wolf Creek with tin sheds and bits of machinery everywhere. EEP!!
We survived the night and set out at 6am to conqueror the Nullabor. Man it was boring!. We crossed the Western Australian/South Australian border almost unscathed except for the crack in the windscreen from a rogue stone. Crossing the border stole 1 1/2 hours of our daylight and it was quickly getting dark and we were no where near Port Augusta, out next planned stop. It was dark, apparently there are kangaroo's, not that we had seen anything remotely alive, we were low on petrol and I was starving!! So we stopped at a wee lil town called Kimba. Lucky we did, because when the iPod was turned off and the car wasnt making its duff duff mrraarrrrrr noise we heard a different somewhat disturbing sound coming from under the bonnet. UHHH OHHH!!
Long story short (a first for me) there was something wrong, we didn't know what but couldn't keep driving, we stayed at the motel attached to the petrol station and waited to see the mechanic when he opened at 8:30am the next morning.
8:30 came and we were parked outside the mechanics. He listened to the noise and told us to come back in half and hour, pointing us in the direction of the town's one and only cafe. Now the elegance of the French word cafe was not reflected in this little establishment. A home style coffee machine sat next to a warming tray of hamburgers and toasted bacon sandwiches. The yellow menu offered such delicacies as fried sausage, fried spring roll and fries...yummy. All the while the two young women behind the counter chatted loudly, in a more occa accent than the PM, about someone's wedding the night before and the local netball team (can't be a big competition) all the while greeting the customers by their first name and handing them their orders before they had even asked for them. I on the other hand sat in the corner with a cappuccino, on my Apple Mac studying Russian Leaders of the 20th Century. Ahhh the timeless rivalry of city folk vs country folk. Half and hour later we were back at the mechanics where he told us that worse case scenario he would have to order a new part and we would have to stay in town for 2 days!! Now Kimba is a lovely town with a population of 636 people and a 7 metre tall statue of a big galah beside the highway marking halfway between the east and west coasts but I didn't fancy missing our flight to hang out there. So we informed him that in 3 days we would be catching an international flight out of Sydney. Another half hour later and he had organised a custom botch job to get us to Sydney...hopefully.
Back on the road at 10:30am, with 4 1/2 hours driving time lost, we set off towards Wagga Wagga. Another boring long stretch of driving with no real interesting stories, sorry. Night began to fall and we were nowhere near Wagga... 400 km no where near. We drove on for while, doing the calculations that if we kept going we would be in Sydney by 3am. Yeahhh not gonna happen, so we pulled over into a town called Balranald for the night. Burke and Wills had stopped there so we thought it must be good. Had a terrible Chinese at the local RSL club and off to sleep. Set off again at first light straight for Sydney. We stopped to refuel and have a bite to eat in Wagga, where I met up with Nardia, from my very first Contiki tour back in 2009. From there nothing could stop us... we arrived in Sydney at 2pm. And god damn we were tired.
