Off to See the Wizard - Balladonia to The Great Australian Bight.

Like the previous day, we were just going to keep driving until we were ready to stop.  As well as the roadhouses, every 200kms or so, there are plenty of places to free camp.

It is a long way, and so many people will tell you how boring it is to drive across the Eyre Highway.  We love it, as the landscape continually changes and you never know what you will see on the road.

We love these signs, which often feature on post cards.  No, we didn’t see any camels, or emus, or kangaroos. We were surprised that we saw now live wildlife on the road.

It wasn’t long until we came across the charity cyclists again.  They had also stayed at Balladonia the previous night.

You have to stop and take a photo at this sign, the longest straight road in the country.  They cyclist support team were also there getting ready to take a group photo of all the cyclists.  

We struggled with a really strong head and side wind, so felt for the cyclists.  They were supposed to ride for 100kms in the day, but we don’t know how they would have gone.

Time to enter a new time zone.  Our phones didn’t recognise this time zone, which is only for a relatively small area.

We called in for fuel at the Cocklebiddy Roadhouse, where we have overnighted on a previous trip.  It has been good that we have stayed at different places each time we have travelled this way.  The hotel on the site is called the Wedgetail Inn and around the back they have two wedgetail eagles in an aviary, which we felt was a bit sad. Maybe they are injured and wouldn’t survive in the wild.  I don’t know.

An unusual feature on the highway is the airstrips that are marked out to allow for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) to land if there is an emergency.

Eventually, we came to the South Australian Border.  There is a big sign that you can park in front of, half way in each state, but it was difficult to access with the van, as it was sort of behind the quarantine station for vehicles travelling in to WA, so we had to make to do with just a photo of this sign, which was a bit disappointing.  We had to change our watches again and this time our phones did recognise the change.

Another sign about wild animals.  The difference was that this one mentioned wombats.  No, we didn’t see any live wombats, as they are nocturnal, but sadly, we did see a couple of dead ones on the side of the road.

The little area of Eucla is at the border and also the Border Village, which is just the roadhouse and caravan park.  Just off the highway you can visit the ruins of the Eucla Telegraph Station, but it is a dirt road and we weren’t going down there with the van.  Also, we have visited twice previously, therefore we kept on our way.

We ended up free camping at “13 Peg Rest Area”, 13 kms into South Australia.  You could see the Southern Ocean of the Great Australian Bight.  Sadly, it wasn’t the evening to be looking for whales as it was freezing and still rather breezy.

There were quite a few vans parked up for the night.

It was interesting watching a weather system move from in the west.

It wasn’t the evening for a sunset either, but we did get this little glow.

I may have been somewhat naive as I watched that cloud come towards us rather quickly, thinking how interesting the clouds were and not thinking of what the consequences would be, as it blew an absolute gale all night and we had some rain.  As you can imagine, we were in about the most exposed position we could have been in, right on the edge of the country.  The poor caravan creaked and groaned as it was buffetted.  I must say that neither of us got a great deal of sleep that night.  

The highlight of the day was once again just travelling along the Eyre Highway and taking it all in.