Call it bad planning, good luck or whatever…
but we ended up driving the Nullarbor, not once but twice in the space of 6 weeks. Like most people, I had heard many stories about the Nullarbor – people getting lost and wandering for days in the outback, nearly dying because they ran out of fuel, food or water. With that in mind, we came well prepared for our journey with an extra jerry can of fuel and plenty of food & water. What didn’t I plan on – having no mobile phone reception for 2 days and most places not offering any Wi-Fi.
What you need to know before you go
Our first stop in South Australia was the famous pink lake – I’m sure you’ve all seen the Instagram pics, pink lake one side, blue sea the other and a road down the middle. However, the lake is only pink certain times of the year. We checked twice, on the way over and the way back and it was regular dirty lake water both times – so no stunning Insta pics for us!!!!
Having learnt our lesson from the NSW outback about booking in advance for a place to stay, we figured we would estimate where we would stay and call in the morning to book a room. This is all well and good until you realise you have no mobile phone signal. Alright, we’ll just keep driving until we can stop at places and check….well, lo and behold, the first two places had no rooms, the sun was setting and I didn’t want to be dodging wildlife on the roads.
Thank goodness for the humble payphone! In case you forgot (I had), Telstra decided to make all calls within Australia free from their public payphones (does that mean it should now be called a ‘freephone’??). Thanks to some forward planning, I had downloaded Google maps, so the motels and their phone numbers still came up on my maps. I tracked the Nullarbor and called every motel along the way until we found a room which ended up being a further 5 hours drive (it was at this point we discussed the downside of having a car and not a van to sleep in!!!). Disappointingly, we hardly saw any wildlife – I was actually wanting to see a few roaming camels, but the most we saw was an emu. Also, thankyou Chris for taking the baton of night driving, so I could snooze!!!!
As you would expect, the Nullarbor is pretty much one straight road. There are plenty of places to stop and stretch your legs and check out the views – we saw some pretty spectacular sunsets. There are even golf courses all along the Nullarbor – each roadhouse has one hole you can play – so by the end of the Nullarbor you played a round of golf – if that’s your thing!!! To be honest, we didn’t even need our extra jerry can of fuel as there were enough petrol stations along the way that we could fill up as needed. At one point fuel did hit $3 per litre – but we were in the middle of nowhere! Food was pretty basic, especially for us vegos, but I can survive on chips for a couple of days. We ran into a few of the same people at the stops and even made a friend who we caught up with in Perth.
What I don’t understand is how people get lost on The Nullarbor….the road is obvious, and you know if you keep going in one direction you would hit a roadhouse soon enough. We also saw plenty of other cars – so I couldn’t imagine if you broke down why you would wander off the road into the outback….but maybe those stories are from years ago when the road wasn’t so well defined and the roadhouses not so many. Would I recommend driving the Nullarbor?? Absolutely. Everyone should do it at least once. Do I feel the need to do it again? Not anytime soon…..but if I need to, I know it’s not so bad. You can easily cross it in 2 days, and I spoke to people who were powering on through and did it in 1 day.
Top tips for driving the Nullarbor:
Download Google Maps
Consider having a mobile phone that connects to all of the Telstra network (they seemed to get reception)
Download a good supply of music (Taylor Swift got a good workout!), podcasts and audio books.
Plenty of water & snacks.
Plan your stops – there were plenty of roadhouses, but sometimes they were 100kms apart.
Book your rooms in advance if staying in motels.