Muir's on the move. The start of the Nullabor



Kids choosing which animals they think they would see





We could only sit on about 95km this guy over took at about 120km and then no indicators or any thing stop in the middle of the road to check out a wedge tail eagle

 Today's the day, Nullabor here we come! I have heard so many stories of how good this is going to be coupled with the stories of how bad this is going to be. Well I guess time will tell.
Leaving Ceduna at 9.50am to start the approx 1200km journey across the Nullabor. Firstly we stopped and fuelled at the Coles express in Ceduna (funny cause the nearest coles store is over 400km away) Bargain fuel at $154.9(with the voucher, lucky my purse is always full of receipts) so we filled to the brim the cars 2 tanks and all 3 Jerry cans. Bread and milk was also a bargain so topped up on them too.
Because of the generator not working we have been unable to charge the kids dvd players and ds games, so fingers crossed they don't get to bored. This 1200kms could be more like 5000kms otherwise.
We stopped for the night about 690kms along and will complete the journey across tomorrow.
To my surprise the kids have been awesome! They have completed word searches, coloring in and played a couple of car games like I spy, this was usually spurred on by the passing of a road train.
We saw the warning signs about the animals we may see crossing the road and true to its word we saw 2 packs of camels (is that what you call them or herd or group, clan maybe?) A few emu's and a loan kangaroo.
The camp site was clean and far enough of the road that the noise of passing traffic wasn't to
bad, they had fire places set out, picnic tables and a trusty old drop box toilet (thankfully we have a toilet in the van) The sign in the toilet said: Yes this is a drop toilet, Yes the seat is loose and may fall off, Yes spiders live in the toilet and under the seat. I think I would rather go on the side of the road than face that. But people did use it. I guess at the end of the day if you gotta go you gotta go.

Great Australian Bight Stunning

Mum and the boys, John saying mum step back further, further. I wonder what he was getting at LOL

dad and the boys, a little to close to the edge for mums liking

In the morning we completed our quick pack up routine and hit the road again. Today we would be crossing the border into Western Australia. I had been advised by the border quarantine in SA that it was ok to take frozen fruit and veg interstate, so quickly before leaving any apples, potatoes, onions, carrots etc that where in the fridge where transferred to the freezer. We stopped at the mouth of the Great Australian bight. What a sight. Beautiful, its a shame we are just ahead of the whales as that would have been a real treat. Seeing the ocean meeting the dessert is a weird concept, but amazing to see.
Pulling up at the quarantine station in the middle of now where under a big dunlop tyre like the kind you find over race tracks, I have grapes that we hadn't managed to get through to surrender and know that everything else is ok. (so we thought)
 How can I describe the gentleman who did our inspection hhmmm, eager, keen, new to the job, straight down the line. The guy was 6 foot tall and quite solid he wanted to go through the car getting the kids to lift their feet, then the freezer(engel in the car), it wasn't good enough for us to open the door he needed to do this for himself, then into the van. Starting with the fridge which was fine as I had already taken everything and put it in the freezer in the morning and then he went into the freezer. "Ah ha" he says, I explained what the guy at SA said. His response "well he is only state law, Iam Federal law and what I say is what goes!" OMG I again said I was just doing what I thought was ok and then he asked about the bin. Did I have any fruit  or veg scraps? I said yes and then showed him. He wanted me to go through and individually remove all veg scraps from the bin. My response "mate if you want it, then you take it all! Its impossible to get every little piece without getting all the other rubbish and then have now where to clean up". He reluctantly took the bag, with all the other fresh produce.
At no point did we ever want to do the wrong thing as we would never want to be responsible for some sort of bug crossing into land where he is not wanted. We just thought being treated like humans not felons would have been nice. All in all we where stopped for about 15mins.
Mean while 3 other cars pull up in the next lane. The quarantine man in that lane was about 5 foot 5 and about 5 foot wide. He walked to the drivers window on each car and said " have you got and fresh fruit, veg or honey?" they replied no and he set them on their way no inspection. Go figure!
Anyway that broke the monotony of the flat plains and we continued on still with about 500kms to go.
We had another stop just another 50kms up the road we needed to transfer the fuel from the jerry cans into the car. Thank god we had brought it with us. The cost of fuel at the actual town of Nullabor was$2.09.9 a litre and when we need 130litres well that's a lot of money. Continuing on again the kids becoming a little restless I found a 12 volt charger for ds in my door, they where stoked except when the realised it would only charge one at a time. Deciding that none was better than fighting over 1 I said no one could play until we got to camp for the night as it would be charged by then. They got back to drawing and singing. They had heard a song on the radio called crocodile roll which they found very amusing and laughed at each other as they sang it over and Over and OVer and OVER.

Norseman the main street roundabout

Finally we came to a town called Balladonia and stopped in at the road house at $198.9 cents a litre we only brought what we needed to get us through to Norseman and what we hope will be cheaper fuel. The roadhouse was very clean and well presented and really well stocked considering where it is. It has an airstrip running behind it and a camel museum on the side. I made some lunch and we took of again, Norseman was in our sights and we where nearly across. Not long now.
We came into Norseman and it was nothing at all like I had expected. It is a really old mining town which looks so run down, but we had done it! We had successfully crossed the Nullabor. We stopped at visitor info to see about booking ahead in Esperance only to be told it was the Easter weekend (I had forgotten) and the whole place was fully booked out.From Kalgoorlie to Esperance to Albany there was nothing. The lady did offer to call the Norseman caravan park as she was sure they would have something. I declined politely as I knew roadside camping was going to be a better option. I frantically started calling friends back home who I knew had contacts in Esperance and had no luck there either.
Looks like we wont be having a couple of days in Esperance after all. So we called ahead to John and Tove our hosts on the station we are working on. To our luck they wanted us sooner rather than later, so we said we would be seeing them the following night for dinner. We where still to far away to make it tonight.

Esperance form the viewing platform

We stayed in a road side stop about 100kms from Esperance at a place called Grass patch. In the morning we headed into Esperance, we walked along the HUGE jetty, had lunch on the beach, had a look around at the sights, went and did some washing at the laundry mat (again because of the generator I couldn't use mine in the van) This lovely man saw us parked outside the laundry mat and saw the kids running around. He knew the town was booked out so offered us the use of his block of land just around the corner. What a gem! We thanked him and explained we had already made plans to keep going. When I had a message come through from a friend back home.Her parents live in Esperance and they would love for us to go and stay at their place. So we have gone form having no where to stay, to having 2 offers in 15 minutes. Really restores your faith, there are still some really nice people out there. Again we declined as we had now committed to an early arrival on the farm. We set forth only 250kms till we reach Newdegate our home for at least the next 4 weeks.

"Verndale" Newdegate WA