What time is it?
Here is an interesting bit of trivia. How many time zones exist in WA? One? Wrong! Just after you pass the Caiguna Roadhouse there is a sign to adjust the time 45 minutes forward to the Western Central Time. This zone exists only along the highway to Eucla at the SA border, 330km to the east. There are less than 100 people living in this zone. To confuse things even more they also have Daylight savings – the rest of WA has not. So while it is 10am in Brisbane it’s 8am in Perth and 8:45 in Eucla and 10:30 in South Australia. So crossing the border into SA, I had to adjust my watch again 1:45 forward. Now I have absolutely no clue (without looking at my watch) what time it is. Even my phone is confused – on automatic setting it jumps around between the 3 time zones like Sarah on a jumping castle.
Another fact I’ve noticed. The fuel consumption is way up. While we usually average around 15 l / 100km, the consumption is now way up to nearly 19 l / 100km. Maybe they sell bad fuel at the roadhouses or maybe the constant headwind has such a big effect.
There isn’t much to say about the road to Eucla. It’s flat, long and boring. Oh- there was 3 stretches of road marked as airstrips for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
Eucla
Just before lunch-time (can’t remember which time zone I was looking at) I arrived in Eucla. I decided to check out the ruins of the old telegraph station. The 4km gravel road was pretty good and I could see some white sand dunes in the distance.
The old telegraph station is just and old ruin, getting slowly consumed by the sand. I didn’t know exactly how far it was to the beach, but the sand under my bare feet felt fantastic and so I decided to follow a little track direction beach. There was a stark contrast between the white sand, the green bushes and the grey clouds. After about 1km walking I arrived at the beach. WOW! The finest white sand I’ve ever seen, crystal clear water, gentle waves, an old timber jetty and beaches as far as the eye could see with no other humans in sight. All that was missing was a mermaid emerging out of the water. It was pure magic. I’m so fortunate to have visited such a beautiful place.
I stopped again at the border Western Australia / South Australia. Everyone travelling west has to stop and is getting searched for fruit, vegies and honey as you’re not allowed to bring those items in. The South Australian checkpoint is several hundred kilometers away at Ceduna. This means I’ve got 2 more night to eat all the healthy stuff in my van.
It’s good to have the UHF radio in the car. There are a lot of road trains on this road (albeit limited to about 38m length, up north they are up to 53m long). But there are also lots of oversized trucks going both ways. The biggest so far was 5m wide. Having the radio means you get advanced warning from the accompanying pilot vehicle and plenty of time to pull over.
The road turned now closer to the coastline with plenty of lookouts to see the Great Australian Bight. I’ve stopped at nearly every lookout. After days of not much to see it is great to get out of the car and enjoy some of the best scenery Australia has to offer.
I’ve stopped for the night about 80km after the border, only meters away from a 80m vertical cliff into the water. I certainly would have not stopped here if Sarah was with me.