Nullarbor Day 8

Nundroo to Ceduna

95 miles/150kms

The FINAL day of the Nullarbor Plain, if you remember we set ourselves an ambitious target of five days and as you can see, we missed it by rather a lot!

That stretch was tough. I feel like no one really talks about how tough it is to cycle across Australia…and we were doing it in WINTER. Doing it in SUMMER is another level of bad ass. Every now and again Stew and I talk about @theofoster_ who we followed as he cycled across the desert in SUMMER during the BUSH FIRES back in 2020(?) I dunno how he did it, well I know a bit, with 21 litres of water/day!

I thought we’d whizz across Aus. The flat lands and the prevailing winds had me too confident. The truth is, the mass of country, the comparative smallish visa (3 months), the cold at night and the price of everything makes Aus blimmin’ tough.

Our final day to Ceduna was at least that, the final day. Every push of the pedal was one less and put Nullarbor Plain behind us. And when we got to Ceduna we had four nights in a cabin to rest up.

It was a headwindy day and pretty tough, some undulating hills which, though small, were a lot after everything we’d done the 7 days previous.

The roads were pretty quiet, except the monstrous dump trucks that were being transported. Absolutely huge things travel across Aus. You see all sorts and you don’t really become numb to it, it’s just another level of transportation that you don’t see anywhere else in the world.

As we got into Ceduna we had to do a little check at quarantine. The guy asked if we had any veg. I had half an onion which I forgot to throw away. Turns out, onions could go through. Potatoes strictly forbidden.

We arrived in pitch black darkness, but we made it.

In Ceduna, there’s a Burger King. The first sign of civilisation; where there’s people, there’s fast food. We went straight there, loaded up then off to our hotel which was a bargain at £40/night with breakfast; the best deal in the whole of Aus.

And just like that, Nullarbor Plain was done. We finally felt like we’d got some distance behind us. When were in Perth it felt like we were going no where fast.

We were roughly 1/3rd across Australia.