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Well, we made it across the border and back in to South Australia today. We left our Mundrabilla campsite late morning as usual and headed straight to the roadhouse at Eucla to top up fuel. In our opinion Eucla is the nicest of the roadhouses on the Nullarbor, perhaps a little more modern than the others. Aside from having a view of the ocean a couple of miles south of the roadhouse, it also has a fantastic and unexpectedly beautiful garden oasis out the back complete with dense shrubbery and flowers, fountains, ponds and statues. It looks like a labour of love keeping this little oasis alive in the dessert. We also visited the telegraph museum housed here, a tribute to the hard work of the telegraphers who worked in this remote location.
The next bit of excitement today came as we drove through the quarantine check point (east to west - we don't get checked going east until Ceduna), finally leaving WA behind after nearly four months, and entering South Australia, and went through another time zone change, moving the clocks forward another 45 minutes.
Once through the border we eagerly looked forward to the lookout points where we could view the ocean, Bunda Cliffs and, we hoped, to see southern right whales on their migration path. We stopped at all four lookouts today, bumping into the same nomads at each stop, freezing our butts off as an icy cold wind prevailed, and marveling once more at those magnificent rugged limestone cliffs, this time of year awash with yellow, white and pink wild flowers. But, much to our disappointment, those elusive whales eluded us today.
We aimed to stay at Twiggy's, the dramatic cliff top camping spot we stayed in last time, but the national parks have closed off many of the cliff top camp spots supposedly because of the unstable cliffs and for regeneration purposes. Another disappointment as we'd really been looking forward to perching ourselves on the cliff edge for the afternoon in the hope of spotting whales as we drank in the incredible scenery.
We found a rest stop late afternoon and drove as far back as we could to get away from other caravans and the highway noise. Gadi had no luck setting up the satellite dish and we are hoping it's just inexperience rather than an issue with the dish.
With the time zone change we were able to enjoy daylight for longer, but the air was so bitingly cold it made it unpleasant to stay outside for long. Instead we watched the setting sun from the caravan window, enjoying the beauty of the vast open plain to one side of us and the colours of the setting sun on the other.
We warned up inside the caravan. Dinner cooked inside tonight (for added warmth) and then we settled down to watch downloaded TV series.
Good night from the Nullarbor. Our fingers are crossed that tomorrow we may see whales before our desert leg is over.
Night night xx
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