The unbelievable excitement continues: Australia's longest straight road

June 17, 2015

I woke up before daybreak and did about twenty kilometres in the dark, before arriving at dawn at my first roadhouse, Balladonia. The roadhouses are essentially gas stations, situated approximately every 100-200 kilometres across the Nullarbor, with meals, groceries and accommodation usually also available should you happen to have had a big lotto win. I was only really interested in filling up my water bottles, but with signs posted everywhere stating that the tap water wasn’t safe to drink that didn’t look likely to happen. But then a young member of staff outside suggested that it shouldn’t be a problem to get me some water from their own rainwater supply seeing as I was on a bicycle, but that I should check with the boss inside first. In I went and met the not-so-friendly boss man, who shook his head and pointed me in the direction of the overpriced bottles of mineral water in the fridges.

Luckily I’m pretty smart, and I’d already come up with a plan to always have enough water to get me past two roadhouses, so I didn’t need to buy any as I’d got enough at Fraser Range to last me a couple of days. Also lucky was that the impressive little museum attached to the Balladonia Roadhouse was free. As I read the information boards about the wildlife and the history of the area, from aboriginal times through to the era of gold prospecting and European exploration, I was delighted to discover that there were indeed feral camels living in the wild here - a staggering 200,000 of them at that, of which I had so far seen none. Also in the museum was a surprisingly flimsy piece of the Skylab space station, which crashed nearby in the outback in 1979, the only exciting thing that ever happened at Balladonia.

Another 180 kilometres to the next roadhouse, California

I liked this variation on the yellow diamond with black animals - a black diamond with yellow animals. The kind of thing that kept me (and Sockface) sane

It was a cold misty morning, and it stayed cold all day which I thought was great as there were no flies. After a couple of hours I saw a cyclist coming the other way, a rare moment of genuine excitement for me. We stopped and exchanged pleasantries, Tomas was his name, a German citizen, and I asked him about his trip. Five years he’d been travelling, he told me, with a deep resonance of pride in his voice. He’d cycled all the way from Europe to China, worked a couple of years in Australia, cycled up to Japan, Russia, then back to China, back here now. He said all this with great immodesty and paused at the end of each sentence as if expecting me to gasp in amazement. He’d cycled 35,000 kilometres, if you can believe such a thing. I asked him what work he had done in Australia. “I farmed pigs” he said, and even seemed proud of that too. It was a strange encounter, maybe it was just his accent that made him seem so boastful, maybe he’d just been travelling too long, but either way we talked for 15-20 minutes about him, and then I’d had enough and we said goodbye and good luck. He’d asked me not one question.

Around midday I arrived at the start of Australia’s longest straight stretch of road - 146 kilometres without so much as a kink. Of course I had a headwind, although thankfully only a slight one as the road flattened out, the trees disappeared, and the tedium went up another notch.

At least there was one more moment of excitement, when the motorcyclist that I’d met briefly in Norseman came up alongside me. He’d been down to Esperance on the south coast before heading this way, which explained why he was only just catching me up now. He rode alongside and shouted against the wind “You’re making great time!” which lifted my moral. Then he offered me a can of coke, and passed it to me with neither of us stopping or slowing as we continued to ride along the straight highway. It made me feel like I was in the Tour de France, receiving drinks from my team. “How far back is the chasing group?” I screamed, although it came out as “Have you seen Mario?” but he didn’t hear me, and zoomed off.

Saw a few of these Rock Men at the side of the road. If you'd like to see these yourself be quick - Tom is planning on cycling the Nullarbor soon and these guys will probably be naked once he's through

This one seemed a bit too pleased to see me - Rock Hard Man

There was to be no further excitement as I was left to my thoughts on the long, straight road through the barren landscape. What I would have really liked would have been to see some wildlife at least. I’d been in Australia almost two weeks now and I’d still seen no live kangaroos, no koalas, no snakes, no camels, no wild emus, no wombats, no wallabies. Not even a sodding whale.

Distance completed: 1171km

Distance to go: 2639km

Days to go: 21.5

Average distance required: 122.7km/day

Today's ride: 124 km (77 miles)
Total: 42,052 km (26,114 miles)

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