I love a good road trip. It is one of my favourite things to do.
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There is something about packing up the car and hitting the open road with no time frame or full destination in mind that appeals to me.
I love nothing more than heading off and exploring new places.
It is probably why I have done so many decent-sized road trips over the years.
I have just returned this week from my most recent to Western Australia.
That’s a long way, I hear you say.
And it was — a total of 9072km to be precise.
And it is not the first time I have done that trip. I was on trip three on that road.
The benefit of making the trip in a car rather than flying is that I can stop whenever I want. And believe me, I want to a lot.
I love taking photos and do it at every opportunity I get.
Road shots are among the photos I really like. And more than 9000km sure does provide plenty of opportunities for that.
It also means I saw plenty of road surfaces.
After having been driving around on Goulburn Valley roads a lot in recent times, I was interested to see how the rest of the country would stack up.
The results were telling.
I drove across pretty much the entire country and the worst section of road I drove on was Echuca Rd between Mooroopna and the turnoff to Kyabram at Lancaster-Mooroopna Rd.
The second worst section was the Great Eastern Hwy between Perth and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
But, as we all know, neither of these roads are as bad as the Goulburn Valley Hwy after heading north from Shepparton.
But I digress.
One of the fun parts about road trips is that you get to see all the little interesting things along the way.
Some people say a trip across the Nullabor is boring, but it really isn’t.
There are things to hop out and see.
I interspersed my 700km or so daily on the road with little side trips to check out things along the way.
There’s an outdoor windmill museum in Penong that is worth hopping out at and stretching your legs as you gaze up at about 20 windmills, including the largest in Australia.
Not far away is Lake McDonnell — pink on one side of a causeway you drive along and blue on the other.
You have to get the right kind of weather for the pink though, but when you do, like I did on this trip, it is a really unique thing to see.
Just before the border into Western Australia, there is a statue of a giant kangaroo holding a jar of vegemite at Border Village.
It’s worth the stop for a photo just because it is so odd.
Twenty kilometres away, Eucla has a hidden gem — an old telegraph station hidden among the sand dunes, that is worth a look at.
And the drive behind the Eucla township itself — and I use the word township loosely — is worth it as you are sitting high on the road and you can look as it drops down eventually to the sea.
Or there are the cliffs stretching along the Great Australian Bight that are well worth dropping into to look at, with lots of short walking paths to viewing points.
And if you go at the right time of year — which it isn’t at the moment — you can also see whales.
Speaking of whales, there is a whale statue at the Nullabor Roadhouse.
On my drive over, it looked a little odd and out of place among the dry and dusty car park.
On the way home, however, it really came into its own after rains left huge puddles, including some quite close to the statue, making it look like it was at home.
Only a few days after I finished crossing the Nullabor, a considerable section of it was closed due to flooding.
Perhaps the whale statue is not an odd thing after all.
There are also plenty of signs warning of camels, wombats and kangaroos crossing the road.
I didn’t see any of these animals — apart from a few dead kangaroos — but I did spot a dingo as it darted across the road in front of me and then watched from the scrub as I stopped to take a photo.
The Nullabor also has the longest straight stretch of road in Australia — known as the 90 mile straight (144.8km for those wondering what that is in the metric system) — and the signposts are a mecca for travellers to snap a photo to document their journey.
Coming from Shepparton, where everything is flat, the first time I drove this road many years ago, I was surprised to find plenty of rises and dips in this part of the road.
There are also plenty of big road train trucks going across the highway between South Australia and Western Australia, with four trailers very common.
It’s always a thrill if you manage to pull alongside one at a roadstop and manage to snap a photo of it with your car, especially if your car is as small as mine.
The joys of this road trip were that while my end destination was to travel around in Western Australia, the trip to get there across the Nullabor was definitely part of the fun.
Senior Journalist