Winter 2019 - OZ 13 Eucla, WA

2019 - OZ  13   Eucla, WA

Driving, Driving!

Straight Roads As Seen From the Passenger's Seat

One section of the road is perfectly straight.

I mean STRAIGHT!

90 Miles (146KM) no turn in the road.

Not even a little bit. I bet you could lock up your steering wheel and just take a nap for an hour and you would still be going STRAIGHT.

Speed limit is 100 km/hour and most Aussies drive like that, they don’t speed. There is no town on this road; our next town for the night is Eucla. So I sit in the car, look straight ahead, watch for camels, emus, kangaroos, dingoes or other larger beasts and just let the car take us forward.

 

The Warning

Now you might think this is boring but surprisingly, I was never bored on this road trip. The landscape is so strange, so different that every bush along the way surprises me. There are some abandoned cars alongside the road, cars that had accidents and then were left there. Why bring a severely damaged car to?  Yes, to? There is no place better to take it than just off the side of the road. I am not sure if a scrap truck comes by to haul them away so that it looks neater, but I was driving in a different reality while driving in WA.

An Abandoned Truck

Boy are you in trouble if you have car problems, so make sure your car is in good shape, has all the fluids, especially gasoline. Having water and some food is essential here. Signs warn you of that, heed the advice, it comes from experience.

While I was driving, questions popped up in my head that I could not find the answers to.

Did people live here?  Surprisingly, the answer was a for sure “Yes”!

How did they eat or drink in these desolate places?  How do animals survive under these harsh conditions? The land surrounding me is inhospitable, tough. I am not sure if I could ever cut it in the Outback. One must be a certain kind of person, a tougher sort than I know I am.

Information Re Some Early Settlers

The old pioneers in the U.S. had it tough, but I believe the pioneers in Australia had it even tougher. Amazing how life is supported in those stretches of “nothingness”.