10 Day Adelaide to Perth Wildlife Experience across the Nullarbor

What an amazing trip!!!

I am too lazy to write everything down again.

A nice and detailed itinerary of this trip is available here, I will write about general things regarding the journey.

First of all – this tour was awesome!!! It is hard to remember everything we did, I am glad I took so many photos. I am overwhelmed with impressions.

Of the 9 nights of this trip I only spent 2 with a roof above me, and that was at Coodlie Park. The other nights we slept in swags under the open sky, something I had never done before. And the australian night sky is more than impressive!
Before you ask what a swag is: it is a bedroll. Basically a matress in a bag that you can put anywhere to sleep in and roll up to stow it away. Inside the swag you put your sleeping bag. Your head stays out and looks into the night. According to my guide they were invented by the germans in World War 1.

My guide, Benchy, was crazy, a mad man, a nutcase, and we all loved it! We, that was only 5 people: a girl from England, a man from Israel, a woman from Luxembourg, a man from Israel and me. We hooked up twice with the group going in the opposite direction (Perth to Adelaide), once at Coodlie Park and once at Cape le Grande Nationalpark. This was very nice, so for a limited time we were ~15 people plus 2 guides that made fun of each other all the time. Benchy and Craig even started a water battle inside the bus! Anyway, the second time we picked up 3 people that did a Perth to Perth tour, so for the second half of the trip we were 8 people plus guide. The newcomers were 2 dutch men and 1 swiss woman.

On the way across the endless Nullarbor and the 90 mile straight road we took some funny photos. Our mad guide had funny hats for all of us and made us wear them ^^

3 nights were real bushcamp without electricity and running water. This was a great new experience for me, I loved it!

At one bushcamp we even encountered whild horses, called brumbies. It is needless to say that we saw heaps of kangaroos, wallabies, seals, dolphins, birds of prey, wombats, even camels! It really is THE wildlife experience 😀

We did several nice hikes of different lenght and intensity, but were always rewarded with a spectacular view and mobile phone coverage 😀 during this trip I did use my phone and laptop much less than I usually would, due to the lack of power and reception. This of course added to the perfect wildlife experience!

At Coodlie Park, home of the Nullarbor Traveller, the owner Hassie took us onto a wildlife tour at night on the huge property (a rectangle of 3 km x 5 km including private beach). We saw wombat caves, sheep and kangaroos at night. Then he told us about the sky. At almost any night you can recognize the milky way in the sky here, but on the clear nights you can see several other planets with your bare eyes. Mars for example looks like a red star in the sky. Hassie also explained us how to find out where south is using the starsign of the Southern Cross. And he showed us a starsign he had found himself, a huge duck in the sky, called Hassie’s Duck 😉

I cannot believe this awesome tour is over. The roadtrip was so much fun. Great people, awesome guide who played good music all the time, great luck with the weather, and awesome sights of nature. What most beautiful beaches we have seen! I went for a swim in either the sea, a dam or a creek on most of the days, so coping without a shower for 2-3 days wasn’t so much of a problem. I miss sleeping in my swag already!

Of course, with such an awesome tour I have taken a huge amount of photos. Enjoy! And if you have questions – just ask me 🙂

By the way – we drove 4380 kilometres in these 10 days!

From 2012-02-22+9 Nullarbor Travel. Posted by Philipp Hübner on 2/25/2012 (284 items)