On the road again...........Tuesday 2nd August

The two intrepid road chicks have arrived into Ceduna - yay!!

Finally at the Big 4 Tourist Park in Ceduna - oh, such joy! This is 5 star luxury compared to Eucla Oasis Pass Motel! OMG!! WTF!!  OMG!!

Eucla - well what can I say....let's see.  Oh yes, for $140 (yes, you may gasp, we did!) we had the joy of cracked mirrors, mould on the bathroom shower tiles, orange mould from the showerhead, cracked basin in the bathroom, no tissues or shampoo/conditioner, a luscious assortment of dead bugs in the overhead light fitting, dust and dustmites covering most surface, window that would not shut and flywire that was broken, dirty carpet, cigarette burn in the sheets, two lonely powerpoints that required my long lead so that Claire could use her CPAP unit, a television that is older than me and a split system airconditioner that you had to stand on a chair to turn it on.  Remotes....what are they?
Food was good at the restaurant, but at Melbourne prices - and the seafood catch was local!
Headed off first thing in the morning and didn't stop for breakfast - not at their prices. Headed 13 kms down the road to Border Village and had a very yummy ham & cheese toastie with coffee and served with a smile!
Met a very nice truckie when parking the trailer at the motel.  He was fascinated that women could back a trailer!  He enjoyed having a good chat about gliding and nearly fell over that 10 year old tyres were originally going to be left on the trailer with the expectation of travelling 3,970 kms!  Yup!!

If you happen to take to the road this way in your life, bypass Eucla and head to Border Village! Better accommodation and cheaper for what you get. Also the chef at Border Village is very, very good!

The trek was uneventful, thank goodness and I do believe that the roo repellers DO work!  A little Wally the Wombat was ambling across the road and 100 metres before we got to him, he started to really scoot across the road, so he obviously heard the sound and moved his little toosh to safety!

The Nullabor Plain is a long, straight road, but so varying in scenery. From totally treeless for 360 degrees and then moving into scrub land and finally sown fields as you get closer to larger towns, like Ceduna.

"Agnes" the agricultural trailer behaved even with the brake lever gone to "road god" heaven.

 At Nullabor Roadhouse we stopped for coffee and met up with a couple, Elizabeth and Peter, that we shared dinner with at Norseman. Grey nomads doing their thing, and were fascinated by two women scooting across Australia in 2 weeks.  Yes, it fascinates us as well!!
Lovely people and we keep crossing paths with many of the same people with caravans as we stop and they pass, and they stop and we pass!  It's like old home week in Ceduna today as we waved to all the people we have met on the road.  The above photo is common across the Nullabor.  Claire is showing Peter the Thelma and Louise video of our impression of Willie Nelson's "On the road again"!  He near wet himself! It's too large to download here, but check Facebook.  We keep playing it and falling about laughing.  Hilarious!!

Note dirty "Agnes" in the background.  Needs love and a good paint and greasing....

Claire has now perfected the two finger salute and is having some success I may add!

We arrived into Ceduna at 1530 hours.  This was a good time for us as we had not had a good night's sleep and Claire had a recurring nightmare from watching ABC2 4 Corners re PTSD for NSW Police the night before. I had to intervene with "Claire - wake up, your having a nightmare" - this was after 30 minutes of sleep talk and then finally moving into a full blown yell.  Wondered who was being murdered at one stage!

So finally, in Ceduna we have found skeins of wool!  At last, we can continue the charity squares for the blanket and I can continue with  my advanced lessons in plain stitch and PSSO - can't remember PSSO? Check previous blog post!! We also visited the post office and Claire sent a postcard to friends in the UK, to wit, the postmistress checked with Claire that the "UK is in England, isn't it?"
I posted back the key to the Eucla Motel that I had inadvertently stowed in the car.  Knowing that my credit card would probably be charged a good $27 to replace the key, I rang and said it was on the way!

Enjoyed a lovely meal again at the Foreshore Hotel and took some nice pics of Ceduna beach.

Unfortunately, the police have to patrol the shopping strip at Ceduna as the local indigenous people spend a lot of time loitering, yelling and screaming across the street to each other. There seems to be a disconnect and it seems to be the same people in the street as we recognised them from last time. Such a shame as it is a lovely town and big enough for all to reap the benefit.

On to Port Augusta tomorrow and if we have a good run, we will trek on through to Peterborough. :-))
From there, work our way down to Swan Hill and home.