Monday 9th April 2012..........
Once over the SA/WA border, the scenery has changed from the coastal vistas. From Eucla to Madura, the highway runs below the southern edge of the Hampton Tableland, an expansive plateau. The Hampton Tableland escarpment once bordered the sea, but a combination of geological uplift and falling sea levels left the cliffs high and dry and formed a new shoreline to the south.
Madura nestles in woodlands at the foot of Madura Pass where the highway climbs west from the coastal plain to the top of Hampton Tablelands. Madura consists of little more than a roadhouse complex and, of course, another hole along the Nullarbor Links Golf Course........'Brumby's Run'. When we arrived at the golf hole two horses were standing right behind the sign. Their owners, who were also travelling, had them out of the horse float to feed them. Good photo time!
We continued our travels and accomplished another two Nullarbor Links Golf hole, one at Cocklebiddy.......'Eagles Nest' .....then onto Caiguna.........'90 Mile Straight'.
We are enjoying the Nullarbor Links golf course. It is heaps of fun, breaks up the journey, most of the time fairly rugged and very challenging!
Just west of Caiguna we started our travels along the, 90 mile straight, the longest stretch of straight road in Australia and one of the longest in the world, named pre metric days and the distance converts to 146.6 klms.
5klms west of Caiguna is the Caiguna Blowhole – a small but deep hole in the limestone. Found throughout the Nullarbor Plain, blowholes are formed by erosion of the bedrock and named because the differences in pressure between internal cave systems (that they vent) and the surface regularly cause air to blow out of the hole or be sucked in through the hole. Today you could feel the cold air being blown out of the hole.
We only travelled a further 30klms to our next camp spot for the night. A lovely couple we were talking to at the Caiguna Blowhole also camped at the same spot so we sat around and chatted till it was time to get some dinner prepared before the sunset. We are now in WA time zone and the sun set around 5.30pm.
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