Travelling the Nullabor

Ok just checked fuelwatch website and petrol is actually cheaper at the BP today.
It is LPG that is always cheaper at the caltex.
if you want uptodate fuel prices try
www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au

That's a change 1arm. BP has always been dearest when we've been through, or i have checked prices. Perhaps it's getting competitive as prices are supposedly starting to drop.

Bp is still dearer for gas today
Evan

Good drive through the well signed Discovery Trail. Very well maintained dirt road. Watch out for the 'Lion Ore' trucks roaring past you. Can camp at Lake Johnston.

Motherhen, I got stuck behind one of them for the next 50km (he just pulled out in front of me from a side road). It was impossible to pass the sod, so I backed off and stopped for lunch at Lake Johnston (nice picnic spot there).
Gerry

Hi Gerry

With the caravan, we were travelling slower than they were, and they roared past without warning, or came at us from the other direction, but it is their road. Also other mining co vehicles travelled past at speed.

We were tempted to take the old Hyden Road, which leaves around 20 k North of Norseman. It was the only one on the most recent map I'd purchased so we went up to it without knowing about the changes, but when we got to the unmaintained 4wd only road warning sign, i eventually convinced my husband to back out. I then realised that my trusty old map book was more up to date. We thought it would meet the new road soon, but it doesn't, so just as well we didn't venture on. So any adventurous treckers out there willing to try it and give a report?

Lake J looked like a nice spot to camp, but we were travelling home, and had already stopped for lunch. Just noted it for the future. We travel further south, through the Frank Hann NP when taking the shortest route home. That is a lovely drive too.

an alternative to this way is to head left at noresy and go to lake king via Peak charles and the frank Hahn NP

Motherhen,
That road you mention further north of Norseman is the original to Hyden, and is no longer maintained. Made the mistake of taking it about 4 years ago, and it's all washed out in places, so the road out of Norseman across Lake Dundas is the one to take.
There is a nice camping spot about half-way between Nors and Hyden called the Breakaways (signposted) which is a nice overnighter. As the name implies, it is breakaway country, with some good shade, but no water.
Davoe, been a fair while since I took the Peak Charles road (mid-90's) - it had been severely burnt out not long before, but should have regrown a lot by now. Peak Charles is a nice place and worth the climb. Back in the early 70's, it was nicely wooded at the base, but the fire destroyed every large tree around.
Gerry

My last visit there it was strting to look good but another fire has been through but I havnt checked out what hapened with that. was still some fantastic old stands of trees on the track to peak elenor I hope thwy werent burnt

Hi Davoe and Happy Birthday

I still haven't climbed (or even driven in to) Peak Charles. When my man is on the homeward run, their's no stopping him, and when we came through in April, it was bucketing down. It is still a nice drive through that way. Patches were fairly freshly burnt, and others in various stages of recovery. It seems fire takes out some every year.

!MPG:10!

All,

We're kinda stealing Alan's original posting about the Nullabor, but that won't be the first time nor the last I'd be guessing :-)

I travelled east via Hyden to Norseman a month or so back, then toured around the Dundas Nature Reserve along the old telegraph track east of Norseman, then headed south along the Fraser Range road to Salmon Gums. See PostID: 38321 for the story.

Getting to the end of the day we planned to camp at Peak Charles on our return journey to Perth, and following our Geosciences 250k raster maps, and the QPA Road and Tracks 500k paper maps, we were heading north from Salmon Gums and turned off the highway into Hanson Road to come into Peak Charles on a southern route, not from the north which is the main way. Looked liked an option on the maps.

However Hanson Road stopped at a farmers fence, despite the map showing it going ahead. We followed other tracks on the map trying to find our way north to the main Lake King road but again found our way blocked by fences and paddocks. Eventually with the sun setting we camped by the rail line and had a great night.

However, the point of my post is for anyone to not try to take this shortcut if they are coming up from Esperance way and spy this shortcut on the map - don't do it - it's road closed. We tried finding farmers at home to ask a way through but no one was home and the light was closing in. With time to spare, it may be possible to sort your way through the paddocks with local assistance and permissions, and would save backtracking going into Peak Charles - but I'd imagine it's all closed off.

I could hijack the thread further and ponder how come farmers can block off what appear to be designated roads on maps, but that'd be naughty.....!

I didn't enjoy the drive to Lake King along this road nearly as much as the Hyden Norseman road, scenery is better to the north as are the road conditions - as of late September this year.

Til next time
tim

those maps are from the late 60s!!!! I did find another way in or at least I think it was it was too overgrown even for me!!. how was the FR track last i saw it had been graded but wasn quickly regathering deadfall from burnt trees. I reckon the fires that trashed to dundas NR would have been right up there in austalias largest fires - it burnt for months

Hi Davoe,

I've just posted a couple of pikkies on the Dundas Nature reserve thread PostID: 38321 and you've responded.

Northern part of FR road was very overgrown as you say. Tree fall each 50m at least led to slow travelling. Some of the way I stood up on the back step of the cruiser and jumped off to clear the path, garbo style, but got a bit concerned if they picked up a bit of speed and I fell off, it might have been a bit lonely for a while - not much out there!! We drove over a lot of the tree fall, around others and removed the rest. No punctures for us showed we did the right thing.

Southern part of FR road much easier travelling, but still slow. Road in good nick, no corrogations to speak of.

Agree that fire must have been huge. Such a vast area of land burnt out.

Some interesting old stuff out there, remains of old dams from stock routes etc. Perplexed as why the FR range does that huge loop south of telegraph track, when country appears flat and with no boggy area apparent.

Tim

after it had jst been graded it had no deadfall so you could go about 40 and my god all the twists and turns mqany nearly going back on themselves I assume it was coz it meandered aound all the original big trees before they were burnt

excellent website I was panning to do some of those trips before I moved to Perth

Yes we are still in the planing stage, there is some good reading on the site

Richard

Sorry about that

Happy Birthday Davoe

Nice point John.

Even with the long stretch of bitumen joining ADL and PER most of the roadhouses sell little more than fuel and have almost no help available and even less availability of spare anything including tyres.

And quite a bit of it is out of the range of the normal auto club service centres without paying extra.

Cheers,
Andrew.

Came back east 3 days ago with a very strong headwind and had fuel problems because of same. Penong was cheaper than Mundrabilla and Ceduna for diesel but as Yalata is closed down it is more important to keep filling up and make sure you have your tank topped up. It is no fun finding your tank getting that close to empty in retrospect I should have topped up at when we decided to push on to a better camp.No whales remaining at head of bight this week but saw them 4wks ago. Agree that Fraser station is a better option than Balladonia or Norseman even, certainly worth doing one way.

Cheers mac

I endorse Mac's comments - now we fill where we can even if it is dearer than Norseman.

First trip across Nullabor we discovered Mundrabilla prices after we'd filled at Caiguna, so saved room on the way home, getting to Mundrabilla with tank ready to fill. Their supplies were delayed (it happens) and they were only allowing 20 litres per vehicle to get travellers to Madura - one of the dearest on the planet. My husband calculated what we'd need to get to Norseman. He was sweating on the empty gauge through the hills to Norseman - where we got more that the stated capacity in the fuel tanks by a few litres! He hadn't counted on the effect of the towing (we had picked up the caravan) through the hills. Not worth the risk, he now says.

This time i noticed that Nundroo has changed to SAFF and was much cheaper than it's previous franchise, but Penong is the best.