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Streaky Bay
22 April, 2007
Streaky Bay, South Australia
We have successfully made our way across the vast and barren Nullarbor Plain, reaching the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia! As soon as we left the Nullarbor and reached the peninsula we were greeted in a most welcome way — fresh oysters! The town of Ceduna, SA, essentially marks the end of the isolated Nullarbor, and the information booth, just beyond the fruit-fly quarantine check-point, adjoins to an oyster shack! Needless to say, we stopped for a couple dozen, and they turned out to be some of the best we'd ever had! Truly delicious!
Beyond the oysters, though, Ceduna didn't seem to have much to offer us, so we drove the 108 km (67.5 miles) south to Streaky Bay, which is also famous for oysters (and shark attacks). We are now camped on the beach in a very nice caravan park.
South Australia already seems like our kind of place. The people are much more open than the Sandgropers (Western Australians) — people in the caravan park smile and say ‘good morning’, and our neighbors have invited us to join them for a beer around their campfire. Campfires were banned in Western Australia, so the camping experience always felt incomplete. Even the beer is more similar to Wisconsin beer — and we've heard rumors of bratwurst — and the prices on just about everything are relatively better.
The unfortunate thing is we're going to have to make some hard decisions about where to go next. Vast distances and limited time are forcing us to decide between Uluru (Ayer's Rock), Coober Pedy (where Mad Max was filmed), Alice Springs, Melbourne and the Great Barrier Reef. If we were to follow the route we'd originally planned, we'd have to cover some 7,500 km (4,687.5 miles) in the next 20 or so days. Added to the 3,500 km (2,187.5 miles) we've already driven, we'd travel some 11,000 km (6,875 miles) in less than two months. Too much. We'd both really like to see the Great Barrier Reef, so it's not likely that we'll make it to Uluru. It's a shame, but we'd either have to extend our tickets significantly or make some tough choices.