The next day it was more driving, on more long roads, reaching one point Lachie told us was “The edge of the world.” Which was really just a lower portion of plain, however its positioning and the way that it seemed to stretch on for ever did make it seem quite edge of the world like, I think perhaps the lack of anything on the plain might have contributed that effect too. Then off to Eucla, a charming little telegraph town, we stopped by a sand bank, with a chair on it, moving past this welcome we came to the town, one long departed building. The place had been buried by sandstorms a while ago and simply left to fall apart.
The south coastline happened to run quite close to the road, so a viewing was natural, the first being our lunch stop. It was obvious that here was where the plateau ended, in a big long line the ground fell away in an incline that reached down to rather harsh looking beaches, perhaps that was just the weather though. The second time was rather more dramatic, forget what Lachie said earlier about the edge of the world, this would also be the edge of the plateau but the difference being instead of a slope the ground just was and then wasn’t, here we were standing on massive cliffs that went as far as you could see in both directions, a sheer drop with the waves angrily pummelling the base of the cliffs we were on and the wind threatening to knock you over, quite humbling really, and the only thing between us and Antarctica was water, and maybe some sharks.
That night was perhaps our most interesting camping wise, we went off the road and up to what used to be the road from west to east. Just off this ancient road there was an old petrol station, which had been abandoned when the road got moved and it went out of business, and this was where we stayed. It was complete with a ghost house, barn, shed, outside ‘dunny’ and even its own car graveyard. Now you might be wondering what the hell a car graveyard is, perhaps that’s not even the right name for it as no cars were buried but that’s what I’m calling it, it being about a hundred rusted out, broken, wrecked cars. The whole place was utterly fascinating, and is now an infamous little shelter for passers by who know of it.
I wandered about the place with Nic, taking photos of cars, lots and lots of photos of cars, we found a funnel web hole, Lachie on his way back from searching for something he never found and eventually when we wandered up to the old barn we found Linda (a friend of Helen who was naturally lovely) sitting in the doorway looking quite creepy, it turned out she had liked the place because it was away from the main goings on of everyone else and felt very peaceful, to me it was just creepy, things left about as if people expected to come back.
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