Poochera Hotel breakfast and dining room

As I mentioned in the last paragraph of my last post my accommodation did include a continental breakfast of which I didn’t indulge. I wasn’t feeling immediately hungry when I awoke and felt like I could get a larger heartier breakfast further along the road in Ceduna.

Leaving Poochera it was basically a case of turn right and continue, there wouldn’t really be any more complicated directions until I got much deeper into Western Australia.

Ceduna was quickly reached in about an hour and a half, it was at the Mobil petrol station on the outskirts of Ceduna that I filled my ute up with diesel and myself up with a big cooked breakfast. This had become my standard thing, to have a large breakfast, have just a muesli bar or something like it for lunch and then dinner.
I found on my last few road trips that eating a small breakfast and then lunch and dinner just made me feel a bit bloated and fat. At least with a big breakfast early on in the day then in the middle of the day if I want to stop and have a walk around I can and not be beholden to finding somewhere for lunch or something.
Also as often a roadhouse will be the only option I prefer a breakfast menu to a lunch menu for its range of options.

It was today that I actually stopped and did the touristy thing of stopping, taking photos and looking at stuff. Mostly the sea and the Great Australian Bite.

Classic beauty shot of the Great Australian Bite.

It is amazing to look at the jagged coast line of Australia, something that you can only see by driving out to it. Or maybe flying to it by small aircraft of helicopter.
But it’s far from everything and when you get out there it’s amazing to look at.

I stopped at two of the photo opportunity / lookout spots along the way to look and take photos and it was amazing.
At the second location I saw some whales.

At the first location the drop into the bite it sheer, you can see the jagged rough edge of the Australian coast line where there are cliffs that drop to the sea. At the second it LOOKED less sheer, it looked almost driveable.
Albeit in a 4x4.
But I don’t think it is, I think it just looks flatter because there looks to be paths, but I think you could still easily end up in the sea if you attempted to drive along these what seem like paths.

My accommodation for the night was something I hadn’t booked and was either going to be Border Village (a petrol station, roadhouse and motel), Eucla or Mundrabilla.

But first I had to get through Western Australia quarantine.
It’s not as stringent as Tasmania’s quarantine, which involves dogs.
But it’s still more extreme than the fruit fly bins anyone who’s driven interstate would be familiar with.

I was asked do I have any; fresh fruit and vegetables, honey and any hessian sacks that might have contains potatoes.
I also had to open up my glove box, centre console, back doors and tailgate. Plus my esky.
Satisfied I wasn’t carrying any of these things I was allowed into Western Australia.

I’d decided not to stay at Eucla, which from what I’d read was expensive for not very much and decided to continue onto Mundrabilla.
Also I’d lost 2 hours off the clock upon crossing into Western Australia.
Although Ecula does exist in its own weird timezone which doesn’t really help. It’s 45 minutes behind Western Australia, despite being in Western Australia.

It doesn’t help at all really, but as I discovered at Mundrabilla time doesn’t really matter either regarding food and what not, so time literally becomes something of an illusion.

Mundrabilla is a roadhouse. Supposedly it has the cheapest fuel on the Eyre highway. It is certainly (as I would discover later on my return trip) much more friendly than Border Village.

$95 for a room at Mundrabilla.
The room was fine.
There was a bathroom which was probably built in the 1960s. The outside of the accommodation had a look of a 1970s primary school.

Outside of Mundrabilla accommodation block

One very notable thing about Mundrabilla and indeed all the roadhouses along this stretch of the Eyre is that they’re not connected to anything. So power, water, those things we take for granted they need to generate themselves.
This wasn’t noted anywhere I could see at Mundrabilla, but having read about this prior to departing while researching my trip I know that the water is drawn up from (somewhat salty) bores and then desalinated via reverse osmosis. This requires power, as does everything else that you use in day to day life.
That power is generated using diesel generators.
They’re noisy.
You are not going to sit outside and enjoy the serenity of the night. Well, you can if you take some photos.
But not if you’re wanting to listen to the night or any other guff like that.

I didn’t have any issue with the diesel generators because they’re constant, it was noisy yes, but it’s a constant drone. I can deal with that.

There was an interesting menu range at the roadhouse, not just the standard fare of steak and chicken parma. There was pasta, curry, soup and I think even a salad.
I opted for steak, which was perfectly cooked and along with its chips also included a pretty good salad. Again kinda surprising since it was reasonably priced and Mundrabilla is about an hour west of the West Australian / South Australian border which means it’s not close to anything.

They also had fresh cake for sale.
I like cake and had been craving some cake for a day or two now, so that was a nice thing to see for sale.
Baked that day I was informed.
Everyone I encountered at Mundrabilla was very friendly in fact, it was oddly a highlight especially as I would come to find out on my return trip staying at Border Village which had been the other option for today’s accommodation.

There were very few problems with Mundrabilla. None that I found awful, but things I think people may rate it down for.
I looked at the ceiling in the bathroom in my room and there was...a degree of mould on the ceiling. I attributed that to the fact that the bathroom wasn’t vented. I looked for but couldn’t find an extractor fan switch.
That’s not really an issue, you use a bathroom to take ‘evacuate yourself’ and have a shower in. I left the bathroom door closed and didn’t really think about it.
Mobile phone reception isn’t amazing, but it depends. I got perfectly fine reception sitting in the roadhouse dining area, I checked Twitter, my email etc, but in my room which was number 10 and on the edge of the property the reception was poor to non-existent.
It wasn’t an issue for me, and really I hadn’t been expecting to get any phone reception, so to find that I could get 3G reception was a welcome surprise, even if it was only in parts of the room.
TV reception was snowy, at best. Again this was not something I was expecting to have at all, so it was nice to see I could watch a bit of the evening news, especially considering the patchy phone coverage in the room. But it wasn’t something I needed. I had with me my phone and a Seagate Wireless Plus drive which functions as my portable media server when I’m out and about.

Going to sleep the drone of the diesel generators didn’t keep me awake, I put a podcast on and set the timer; fell asleep and slept soundly until the next morning uninterrupted by the diesel generators or passing road trains.