One of the things I’ve been saying to people who’ve asked me about this trip is the insight it’s given me into West Australians. The psychology of them, as a population compared to the eastern states, the sense of isolation.

It’s a very long way from Victoria to Western Australia.
It’s not something you can do on impulse.
You can for Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide and even Brisbane or Tasmania. There’s no huge expanses (fine there’s water for Tasmania but on the ferry it’s not you driving), there’s no areas of nothing. Or the special sort of nothing that the Eyre Highway is.

South Australian farmland–one side of the road

The other thing people have mentioned, which I said in my introduction is why I didn’t visit X or Y. I never intended to, and looking back on this trip, I’m glad I focused on what I did.

South Australian farmland–other side of the road

It’s been similarly with my other road trips, I’ve gone on them to go to one particular thing, to see a particular place and to drive the gaps in between. Then I’ll return in the future and see other things, once I’m familiar with the passage to each of the capital cities then I can expand and go further out from that.
The only city I’ve been back to more than once is Canberra, and enjoyed it each time.

Having done my road trip to Western Australia I fully intend to return, by road again. I massively enjoyed the trip over there. The isolation, the desert, the remoteness.

If there was one black spot on the whole journey it was Border Village.
But there’s always one bad spot anywhere when you’re travelling, at least it was on the way back and didn’t leave too much of a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve learnt from the experience and know to steer clear of it. It also doubly makes me mistrust anything said on TripAdvisor.

I did use TripAdvisor here and there when planning this trip (and for the most part completely ignored the reviews on that site, usually to my benefit), one thing reviewers seemed to bang on about is water pressure at locations along the Nullarbor. Which is an odd thing for reviewers to fixate on.
I didn’t notice any problems with water pressure at all the places I stayed at; Poochera, Mundrabilla, Border Village. They all had perfectly fine water pressure.
There could be a few ‘howevers’ attached to my experience and other people’s judgments. I shower at night, and because I liked to get an early night’s sleep I was showering early in the evening, so there’d probably not be a lot of people taxing the water system, be it pumps or mains pressure.

Welcome to the Great Western Woodlands sign at McDermid Rock.

Something interesting I found upon returning was people’s ideas of the Eyre Highway / the Nullarbor’s sense of “isolation”. People seem to think that it’s a remote, isolated location. It’s not.
Not really.
There are roadhouses spaced apart every not even 200 kilometres apart.
There is a surprising amount of mobile phone reception.
At all the roadhouses and probably 100 kilometres in likely a circle (as that’s generally how phone reception works across a relatively flat surface) around them. There were times when I got a call and could see as I was driving (on my ute’s centre console display) my reception bars drop off as I drove. But still held reception for a long time, and not just reception, 3G data at a relatively good speed, most of the time.

There are rest stops that have shade, places to camp and at several of them water.
If you broke down somewhere on the Eyre Highway and were without phone reception the highway is busy enough that you would be able to find yourself out of trouble.
I think unless you deliberately wandered away from your vehicle and away from the highway it would be quite difficult for you not to be rescued from a problematic situation on the Eyre highway.

McDermid Rock, it had a small dam on it.

It’s remote in the sense that it’s isolated from any sort of sizeable population. Due to the fact the original towns are along the train line and the Eyre Highway’s current alignment follow different paths it means that there are none of the more common town–pub–petrol station sort of arrangements after Ceduna. After that it’s just roadhouses (with the exception of Ecula just west of Border Village). So that can give the sense of isolation because you’re not encountering anyone that forms a ‘population’ beyond those working at roadhouses, everyone’s transient.

Of the people I did interact with, albeit mostly at the roadhouses and petrol stations throughout my journey, and the occasional people at lookout points, I found them all to be friendly.

My overriding adjective for this road trip was ‘awe’. Awe inspiring and awesome (in its traditional definition). I was amazed and awed by the landscape I saw, that I drove through. I enjoyed every daylight moment of it.

View from on top of Wave Rock with Hyden Dam on left.

It’s also the most unique trip, across a sealed road that anyone can take. If you’ve got a spare week or so.
It can be done one way in about 4 days.
It’s enlightening, amazing and insightful.
It’s not something you can do on impulse and it does require a little bit of planning.
But it’s a journey that was fantastic and awesome and one that I will repeat sometime soon.

What this road trip cemented in my mind is that I want to continue to explore Australia.
By road and at ground level. That we have a fantastic and amazing landscape that should be seen. As I have mentioned and probably will continue to say, the destination is only a part of the exploration. I think it’s the wrong part to focus on. The destination is like the origin, they’re things to aim for and return to, I don’t see them as the goal of a journey.