Some of the other creatures on the Nullarbor were too spiky to get along with!

I had no idea there were camels out there until the day we came across a bloated, dead one on the side of the road. Must have been hit by a truck. Later we saw one racing the ambulance, way off on the horizon. Remarkable to think that the Afghans brought camels and used them to cross the Nullarbor so long ago. There was an old lady at the next station who was an artist. She had an entire gallery of her work hung on the homestead walls - all pictures of Afghans and camel trains. Nearby there was a watering hole called 'Afghan Rock'. We took a bottle of champagne there one time and it was a spooky place. You could almost hear the spirits of those hardy men, the grunts of the camels, their soft sandbag feet... 

#16 The cast now. And what a bunch of characters they were! I mentioned Joy, our wonderful aboriginal cook who demanded I bury the snake I'd killed in two separate places, but before her the cook was a mad ex-merchant marine. He used to sing swing songs at the top of his lungs but he'd mix up the words, (and melodies,) from two different songs. He got baking powder confused with baking soda fairly often too and one day he decided he was leaving. I found him on the side of the highway with his suitcase by his side and his thumb up! Our assistant manager just arrived at the roadhouse one day in a clapped out Mk 2 Cortina. He'd been working for someone he didn't get on with up in Derby, (way north,) and one day he'd just 'gone for a drive'. We hired him in spite of his annoying habit. Every time you asked him to do something his reply would be, 'No drama piranha, little snake charmer!' Every time. Then there was Buck. A young 'grunt' from the NZ army he'd do anything for you with a cheerful, 'Roger that!' One day a road train full of sheep pulled in. All the sheep were covered with red, red dust. We had very little water out there, the dam was always empty, but when I handed him the site's only hose and told him we had the contract to wash the sheep he just smiled, took the hose, and said cheerfully, 'Roger that!' I had to stop him...

The kids that hooned around the Nullarbor in the Model A lived in an old house that will still on site. Smack in the middle of a bunch of fibro and brick buildings it looked so out of place it may as well have been the Tardis. It was certainly a time machine. If you went inside you were immediately transported back to the early days on the highway. It smelled like hot sand on a 40 degree West Australian summer's day, the kind of smell that comes with dryness and years and years of accumulated dust. I remember the green enamel canisters on the shelf over the AGA oven, the empty fireplace with tiled surrounds, the heavy curtains to keep out the heat, the iron bed frames and the big, mahogany wardrobes 

One for the petrol heads. Behind the servo, next to the tip, there was a car graveyard. For all the cars that hadn't made it across the Nullarbor, it was the size of a rugby field and it contained every make and model imaginable. 30, 40 and 50 year old wrecks, all with the their bonnets sticking up from people butchering them for spare parts and all with their tyres reduced to globs of petrified rubber. LOTs of Kombis I recall, an HQ Holden, a bunch of panel vans, but the best was a Model A Ford. A very wealthy Perth family began their empire on the highway and half way through our stay they sent their daughter out to do a little work experience. She told us that as children they used to hoon around the Nullarbor in the Model A. There's an image, isn't it? A bunch of kids 'hooning' in a vintage car with no tyres...

The Flying Dentist's visit was a great way to meet the neighbours! All the local station owners came in. The dentist turned out to be only a third year dentistry student but she was a very pretty English girl so none of the men minded. We set up her surgery in one of the old motel rooms. She used an old recliner for her chair! We did brisk business in the bar that day.

On a lighter note - we had an airstrip way down the back of the site. It was for the Flying Doctor mainly. Johnny Crocker, the owner of Balladonia sheep station, had the job of grading it. (He had a grader!) Every so often we'd hear a rumble and it would be Johnny come to smooth the airstrip out. If a plane needed to land at night we had to light stacks of old tyres positioned either side of the runway. We were out there during the pilot's strike, when Bob Hawke grounded all commercial flights in Australia. It was a remarkable time with light planes hopping across the country. The airstrip was very busy, not to mention the highway. I will never forget the sight of a small plane fueling up at out petrol bowsers!

A highway horror story now. One day a beige HQ Holden drove slowly in and as soon as we saw it we knew something was wrong. It had no windscreen and across the roof there was a dark, red smear. When it got closer we saw the driver was covered with blood. A little boy in the seat beside him was the same. Both had eyes like saucers. When he stopped the driver explained they hit a roo. It had gone through the windscreen and landed in the back seat. The smear was from its head. It had been decapitated. Its big, powerful legs had kept kicking. The driver had had a hard time getting it out. The whole of the interior of the car, (upholstery, windows, everything,) was covered with blood. The little boy had been asleep in the back... 

We got called out to do a patient transfer in the ambulance once. (We had to meet the Cocklebiddy ambulance then take the patient back past our place to meet up with the Norseman guys.) We were half way down 90 Mile straight when we started seeing the GHOST TRUCK. A legend on the Highway it was exactly how I'd heard it described. Green tarp, like an old army truck, spread over a frame. I said to Terry, 'Do you see that?' He nodded. 'Let's try to catch up.' I tried. Believe me, I tried. The faster I got the further away it looked. Sometimes it would disappear then reappear. We thought perhaps the road rose and fell imperceptibly, by maybe a meter, but that was wishful thinking. It didn't. It is the longest, flattest bit of road in Australia. A mirage? Perhaps...

The police did fortnightly runs up the highway, from either end, Eucla or Norseman, and we always knew we could rely on them. A fax would roll out of the fax machine with a baddie's photo and a warning and we'd know to watch out for someone dangerous. And it was remarkable how quickly the police would arrive if we recognized someone. (Where did the baddies think they were going? There was only one road.) But it WAS the wild west and there were cowboys. Cowboys with fast cars and great, big guns. I remember one pair decided to see how fast their new patrol car would go so they raced a local station owner down the highway in his Corvette Stingray. I also remember making up the beds in the homestead for a couple of constables and for a laugh one of them discharged a pump action shot gun under the house, sending clouds of dust up through the floorboards and nearly giving me a heart attack! He always claimed he was only shooting a feral cat. They did save us though. On many occasions. And they were always there if we had an ambulance call out. I'll relive one of them for you in the next installment...