Sydney to Perth....1975 style

(Click on any image for a much larger view)

I was browsing some 35-year old 35mm slides the other day (hmmm, that's 1mm for every year!) and scanned a few of them that related to our (wife and I) trip from Sydney to Perth and return in April/May of 1975.

We had bought a new Honda Civic in 1974 and I added a few minor things to it before the trip, such as driving/fog lights and an insect/bird screen across the front.
A roof-rack carried our two-man tent and sundries that could get wet without causing any problem.

Inside we had our clothes, sleeping bags and other odds and sods. We even bought a Sharp cassette/radio unit as we knew that radio reception in the vastness of South Australia would be limited to the ABC. One new tape that we bought was the Wings album "Band On The Run", which we had on LP.

The photo above shows the shiny car as we made a comfort stop somewhere west of Mildura.

We had planned the drive across to take six days - the first was Sydney to Hay, the second Hay to Adelaide, the third was Adelaide to Ceduna, the fourth Ceduna to Eucla (WA border), the fifth then from Eucla to Norseman and the last from Norseman north through Kambalda and west to Perth.

The intent was to camp in the tent each night but that fell by the wayside at Adelaide (motel) and Ceduna (motel).

Today (and from about 1977) that trip would take in 4,100 kilometres but back then the Eyre Highway followed a more inland route after leaving Ceduna and did not approach the coast again until arriving at Eucla, on the SA/WA border.
Back in 1975 we drove considerably further and it included about 400 kms of rough dirt (and limestone rocks) road and that road was covered with muddy water in many areas due to heavy rains through the "centre" over previous weeks.

Here's the car on one of those stretches, somewhere between Bookabie and Eucla.
Note the stretches of water on either side of the road, the fact that it is wider than a dual-carriageway express-way and the limestone rocks.
The reason the surface is so wide is that when it became damaged by the trucks then the road maintenance gangs simply graded another bit along the side!

The Civic is looking very second-hand but I still managed to strike a cavalier pose for my wife of two years.

Here's the sign erected near Yalata that highlights the fact that a new southern alignment is under construction........

We drove alongside this new bit for some distance before it slipped away to the south and we veered more northward.
Very frustrating, seeing that bitumen surface going to waste....although it was being used by a couple of motorcyclists who passed us.

As you can see on the sign, the section from Ceduna to Bookabie had been resurfaced and the dirt continued onwards from Bookabie.

Another shot of the Honda. We are pretty sure that we never completely rid it of the muddy bull-dust. It got into every crevice. The engine compartment was covered in it, but she never missed a beat.

When we got back to Sydney four weeks later we spent a whole day cleaning it but I'm sure that whoever bought it after we traded it in 1978 bought a Civic with Nullarbor Plain mud in it somewhere!

After enduring what was almost a full day of crap road it was a blessing to finally arrive in Western Australia and feel the smoothness and quiet of a bitumen road surface under our tyres once again.
We weren't the only people to have felt the same way, as evidenced by the graffiti on the sign.....

There wasn't much at Eucla in 1975......a service station and a camping ground, which is where we stayed for the night.
We could have pushed on to Norseman but it was too far away and we were both tired and just wanted to relax, have something to eat and drink before starting the Western Australian section the next day.

So far our Big Adventure had taken us through three States (including NSW) and we had travelled further west than either of us had been before.
And it was an adventure back then - you could buy a sticker which proudly proclaimed "I Crossed The Nullarbor" and depicted the dirt-road route. I still have that sticker.

So we parked the car and erected the tent. I think I even gave the Honda a cursory wash with a bucket of water, just to get the glass areas clean, at least.

In the background, the blue of the sea in the Great Australian Bight as the sun starts to set in the west (to right of the photo).

That little tent was a beaut. It didn't take long to put up or take down and it also came with a zip-in floor and a separate sleeping "tent-within-a-tent".
We only ever needed that once, at Norseman, where a scorpion was found traipsing across the gravel (no grass at Norseman caravan park!). But did we bother to put it up? No!
However, we caught the scorpion and consigned it to its ancestors.

We eventually arrived in Perth, spent a lovely time at Scarborough beach, caught up with friends (my wife's) and then came time to turn around and head back east.

However, neither of us were really terribly keen about doing that stretch from Eucla back to Ceduna and we also needed to have some attention paid to the car, which, we had been informed when it was serviced, might have a burnt valve. (Bad fuel somewhere?)

So we made the decision to blow our reserves by travelling on the "Trans-Australia Express", a similar service to that of the "Indian Pacific" but which travelled between Perth and Port Pirie, also on the standard-gauge line.
In order to save a little, we also decided to drive from Perth to Kalgoorlie and catch the train from that point, and that is what we did, spending a night in the city whose name is synonymous with "gold".


 The "Trans-Aussie" left Kalgoorlie in the morning, after breakfast (we stayed in one of Kalgoorlie's many hotels) and the afternoon before I had to take the Civic to the station to be loaded onto a flatcar that would be added to a freight train leaving that night.
This meant that, when we arrived in Port Pirie two day's hence, the Honda would be waiting for us in the car park, ready to resume the journey.

We spent a full day, a night and then half the following day on the train, travelling First Class.
It was the BEST time of the entire trip......totally relaxing, with wonderful service and facilities and fabulous views from the panoramic windows.
I was particularly taken by this sight at one of the little fly-speck railway locations.........

Now if that isn't quaint then I don't know what is!
A rotary clothesline on a flatcar, which also hosts a shed which, I can only assume, is the laundry.
This was taken at Forrest, or somewhere similar.

There were (are?) many such sidings along the railway line traversing the Nullarbor, homes to the workers and families who maintain the rails and infrastructure.

All too soon our train journey seemed to draw to a close but, before it did, I snapped the following shot as the train paused at Port Augusta for a crew change. That is Shirley (wife) sitting on the bench further down the platform.

The locomotive CL1 is finished in the original Commonwealth Railways maroon & silver livery and is still in existence today was scrapped after a collision & fire in 1997.
Stretched out behind her are the stainless steel carriages of the same design used back then on the Southern Aurora (1962 - 1986) and also the relatively new Indian Pacific (service commenced in 1970).

A great trip, many good memories. I'd love to do it again, but this time on the new Eyre Highway!