Escaping Eyre Highway

We were always determined to take it slowly across the Nullabor – and we have. We spent a night at the Eyre Bird Observatory – partly so we didn’t have to stay at a dodgy roadhouse or a skanky roadside camping spot, partly to indulge Tim’s emerging avian interests and partly to satisfy my growing fascination with the cross-country Telegraph line (my obsession with the early settlers at Israelite Bay has broadened out into an interest in the whole Telegraph Line!)




It was a great drive over a scarp and towards the sand dunes to the old Eyre Telegraph Station. It’s a fabulous old building that is now accommodation for twitchers and the volunteer caretakers, who as well as cooking for blow-in guests like us, have to do regular bird counts, record weather observations for the Bureau of Metereology 3 times a day and keep the solar cells and water systems functioning.

It is a fabulous spot and we had a great time – it was just us and Gina and Norm the caretakers, who sent us off exploring with lots of tips and mud maps. We drove along the beach and through the dunes to the beautiful Twilight Cove - which is where the long, long limestone escarpment that becomes the cliffs at the Great Australian Bight heads inland for a few hundred kms. We did a bird count for the EBO on the beach on the way and found some interesting stuff washed up on the beach including a dead loggerhead turtle.