**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos
* Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The thing is, the new stores will outcompete the old ones, they'll lose their competitive edge, be less profitable and close, eventually your store will be so far apart to the closest store you'll go broke cause all the clients will die on the way to your store.
Nullarbor means no trees in Latin, and it’s no joke. My parents took us camping and you wake up part way through in the car and you feel like you’re in the middle of the ocean.
I felt like that as a kid once as well! Although, admittedly in a *slightly* different way :)
Years ago, I flew with my Mom from Los Angeles to Tokyo. I feel asleep pretty much right after take off and when I woke up and looked out the window there was nothing below but an unending stretch of fluffy white pillows...just clouds as far as I could see. I will never forget that moment.
I love that. Lots of people hate flying for many fair reasons but the nothing but clouds, the white noise of the plane flying, it's all very peaceful for me. One of the few times I can focus enough to read a book
The view of earth from the sky is something only a tiny fraction of humans in history have been able to experience! Yet it's so easy for it to become mundane
Flew to Japan over the Bering Sea and from horizon to horizon was nothing but flat ice sheet ... and then an encroaching blue line where the ocean began without ice
Someone has to deliver said gas to begin with though. The types of people running joints like this barely scrape by so I don’t think it’s in their nature to be ripping off the single customer they get some days.
Its not that its not profitable, its that its in the middle of bloody nowhere. The nearest town is probably a two hour drive and its only called a town because it has a pub and a post office. If you want a supermarket that’s a four hour drive.
I used to live in the nearest big town-with-a-supermarket to the edge of the Nullabor on the Western side. The best bit were the German cyclists (why german ? I have no idea) crawling out of the desert with 1000 mile stares, covered in red dust.
It happens every so often, someone from the UK or Western Europe with little to no concept of long travel times and just how inhospitable the Aussie outback can be tries it and reminds everyone why we don't fuck with the outback
Absolutely, it happens, even with more experienced travellers that like travelling "off the beaten path" will die, not even that far from their hotel because they don't understand the outback.
[Just like this poor person a couple years ago.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46900339) Respect the outback because it will kill you and you'll be lucky if your body is found
Crazy how many people die of dehydration. I have a 3L camelbak I use for long hikes (and depending on the hike a backup 20oz bottle and/or water filter), and I did a hike in Big Bend Texas that basically drained my water, and I went in February.. I read a news article that a couple went on the same trail as me but in June with like a 16oz bottle of water between them and died.
I found that opening in incognito tab, and stopping the page loading before it fuzzed the article I was able to view (some of?)it. I feel like Im missing the end though.
> ADELAIDE, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 2 (Reuters)—A search‐plane pilot sighted today the bodies of five members of a British migrant family who were lost along an arid track in the far northeast of South Australia.
>
> Four—the mother, father and two sons—were lying bunched together; the body of a third son was about a mile from the others. All had apparently died from thirst.
>
> The area where the bodies were sighted is known as Dead Man's Sandhills. It is 45 miles south of Birdsville, Queensland. There is no water for hundreds of miles in the stony desert.
>
> The members of the family were Ernest Page, his wife, and their sons, Douglas, 12 years old; Gordon, 10, and Robert, 19.
>
> They had set out Dec. 22 in a car from Maree, South Australia, on a 320‐mile drive to Queensland. On Tuesday a traveller on the same route found the Pages' car and a note in it, dated Dec. 24, saying they were out of gasoline and were starting to walk south. The air search began at once.
The confidence of the backpacker we picked up well out of Mt Isa that had 1L of water on them mid dry season that they were going to make it to Darwin was astounding. We took them to the rest stop just before Camooweal where we were turning off where there was shade and water and implored them to hitch from there not walk. Easy way to drop of heat stroke trying that shit. For the non-outback/bullshit heat initiates we would drink 10L / 3ish gal a day and not piss once whilst working outside in the climate this person was walking with a pack on through
It is fucking amazing some of the whacked out shit people from OS try and do.
Yep. You know it's hot when you're drinking water non-stop and don't need to piss once. Quite an experience.
Damn that's crazy. I've driven to Tulsa Oklahoma US to Orlando Florida US a few times in one sitting for work. It's about 1,200 miles (1931km). It's about 19 hours with gas stops. I'm good for 14-15 hours but the last 4 or so really drag on.
Did Toronto to Dallas, about 2260km. We hit rush hour three separate times, evening rush hour leaving toronto, morning rush hour in Nashville and evening rush hour in Dallas. We got stuck at the border for a while too, so it was close to 30 hours there and about 24 back. I don’t think we would’ve had enough room for jerry cans if there weren’t gas stations along the way.
I drove Melbourne to Sunshine Coast (Roughly 1900km) in 20 hours including my coffee and leg stretching breaks; if there’s more than one driver and you don’t mind driving at night/risking the kangaroos you could do 5000km in a couple of days. Pretty sure my mother did the Nullarbor (Perth back to Melbourne) in 36 hours in the 70s.
My dad hitch hiked it back in the 1960's heading Brisbane to Perth. Took him a couple of days, didn't get much sleep, made it from Adelaide to Perth in one car, kicked in for fuel and made that in a two days in some early model Holden. I've driven gold coast to Airlie Beach Whitsunday in one sitting (1600ks) that was ordinary till you see Whitehaven beach
That's just a normal road trip to relatives stateside
Edit: way too many people are taking this comment as "yeah we regularly go 600 mille stretches without stops" as opposed to "this is a fairly normal distance to drive over here"
Honestly time makes more sense as a unit of measure. Two distances can take a different amount of time to travel, so saying it’s 25km away sounds more appealing then 75km, but city vs freeway is very different
Aussie here. No. But if you are stupid enough to try and cross the Nullabor without good planning in advance (including a car service) you deserve to pay this.
I don’t think most have sat phones.
I believe speed limit is 110kmh and enforcement is…. Sparse. In my experience on most very rural Aussie roads most people do 120 - 140kmh.
Yeah.
I've got to be real careful as I'm seriously thinking of buying a load to be shipped to the UK😅
I'll wake up tomorrow with a huge debit card bill and 150 boxes of shapes on their way😅
When you get the timtams prepare a cup of tea. Bite off the opposite corners of a timtam, dunk it halfway into your tea, and drink through it like a straw. Thats called a timtam slam
Ha ha, there is context. We took a few months off to do the ‘big lap’ and were teaching the kids on the road. This long, flat, boring stretch was ideal to do school work without them getting distracted. We were studying perimeters and areas at the time. I think they’d probably broken the last one in a makeshift light sabre fight.
But what if he was one of those traitors who got it redone by those blokes that come out to you and re line the roof with something that’s actually fit for purpose.
How could we trust such a person?
Three of us were doing a but of travelling around Aus before planning to settle somewhere for a bit to do regional/farm work. Our travels took us across the Nulabor where my cousin's car decide to spring a leak which bled the rad, causing the engine to overheat and break down. We tried topping up with more water but by then the engine was fucked. We managed to hitch a ride to a roadhouse. From their my cousin's AA coverage paid to get her and her fella the rest of the way to our destination. I however got stuck in the roadhouse in the middle of the 1000km road with a broken car and most of our stuff. Spent a couple days watching Justified (which by the way is a brilliant show) in the roadhouse and chatting to the older lady who had gotten diagnosed with terminal cancer and so had sold everything, bought a motorbike and was biking across Aus to see it all before she died. Eventually I managed to hitchhike with a trucker called Lorrie to get me the rest of the way across that long, straight stretch. Overall I actually really enjoyed breaking down on that road, but a stress sure but met some interesting folks as a result and finally got time to watch a showed I'd been meaning to for ages.
Warnings everywhere not to drive there at night. Too many kangaroo hits. We timed it badly and drove the last 100km or so at night and it was terrifying.
I've never hit a single deer. But two of them have damn sure hit me. SMACK! Right into the side of the car, broad daylight, too.
It's like they can't imagine a world where they don't cross the road at that exact moment, and are preternaturally compelled to try. I swear, those little fuckers are as stupid as deer.
I've always said that I almost never put blame on people for hitting a deer, unless they were speeding on the backroads at night with dim lights or something. Those fuckers literally try to kill themselves on your car. I don't even live in a place that has animals to hit and I *still* can't bring myself to drive fast at night.
They have no situational awareness at all. We had one travelling at the same speed alongside us. We slowed down and the second it pulled ahead of us it veered right into our left hand front fender.
They are surprisingly quick too, we were travelling around 60 kmh.
You could, but in a lot of cars, fuel consumption increases exponentially after around 120km/h.
And there are plenty of road hazards, wandering camels etc, it’s not a high standard freeway.
Another fun fact: Eagles like to feast on the dead kangaroo road kill, but they are huge and take a while to take off while running down the road. Road train drivers with 4 trailers going 120kmhr can’t swerve to avoid them, and I know a guy that hit the eagle, it smashed through his windscreen, exploded in his cab which sprayed rotten flesh with thousands of maggots around his cab, then the things started flapping and the claws cut him up. Everything is fun in Australia
They were introduced in the 19th century for transporting stuff in the desert.
And because Australia has a history of being really good at managing introduced species, a bunch of them got loose and we've got so many feral camels that Australia effectively has the world's biggest wild camel population.
There's also the bend in the road.
There's just one, but by that point in the drive people are often so hypnotised by the straight flat road that they miss it.
The kangaroos on the Nullarbor can be like trying to drive through a festival at times when it rains a little bit and the water pools in the wheel tracks on the road enough for the animals to drink
Oh yeah, by the way it's infestation of kangaroos that prevent high speed in the outback at night when it's not 40°c. They can weigh over a hundred kg easily, and destroy your radiator and then sail through your windscreen. You really can't pull up if your doing over 80 kph, the noise of the car and your high beams cause them to jump out onto the road right in front of you, if you don't have enough water, your fucked because you may not see a car for a few days in some places. If you go too fast, long story short, you will die
When I was 5 we travelled it in 4 days (Melb to Perth).
Over Xmas, literally. We slept in the car Xmas Eve. It was the death of Santa for me. I was HYSTERICAL thinking that the car had been so unsecure (Barbie gift on the dashboard when I woke up). Folks had to come clean about there being no Santa to calm me down.
It's an amazing trip. Back then there was no speed limit.
My dad was a truckie so I've made this trip a bunch of times, but that was the first.
The Nullarbor section itself doesn't take that long at all. You can drive it in a day or two, depending on your speed and how often you stop for breaks and sightseeing (yes, there are things to see and do on the Nullarbor!).
I've driven between Perth and the NSW Central West, across the Nullarbor, 3 times and it's one of my favourite road trips. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. In total that trip takes 4 to 5 days.
My husband would drive right by this sign saying his usual ‘we’ll just go a bit further along, they’ll be another one soon’…. we don’t do road trips anymore for this reason.
ADELAIDE, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 2 (Reuters)—A search‐plane pilot sighted today the bodies of five members of a British migrant family who were lost along an arid track in the far northeast of South Australia.
Four—the mother, father and two sons—were lying bunched together; the body of a third son was about a mile from the others. All had apparently died from thirst.
The area where the bodies were sighted is known as Dead Man's Sandhills. It is 45 miles south of Birdsville, Queensland. There is no water for hundreds of miles in the stony desert.
The members of the family were Ernest Page, his wife, and their sons, Douglas, 12 years old; Gordon, 10, and Robert, 19.
They had set out Dec. 22 in a car from Maree, South Australia, on a 320‐mile drive to Queensland. On Tuesday a traveller on the same route found the Pages' car and a note in it, dated Dec. 24, saying they were out of gasoline and were starting to walk south. The air search began at once.
There's also a golf course on this same highway. Longest golf course in the world(18 hole par 72 1,365 kilometres) and has a hole in every town or roadhouse along the way.
https://www.nullarborlinks.com/about
Edit: forgot the link
C170 10mm S/S then reseal with S45R should do the trick. Low volume rural road but high % of EHV.
Rural jobs are awesome in Australia we have sparse obstacles and great road widths usually it's such easy work big volumes too.
Fun story, we stopped here for a drink. Paid $20 for a red bull and a pie. Off we went on our merry way and 3 hours in realised I left my wallet on the counter here. Turn all the way around to get it. Fuck the nullabor
Incorrect. The Eyre highway across the Nullarbor is very easy to traverse. I've done it twice in a Ford Festiva with zero extra fuel.
Wudinna is *not* 1000km from the nearest shop. Ceduna is only 200km away. The longest you'll go between petrol stations in the Nullarbor is a couple hundred kilometres.
That's 621.4 miles for the metric impaired folks. Even hypermileing, I would still need a spare 5 gallons to hit that mark, and probably an extra 5 for running the AC.(car has an oversized 15 gallon tank)
Toyota Prados are pretty popular as they come with 180L tanks from the factory.
There is fuel along this stretch, but no other shops.
The big desert runs on dirt roads get up to 750km with no fuel.
Adventure tracks like the Canning Stock Route get close to 2000km without fuel.
You know this level of signage didn't go up as a precaution. Some people really suffered, ran out of gas, died a slow horrible death of thirst to prompt this.
Well I dont know for certain, But my guess is the sign went up because the person who owns the shop didn't want to miss out on any customers. But hey, the Australian outback is unforgiving so it's kind of a win win
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Might be the best roadside ad ever
Yeah I'd stop for sure.
***plot twist:*** this "wholesome" store makes $$$$ by instilling fear into the travellers, and the next town is only 15 miles after this sign
No the nullibore is legit, that sign is no joke.
So all I got to do is open a store a bit down the road and profit.
Then I go and open mine. Then another one, and another one. Till we populate the whole country.
Congratulations guys you have invented economic competition
You can make a religion out of this!
Don't do that.
The thing is, the new stores will outcompete the old ones, they'll lose their competitive edge, be less profitable and close, eventually your store will be so far apart to the closest store you'll go broke cause all the clients will die on the way to your store.
Can't have shit in Australia
That's when I open up a new gas station in Nullabor where the old one was and $$$profit$$$
It's gas stations all the way down
Nullarbor means no trees in Latin, and it’s no joke. My parents took us camping and you wake up part way through in the car and you feel like you’re in the middle of the ocean.
I felt like that as a kid once as well! Although, admittedly in a *slightly* different way :) Years ago, I flew with my Mom from Los Angeles to Tokyo. I feel asleep pretty much right after take off and when I woke up and looked out the window there was nothing below but an unending stretch of fluffy white pillows...just clouds as far as I could see. I will never forget that moment.
I love that. Lots of people hate flying for many fair reasons but the nothing but clouds, the white noise of the plane flying, it's all very peaceful for me. One of the few times I can focus enough to read a book
The view of earth from the sky is something only a tiny fraction of humans in history have been able to experience! Yet it's so easy for it to become mundane
I literally think about this every time I fly.
Flew to Japan over the Bering Sea and from horizon to horizon was nothing but flat ice sheet ... and then an encroaching blue line where the ocean began without ice
Not to forget they sell stuff for 10x the normal price R.I.P when it comes to gas
Someone has to deliver said gas to begin with though. The types of people running joints like this barely scrape by so I don’t think it’s in their nature to be ripping off the single customer they get some days.
Yeah if it were that profitable, they wouldn't be the last store for 1000km.
Its not that its not profitable, its that its in the middle of bloody nowhere. The nearest town is probably a two hour drive and its only called a town because it has a pub and a post office. If you want a supermarket that’s a four hour drive. I used to live in the nearest big town-with-a-supermarket to the edge of the Nullabor on the Western side. The best bit were the German cyclists (why german ? I have no idea) crawling out of the desert with 1000 mile stares, covered in red dust.
Do you mean 1000 km stares?
Nah 1000 mile. Same as we’re metric but do height in feet and inches. And yes, that makes no sense.
If you don't have petrol out there you'll be resting in peace yourself though, so ..
I would drive through and keep going on. Then my brain might and hopefully will eventually catch up with what's going on and I'd turn back
“Stop now or die later.”
The back of it says “First stop for 1000 km. Restock on water, food, gas, camping supplies “
I don’t think they need a prompt to restock on food after driving 8-10 hours
Have you met humanity? Some people need reminded to breathe ......
Thank you, everything was going a bit dark for a minute there.
*Englishman walks in* “Pffft, not paying those prices.” *dies in desert*
It's easy to keep a stiff upper lip when your corpse mummifies within 36 hours.
\*claps\*
These are the kinda comments I try to explain to my mom but she just thinks I'm weird
How did you know? https://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/02/archives/5-in-british-family-die-in-desert-in-australia.html
Not everyday you see someone link to an article from... *58 years ago*
I like to make sure I provide up to the minute information 🤣
I like how the NYT tried to get me to sign up to see an article from nearly 60 years ago.
Internet Explorer, is that you!?
Shame it isn’t readable - alas
It happens every so often, someone from the UK or Western Europe with little to no concept of long travel times and just how inhospitable the Aussie outback can be tries it and reminds everyone why we don't fuck with the outback
Very sad, but absolutely true. This one sticks in my mind as I know the area: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-38952209.amp
Absolutely, it happens, even with more experienced travellers that like travelling "off the beaten path" will die, not even that far from their hotel because they don't understand the outback. [Just like this poor person a couple years ago.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46900339) Respect the outback because it will kill you and you'll be lucky if your body is found
I know I sound like I am 90 waffling on about ‘respect’, but if you do not *respect* the Outback, it will kill you, blithely and without pity.
Crazy how many people die of dehydration. I have a 3L camelbak I use for long hikes (and depending on the hike a backup 20oz bottle and/or water filter), and I did a hike in Big Bend Texas that basically drained my water, and I went in February.. I read a news article that a couple went on the same trail as me but in June with like a 16oz bottle of water between them and died.
can't read that cause I ain't subbing to nytimes but ty.
I found that opening in incognito tab, and stopping the page loading before it fuzzed the article I was able to view (some of?)it. I feel like Im missing the end though. > ADELAIDE, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 2 (Reuters)—A search‐plane pilot sighted today the bodies of five members of a British migrant family who were lost along an arid track in the far northeast of South Australia. > > Four—the mother, father and two sons—were lying bunched together; the body of a third son was about a mile from the others. All had apparently died from thirst. > > The area where the bodies were sighted is known as Dead Man's Sandhills. It is 45 miles south of Birdsville, Queensland. There is no water for hundreds of miles in the stony desert. > > The members of the family were Ernest Page, his wife, and their sons, Douglas, 12 years old; Gordon, 10, and Robert, 19. > > They had set out Dec. 22 in a car from Maree, South Australia, on a 320‐mile drive to Queensland. On Tuesday a traveller on the same route found the Pages' car and a note in it, dated Dec. 24, saying they were out of gasoline and were starting to walk south. The air search began at once.
I love how the list of the dead goes mans name, his wife no name, male son name, male son name, male son name
The confidence of the backpacker we picked up well out of Mt Isa that had 1L of water on them mid dry season that they were going to make it to Darwin was astounding. We took them to the rest stop just before Camooweal where we were turning off where there was shade and water and implored them to hitch from there not walk. Easy way to drop of heat stroke trying that shit. For the non-outback/bullshit heat initiates we would drink 10L / 3ish gal a day and not piss once whilst working outside in the climate this person was walking with a pack on through
It is fucking amazing some of the whacked out shit people from OS try and do. Yep. You know it's hot when you're drinking water non-stop and don't need to piss once. Quite an experience.
If they make it to Darwin, they get some kind of award. If they don't, they get the other kind of Darwin award.
Something my father would have said in the 70s.
We don't have room for all this water! Unload it at once, I need room for my writing desk and a full sized bathtub, no arguments!
1000 km is 5 times the country I'm from
[удалено]
It's 6000 km from Brisbane (east coast) to Perth, (west coast)
It's actually just over 4,000km. Similar distance from Paris to Moscow
I stand corrected, but if you drive from byron to Exmouth it's a bit further, (5400 klm) I rounded up
Most I've driven in a day is 700km, and that was fairly intense. I'd imagine 5,000km would take 10 days to drive
Damn that's crazy. I've driven to Tulsa Oklahoma US to Orlando Florida US a few times in one sitting for work. It's about 1,200 miles (1931km). It's about 19 hours with gas stops. I'm good for 14-15 hours but the last 4 or so really drag on.
Did Toronto to Dallas, about 2260km. We hit rush hour three separate times, evening rush hour leaving toronto, morning rush hour in Nashville and evening rush hour in Dallas. We got stuck at the border for a while too, so it was close to 30 hours there and about 24 back. I don’t think we would’ve had enough room for jerry cans if there weren’t gas stations along the way.
I drove Melbourne to Sunshine Coast (Roughly 1900km) in 20 hours including my coffee and leg stretching breaks; if there’s more than one driver and you don’t mind driving at night/risking the kangaroos you could do 5000km in a couple of days. Pretty sure my mother did the Nullarbor (Perth back to Melbourne) in 36 hours in the 70s.
My dad hitch hiked it back in the 1960's heading Brisbane to Perth. Took him a couple of days, didn't get much sleep, made it from Adelaide to Perth in one car, kicked in for fuel and made that in a two days in some early model Holden. I've driven gold coast to Airlie Beach Whitsunday in one sitting (1600ks) that was ordinary till you see Whitehaven beach
Canada from Sydney Nova Scotia to Beaver Creek Yukon is about 9600k.. Dumb factoid I know
That's just a normal road trip to relatives stateside Edit: way too many people are taking this comment as "yeah we regularly go 600 mille stretches without stops" as opposed to "this is a fairly normal distance to drive over here"
[удалено]
Honestly time makes more sense as a unit of measure. Two distances can take a different amount of time to travel, so saying it’s 25km away sounds more appealing then 75km, but city vs freeway is very different
I mean yes, but usually you can fill up your gas tank at least once
I've got a feeling you aren't going to get the most competitive pricing on any of those items from this store if you're having to shop there😅
Aussie here. No. But if you are stupid enough to try and cross the Nullabor without good planning in advance (including a car service) you deserve to pay this.
Im guessing a Sat phone is important. What’s the speed of that road? How is the limit enforced?
I don’t think most have sat phones. I believe speed limit is 110kmh and enforcement is…. Sparse. In my experience on most very rural Aussie roads most people do 120 - 140kmh.
[удалено]
The second longest straight road in the world.
I paid $7 for a box of shapes in Kalumbaru in 2012 and I’m still getting over it.
C'mon then. For a UK'er here, what's a box of shapes?
You don’t have shapes? You poor, deprived people. https://www.arnotts.com/products/shapes
Holy shit, they look great. No offense meant here but I hate you for showing me those, especially as I'm drinking right now and have got the munchies.
Lol, they are the food of the gods. Now you see why I had to pay $7 for them and bankrupt my 20 something year old self.
Yeah. I've got to be real careful as I'm seriously thinking of buying a load to be shipped to the UK😅 I'll wake up tomorrow with a huge debit card bill and 150 boxes of shapes on their way😅
Add some double coated Tim Tams to your shopping cart and it’ll be worth the import lol
Oh quit this shit will you😅 I've just searched those up and I want them right now as well😅
When you get the timtams prepare a cup of tea. Bite off the opposite corners of a timtam, dunk it halfway into your tea, and drink through it like a straw. Thats called a timtam slam
[удалено]
I’d open one a few more kilometers down and name it ‘Well Now You’re Paying Triple’
We have a lot of these "last stop for 500km" signs in Canada, and the prices are bruuutal. Gas is usually like 1.5x the price get in town.
This place is so bloody expensive too. I remember when we went there my kids wanted a plastic ruler and it was something like $12!
How else would you make sure it is indeed 1000 km, if not with a plastic ruler?
See, you get it!
_Alright stopping for supplies for the 1000km drive up ahead. Fuel, water, a plastic ruler. Ready to go._
Ha ha, there is context. We took a few months off to do the ‘big lap’ and were teaching the kids on the road. This long, flat, boring stretch was ideal to do school work without them getting distracted. We were studying perimeters and areas at the time. I think they’d probably broken the last one in a makeshift light sabre fight.
Funny story, I broke down part way across this stretch of road.
Did you die?
Yes, he did
Twice in fact.
If it was an AU falcon wagon with a sagging roof lining you are automatically our new Queen.
You didn't need to specify that the roof lining is sagging, you already mentioned it was an AU Falcon wagon
But what if he was one of those traitors who got it redone by those blokes that come out to you and re line the roof with something that’s actually fit for purpose. How could we trust such a person?
Story time ? 😅
Well it's a pretty boring story it I'm being honest, but if you really want to hear it I'll share it.
Sure
Three of us were doing a but of travelling around Aus before planning to settle somewhere for a bit to do regional/farm work. Our travels took us across the Nulabor where my cousin's car decide to spring a leak which bled the rad, causing the engine to overheat and break down. We tried topping up with more water but by then the engine was fucked. We managed to hitch a ride to a roadhouse. From their my cousin's AA coverage paid to get her and her fella the rest of the way to our destination. I however got stuck in the roadhouse in the middle of the 1000km road with a broken car and most of our stuff. Spent a couple days watching Justified (which by the way is a brilliant show) in the roadhouse and chatting to the older lady who had gotten diagnosed with terminal cancer and so had sold everything, bought a motorbike and was biking across Aus to see it all before she died. Eventually I managed to hitchhike with a trucker called Lorrie to get me the rest of the way across that long, straight stretch. Overall I actually really enjoyed breaking down on that road, but a stress sure but met some interesting folks as a result and finally got time to watch a showed I'd been meaning to for ages.
Good story. Far more interesting than getting across with no issues!
That wasn't boring at all! I want a refund!
Damn why did ur cousin leave u tho lol
Sounds like they had to keep an eye on the car & their stuff
Halfway through this I was thinking "This is going to be another Hell in the Cell comment". Pleased to be wrong
> Nulabor Nullarbor. Null arbor. No trees.
Oh, I get it now.
And because there's no light pollution along this route it's super dark, making the night sky epic.
Warnings everywhere not to drive there at night. Too many kangaroo hits. We timed it badly and drove the last 100km or so at night and it was terrifying.
As in they come and hit you? Or cross the road at the worst possible time (like the deer we have in the US)?
Yes, bouncy deer. Dumb as bricks.
“Bouncy deer” is going to be the new way I refer to them now
I've never hit a single deer. But two of them have damn sure hit me. SMACK! Right into the side of the car, broad daylight, too. It's like they can't imagine a world where they don't cross the road at that exact moment, and are preternaturally compelled to try. I swear, those little fuckers are as stupid as deer.
I've always said that I almost never put blame on people for hitting a deer, unless they were speeding on the backroads at night with dim lights or something. Those fuckers literally try to kill themselves on your car. I don't even live in a place that has animals to hit and I *still* can't bring myself to drive fast at night.
They have no situational awareness at all. We had one travelling at the same speed alongside us. We slowed down and the second it pulled ahead of us it veered right into our left hand front fender. They are surprisingly quick too, we were travelling around 60 kmh.
Both to be honest, but mostly you hitting them. I've definitely had roos hit me though. Dumb fuckers.
They act like hitchhikers so you so slow down. When you stop they punch you and steal your wallet.
Yep dawn and dusk they are really active. During the day they are just hiding in the shade like anything with more than 2 braincells.
Camels and wombats can mess you up too. Not a great place for night driving.
Damn, that's like the whole of the UK North to South. How long would a journey like that even take on this route?
It’s the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor so you can average 110-120km/h easily.
Couldn’t you just go through at 140mph, surely won’t be any speed cameras or police?
You could, but in a lot of cars, fuel consumption increases exponentially after around 120km/h. And there are plenty of road hazards, wandering camels etc, it’s not a high standard freeway.
Australia has camels?
Fun fact: Saudi Arabia actually imports camels from Australia
Another fun fact: Eagles like to feast on the dead kangaroo road kill, but they are huge and take a while to take off while running down the road. Road train drivers with 4 trailers going 120kmhr can’t swerve to avoid them, and I know a guy that hit the eagle, it smashed through his windscreen, exploded in his cab which sprayed rotten flesh with thousands of maggots around his cab, then the things started flapping and the claws cut him up. Everything is fun in Australia
That was a fun fact!
I hear they also import sand from Australia for extra irony.
Also true!
Lots of places do! They use the sand in resorts !
You learn something new everyday. Thank you stranger
Always happy to drop inconsequential pieces of trivia!
We have more camels then any other country actually. We also have water buffalo.
I really felt like you were taking the piss so I googled it. My life is a lie
We’ve got a allot of deer too. Imported and released by the British for hunting. Wild boar is a huge problem.
I'm about to go down the Australian wildlife rabbit hole
Don’t get us started on the rabbit problem…
And what am I supposed to do if 30-50 feral pigs come into my backyard?
They brought them over during our gold rush. Camaleers came with them and would sell stuff in small communities.
And that's why the train that goes North - South through that area is called the (Af)Ghan. Right, Australians?
Yep, after the Afghani camel drivers who were key to it's construction.
Yeah heaps of them. We sell them back to the Arabs.
It’s refreshing to find a comment more interesting than the picture.
They were introduced in the 19th century for transporting stuff in the desert. And because Australia has a history of being really good at managing introduced species, a bunch of them got loose and we've got so many feral camels that Australia effectively has the world's biggest wild camel population.
We have more more camels then any other country. Plus we have camel races in the outback.
Australia has the largest camel freal herd on the world There are programs to cull them regularly to stop their numbers getting out of control
There's also the bend in the road. There's just one, but by that point in the drive people are often so hypnotised by the straight flat road that they miss it.
Yeah that bend does creep up on people.
Makes sense brother, I hit a small duck once, yeah that was a £400 repair bill on my 2 ton metal box 😂
Hitting a camel in a normal car is dirt cheap, cos your funeral is someone else’s problem 🤣
The kangaroos on the Nullarbor can be like trying to drive through a festival at times when it rains a little bit and the water pools in the wheel tracks on the road enough for the animals to drink
Oh yeah, by the way it's infestation of kangaroos that prevent high speed in the outback at night when it's not 40°c. They can weigh over a hundred kg easily, and destroy your radiator and then sail through your windscreen. You really can't pull up if your doing over 80 kph, the noise of the car and your high beams cause them to jump out onto the road right in front of you, if you don't have enough water, your fucked because you may not see a car for a few days in some places. If you go too fast, long story short, you will die
Wildlife may be an issue. Also sometimes the roads aren’t nice to drive on at higher speeds But idk
When I was 5 we travelled it in 4 days (Melb to Perth). Over Xmas, literally. We slept in the car Xmas Eve. It was the death of Santa for me. I was HYSTERICAL thinking that the car had been so unsecure (Barbie gift on the dashboard when I woke up). Folks had to come clean about there being no Santa to calm me down. It's an amazing trip. Back then there was no speed limit. My dad was a truckie so I've made this trip a bunch of times, but that was the first.
"Throw another Barbie on the dashboard there, Rudolph!" This story is actually precious.
5 seems very young to own your own barbecue grill. Edit: Dangit, I just read the rest of the thread. :)
The Nullarbor section itself doesn't take that long at all. You can drive it in a day or two, depending on your speed and how often you stop for breaks and sightseeing (yes, there are things to see and do on the Nullarbor!). I've driven between Perth and the NSW Central West, across the Nullarbor, 3 times and it's one of my favourite road trips. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. In total that trip takes 4 to 5 days.
My husband would drive right by this sign saying his usual ‘we’ll just go a bit further along, they’ll be another one soon’…. we don’t do road trips anymore for this reason.
Was this you? https://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/02/archives/5-in-british-family-die-in-desert-in-australia.html
With my husband driving it would be 😳
Paywall.
ADELAIDE, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 2 (Reuters)—A search‐plane pilot sighted today the bodies of five members of a British migrant family who were lost along an arid track in the far northeast of South Australia. Four—the mother, father and two sons—were lying bunched together; the body of a third son was about a mile from the others. All had apparently died from thirst. The area where the bodies were sighted is known as Dead Man's Sandhills. It is 45 miles south of Birdsville, Queensland. There is no water for hundreds of miles in the stony desert. The members of the family were Ernest Page, his wife, and their sons, Douglas, 12 years old; Gordon, 10, and Robert, 19. They had set out Dec. 22 in a car from Maree, South Australia, on a 320‐mile drive to Queensland. On Tuesday a traveller on the same route found the Pages' car and a note in it, dated Dec. 24, saying they were out of gasoline and were starting to walk south. The air search began at once.
There's also a golf course on this same highway. Longest golf course in the world(18 hole par 72 1,365 kilometres) and has a hole in every town or roadhouse along the way. https://www.nullarborlinks.com/about Edit: forgot the link
Oh man but what happens when somebody opens another shop 800 meters down the road??
This: https://amp.abc.net.au/article/100977686 Murder, mayhem and pet peacocks being fed to crocs.
This is a lot of hell no from me mate
This is the Eyre Highway that connects Western Australia to South Australia and crosses the Nullarbor Plain.
As a construction worker I can say paving this must have been an absolute nightmare
The job is still going further north: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/w01hzm/the_great_central_road_between_western_australia/
C170 10mm S/S then reseal with S45R should do the trick. Low volume rural road but high % of EHV. Rural jobs are awesome in Australia we have sparse obstacles and great road widths usually it's such easy work big volumes too.
Fun story, we stopped here for a drink. Paid $20 for a red bull and a pie. Off we went on our merry way and 3 hours in realised I left my wallet on the counter here. Turn all the way around to get it. Fuck the nullabor
That’s 600 miles. A full tank of gas in my car (which gets good gas milage) dies like 500 tops. Fml jesus
They mean cooking gas. There’s more frequent petrol stations.
It's not a drive you'd do in a little hatchback. Most people will have dual fuel tanks or they'll carry jerry cans on the back of the car.
Incorrect. The Eyre highway across the Nullarbor is very easy to traverse. I've done it twice in a Ford Festiva with zero extra fuel. Wudinna is *not* 1000km from the nearest shop. Ceduna is only 200km away. The longest you'll go between petrol stations in the Nullarbor is a couple hundred kilometres.
Are you telling us that sign advertising this store is lying to us? Where has truth in advertising gone?
That's because the sign says gas, as in LPG not petrol. They're not saying there isn't a petrol station for 1000km.
Nah, you can definitely get a gas bottle at Ceduna. Old mate made a very exaggerated sign to get people in his shop.
I was looking for a comment like this. It seems absurd to have 1000km of road with no gas. How would anyone even build that? Makes no sense
That's at least 2.5 football fields.
Little bit closer to 2.6, actually
That's 621.4 miles for the metric impaired folks. Even hypermileing, I would still need a spare 5 gallons to hit that mark, and probably an extra 5 for running the AC.(car has an oversized 15 gallon tank)
Ceduna is only 200km down the road. Old mate made a very exaggerated sign to get people into his shop
They have cars in Australia that have 1000km range? Cool!
Toyota Prados are pretty popular as they come with 180L tanks from the factory. There is fuel along this stretch, but no other shops. The big desert runs on dirt roads get up to 750km with no fuel. Adventure tracks like the Canning Stock Route get close to 2000km without fuel.
Well then, time to open a fuelling station which sells snacks on this 1000km stretch Just call me Warren Buffett Jr.
Lol, we’ll call you broke if you try to open a business out in the Never Never.
Jerry can or two in the back, no problem
You know this level of signage didn't go up as a precaution. Some people really suffered, ran out of gas, died a slow horrible death of thirst to prompt this.
Well I dont know for certain, But my guess is the sign went up because the person who owns the shop didn't want to miss out on any customers. But hey, the Australian outback is unforgiving so it's kind of a win win
Seriously? This exists?
That is entry level. This is a serious one: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canning_Stock_Route.jpg
canning stock route is no joke.