One Woman Tells The Tale Of Five Women’s Cross-Country Road Trip From Adelaide To Perth, Australia In Search For Sir Antony Gormley’s Salt Lake Sculptures In Western Australia
by Heather Cassell
Michaela Boland is always up for an adventure, whether it’s a three-month “Australian odyssey” with her husband and children or hitting the road on a cross-country adventure with four of her friends, she’s game.
So, when one of her friends suggested a trip from Adelaide to Perth along the Nullarbor Plain on the search for sculptor Sir Antony Gormley’s Salt Lake Sculptures at Lake Ballard in Western Australia she jumped at the opportunity.
A permanent exhibit “Inside Australia” by the acclaimed British sculptor features 51 steel sculptures of Menzies residents standing 6.2 miles (10 square kilometers) apart on the white plain of Lake Ballard. The outdoor exhibit was installed in 2003 and has been a major attraction to the remote part of Western Australia, Lake Ballard, which is 111.8 miles (180 kilometers) from Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields.
The five women – all mothers and wives – met up in Adelaide to begin their adventure across the Nullarbor Plain, also known as the Nullarbor Desert, of Australia’s famed Outback to Perth.
“The Nullarbor topped my list of unexpected highlights from that first adventure,” Michaela wrote in her personal travel essay for the Daily Telegraph about her road trip with her husband and children three years ago.
Before they headed out on their adventure, she had to overcome her anxiety driving the Apollo campervan with an attached caravan, but that was the worst of her imagination. The women picked up two big six-berth Mercedes in Adelaide, which “didn’t seem too removed from driving the family wagon,” she wrote.
The van was equipped with power steering and was already approved by a mechanic that it was ready for the 2,175 mile (3500 kilometers) cross-country road trip and the women had their Telstra, mobile phone coverage set.
They were ready for any potential mishap that would attempt to throw them off course during their 12-day adventure.
Driving through a desert, the automatic expectation is that it will be arid, dull, and vast space of nothingness that seems to have no end, in spite of intellectually knowing that it will eventually hit an end.
“I was delighted to find an ever-changing visual bounty of enormous skies, wildflowers, ranges and plains, with a highway often running alongside the spectacular Bunda Cliffs providing glimpses of a thunderous ocean,” wrote Michaela.
The first few days were smooth along the sealed roads, albeit the women took a little time settling into getting to know each other better in their confined quarters of the van. They took brief stops in Burra, Port Augusta, Lake Gillies, Kimba, Streaky Bay, Ceduna, Cactus and Fowlers Bay to stretch and take in the scenery and the journey a bit.
Working as a team and getting things done was more of a challenge than the long spouts of driving.
“What we hadn’t anticipated was how five mothers on a self-catering overland adventure would have five, or sometimes even more than five, ideas about how particular tasks could be completed,” wrote Michaela.
“At every stop, everything took so much longer than it might as we scattered to take photos, buy souvenirs and sample food infinitesimally inferior to the delicious supplies we had amassed at Adelaide Central Market,” she continued.
Bumps In The Road
Issues with getting along and deciding how and what to do only complicated the journey when it got stymied when Michaela bogged the van while looking for firewood and kindle at Wandilla Beach, a surfers’ paradise.
Setting up camp in the dunes above Wandilla Beach, at sunset, the women decided to separate with one half of the group going out to hunt for tree limbs and tumbleweed while the other half of the group prepped dinner in the other van.
While searching for campfire materials, Michaela got the van stuck in a sand trap. It was a wet sandy mess about 10.5 miles (17 kilometers) off the Eyre Highway. They were along a dirt track, about 93 miles (150 kilometers) west of Ceduna and about the same distance east of the head of the Great Australian Bight, she wrote. The closet town, Fowlers Bay, was 9.3 miles (15 kilometers) away along a dirt track.
The situation became messier when Michaela’s three-point turn only resulted in the van’s right rear wheel spin and sink in the sand “so soft I could easily dig it away with a cheap plastic dustpan,” she wrote, and they realized they were completely out of cellular range. The phones and coverage they bought failed them in their time of need.
The women leapt into action they found a piece of cardboard, a swag bag, sticks and gathered tree limbs and tumbleweed with their dirty and sandy roots attached. Stuffing the materials under the sunken tire and digging away the sand they failed to get traction and only got the women just as messy as the situation itself.
“It was terrifying,” wrote Michaela. “As the sun set completely we wondered why the others hadn’t come for us.”
Nearing a point of hopelessness, three surfers barreled down the road with a giant root tied to the roof of their Subaru. They stopped and gave us a life back to our camp.
Anxiety ruled the night. She wasn’t able to enjoy the spectacular show the moon and stars presented. Her sleep was “fitfully worrying if our trip was over before it had really begun,” she wrote.
Angels arrived the following morning. The women flagged down two farmers who were heading to town on the road. They took the women back to their van, attached a rope to the undercarriage and pulled the van out of the sand.
It was truly a saving grace. The van was fine. They were on their way on their journey once again. However, Michaela couldn’t shake the thoughts of all of the “what ifs”: “What if the van had been damaged?”
“It would have taken days to repair or replace and there wasn’t enough fat in the journey for that,” she wrote.
The questions haunted her for a day and a half. Once she finally shook away the thoughts the next challenge presented itself.
One of the women fell ill. The group had to stop for 48 hours at Nullarbor Roadhouse (Border Village, Nullarbor, Old Eyre Highway; +61 8 8625 6271; NullarborRoadhouse.com.au), an iconic truck stop along the route in Southern Australia.
“Nobody spends more than 10 hours at the iconic truck-stop unless they’re on the payroll,” wrote Michaela. “We know this because after our first night, every single other vehicle pulled out of the carpark to exit east or west, leaving us in our very own Coen Brothers movie.”
However, it wasn’t completely bad. The staff was “mostly super friendly,” Michaela wrote.
“The beer was plentiful, we experienced a thumping downpour delivering half the annual rainfall in just a few hours and breathed air pregnant with the dusty aroma of drenched desert,” she continued.
Once the Royal Flying Doctor gave the women an all-clear signal they hopped back into their vans and hit the road again rolling toward the border.
The next challenge was crossing borders with fresh produce. In a rebellious moment modeling their daughters the women hosted a “Border veggies” cookout at the kangaroo-ridden Caguna Blowhole campsite. They would rather have a feast when faced with the prospect of having to fork over their goods of fresh onions, carrots, garlic, sweet potatoes, potatoes, beetroot, cabbage, nuts, seeds, oranges, mandarins, celery and Brussels sprouts by the inspector at the Western Australia quarantine station. The women were able to keep the carrots and onions if the heads were cut off the inspector informed them.
It was the women’s least favorite meal at their least favorite campsite, wrote Michaela.
“But our sense of righteousness was profound,” she wrote.
Making Up Time For Magic
With the two and a half day setback the women drove quickly through the historic Norseman toward Kalgoorlie, just 111.8 miles (180 kilometers) from Menzies in the Western Australian Goldfields near the endpoint of Lake Ballard and the statues.
“The statues have a magical quality. They change throughout the day and over the seasons, throwing shadows and reacting to the amount of water surrounding them. In every direction, Gormley’s chosen location is an art installation itself, riven with red dirt, the shimmering lake and pocked mud under a dome of clear blue sky,” Michaela wrote.
The land is pretty much barren only dotted by the status and the fire pits and a toilet at various locations. This is all there is. The vans provided “shelter, sustenance, and showers,” wrote Michaela.
It was well worth the journey, expressed Michaela, who expressed that the women could have just as easily flown to Kalgoorlie and driven the couple of hours to the statues.
“But would we still have been brought close to tears when we arrived?”
Book your next adventure to Australia with Girls That Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at Travel Advisors of Los Gatos at 408-354-6531 or 415-517-7239 or at .
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