Beechcraft Musketeer Sport III 19A VH-SQB

Leg 5: Ceduna to Nullarbor Motel

Front ~ Next - Leg 6: Nullarbor Motel to Caiguna

At lunch we reviewed the maps in the BP roadhouse. Our next leg would inconveniently take us over three WACs, since we were on a conjunction of three different maps. But it wasn't going to be a very long leg. It was my turn to fly again. Takeoff was fine, off runway 17 again, and we said goodbye to Ceduna, and continued onto Nullarbor Motel. Of course, since it was my turn to fly, the turbulence had disappeared, at least for the first half of the leg.

	Tracking west into the Nullarbor plain. On our left we had ocean...
	...on our right was, well, not much. My camera decided the bugs on our windshield were the best thing to focus on.

About half-way there, we noticed a weird cloud cover which was hanging over the ocean, and extending about a mile over the land. We were tracking coastal, and this cloud was in our way. We talked about going further to the North to avoid it, or going over it, but decided to go under it. We knew it was clear behind us and to the north, so had no real concerns about getting closed out. I had been trying to cruise at 2500 ft, but had to descend to 1000 to get under it. It was only about 200 ft thick, top to bottom, but was broken, maybe 6 oktas, so we didn't want to try and navigate from above it.

Out over the water is a grey cloud, obscuring the horizon. Further on, this extended overland and forced us lower than we wanted.

We continued on, and when our route took us away from the coast, the cloud disappeared again, allowing us to climb back to 1500. But in the last 20 minutes, we had to come back to the coast, and were flying just underneath cloud again at 1000 ft. At this stage we were quite a distance from the main highway, maybe 20 nautical miles, and we were flying over dunes which let down to the aqua water. So we had wild country under us, extremely low cloud above us, and beautiful beaches just on our left. We were a bit worried, but we were within 10 minutes of Nullarbor Motel, so we were confident that we would make it OK.

	Flying low over the wild beaches. In some places the sand dunes extended for kilometres from the water.
	Perfect white sand, nobody around to appreciate it.

We passed Head of Bight, which seems to be where the famous cliffs along the Great Australian Bight commence. What was beach one minute turned into some 200 feet cliffs. These cliffs extend for a very long way, and climb up to 300 ft on the way. We learnt later that this is a famous spot for whale-watching. Migrating whales come close to the shore here.

Then it was back overland, with the Nullarbor Motel and associated airstrip in sight. It was hard to choose a runway, because the wind was all over the place (and quite strong). We ended up choosing 10, and came in with quite a strong crosswind. I landed it OK on the gravel strip. Wish I took a photo but I was too busy at this stage. Unfortunately Simon's camera wasn't taking photos on this leg. Then we were able to taxi right up to the Motel and park - something I've never done before. I found it quite a thrill to actually be able to park the aircraft and be within walking distance to the accomodation.

	The Head of the Bight, where white sand beaches turn into cliffs. These cliffs will extend for hundreds of miles.
	As soon as we passed the head, we were into Nullarbor Plain proper. With a buggy windshield and facing the western afternoon sun, it was hard to spot our motel. Fortunately it had an airstrip which took us within metres of the motel reception.

After bedding everything down, we went into the bar. We agreed this was probably the best day's flying either of us had ever done. A few beers, then into the restaurant. I had a seafood collection, and Simon had a T-bone steak. Kim called - I hadn't called her yet, despite agreeing to call her when I landed. I was too easily led straight to the bar. I was very impressed that she tracked us down at the Nullarbor Motel.

Back to the bar, where we met some characters. There was a guy who (with his wife) set off from Perth at 1am this morning, and had just arrived here at about 9pm. That's about 20 straight hours of driving, only stopping for fuel. He deliberately set off at 1am in order to cross a particular stretch of the highway in daylight (did it at night once - too many kangaroos - had to slow down to 50 kph). His plan was to set off at 4am the following morning, then cruise into Adelaide about 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. He's travelling across the Nullarbor quicker than us! It sounded like hard work to me, but he loved it - said this was his fourth trip across this year.

We decided to plan an early departure the next day. Our original plan had been to get to Esperance, but now we decided we could get further, maybe to Narrogin, or even all the way to Perth.

I had been having trouble with the camera - despite putting brand new batteries in it, it ran out as we were arriving in Ceduna. I didn't get any photos coming into Ceduna. After reviewing my photos today I resolved to clean the windscreen. It had been getting buggier and buggier, which was decreasing the quality of the photos.