The Crossing Norseman rest and Nullarbor prep
Before The Eyre Highway
Day 21 was a Norseman reset before the Eyre Highway: campervan number three, foot care, supplies, Gateway Tourist Park kindness, a phone call with Matt Napier, and the Nullarbor plan becoming real.
Day 21 was the deep breath before the Eyre Highway.
We were in Norseman with about 800 kilometres already in my feet and legs. The next four weeks were going to add roughly 1,200 more. If I stared at that too long it became ridiculous, so we did the sensible thing and got busy with practical jobs.
First came Operation Transfer All Our Stuff, part two.
Campervan number three arrived in the morning. The driver seemed understandably confused because he had a train ticket from Kalgoorlie, which was about 190 kilometres away, and the train was leaving in a couple of hours. We were confused because campervan number two was still sitting there, not driveable, and could not just be abandoned in the caravan park.
Then the iPad Air that had been left in campervan number one and supposedly returned turned out to be some random old iPad from lost property.
Then we discovered that campervan number three had arrived with an empty fuel tank.
At a certain point you just have to laugh.
Apollo still needed to organise the tow for campervan number two. We still needed to move everything across again. But campervan number three was now our vehicle, and I was declaring that it would get us all the way.
The rest of the day was shopping, food, foot care, and trying to let the scale of the next section settle without letting it crush us. Foot care had become a proper routine by then: moisturiser, skin lotion, balm, foot bath, pain relief, liniment, gel, and rubbing my feet between sessions. My legs and body were fine. The feet were the thing. Gravel, uneven ground, and ultra-distance days stacked on top of one another will find your feet no matter how motivated you are.
Because the weather had been getting colder, that was the day I bought the infamous bright yellow beanie. It would become a prominent feature of the crossing, part of the uniform, and in many ways part of my identity.
After the shopping was done we hit the BP Roadhouse for lunch. I could not go past the mixed grill. I called it carb loading because that made it sound more scientific.
Gateway Tourist Park was exactly what we needed: handy for the Eyre Highway, the roadhouses, and the town centre, and kind about what we were doing. Janet and Peter Percy managed the park at the time, and they generously donated our site because HAA was a charity event.
Janet added a heart for Max, her and Peter’s grandson, who had died five years earlier from a heart defect at only 14 and a half weeks old. Those moments always changed the temperature of the day. You could be in the middle of logistics, food, campervan hassles, jokes, and planning, and then suddenly the Heart Foundation part of HAA was not a logo or a fundraising page. It was a family, a name, and a little red heart hanging with all the others.
Peter and Janet were also brilliant about the vehicle situation. We were using two spots in the park because of the campervan mess. The fees for the second spot were billed to Apollo and then donated to the Heart Foundation, which was very on-brand for HAA, and a lovely thing for Janet and Peter to do!
That night I spoke with Matt Napier. Matt had both cycled and walked from Perth to Sydney (bouncing an AFL ball in the case of the walk - because why not?) A few months earlier, I had stumbled across his blog, recording details of the walk, while doing the perfectly ordinary thing of googling “how to walk across the Nullarbor”.
The route details and daily distances were similar to my own plan; above all else, that blog had given me the reassurance I needed that the Nullarbor was doable! I printed out Matt’s itinerary breakdowns, and still have them. Talking to him in Norseman, the night before we stepped onto the Eyre Highway, helped again.
He told me he was jealous because I was about to do his favourite bit.
I did not really understand what he meant. A few hours into the next day, I would.
We also picked up a little slip of paper from the BP servo listing the distances across the Nullarbor. It instantly turned a huge unknown into something we could plan around. Around the same time, I asked Ben and Ols how they felt about not taking rest days for the next section, so we could reduce the daily distance a little and hopefully finish earlier. Their answer was wonderfully practical, and delivered with just the right amount of humour:
“doesn’t make any difference to us. Whether you’re walking or not we’re sitting in the van waiting around anyway”
Earlier finishes mattered. They usually meant better sleep, and better sleep meant I had a chance of being up and ready at stupid o’clock. Walking toward a sunrise was uplifting. Walking in the dark after the sun had already gone down behind me was much less so.
So the plan was set.
In the morning we would start moving again. Norseman behind us. Eyre Highway ahead. “The Nullarbor” no longer something over there in the distance.
Images From The Day
