The CrossingFinal day on the 90 Mile Straight
The First Bend In Four Days
After four days and three unpowered nights, the highway finally bent. Caiguna gave us a daylight finish, power and the sort of roadhouse feed I had been thinking about for miles.
Saturday started with a number that sounded almost reasonable.
Only 40 kilometres to Caiguna.
At the start of HAA, 40 kilometres would have sounded huge. By week five, on the final day of the 90 Mile Straight, I was calling it “just” 40k. The plan was to do the usual 30 before lunch, then reach Caiguna with daylight left for a shower, shave, laundry and a proper feed.
That was the hope, anyway. The shorter distance made it feel like it should be easier, but by lunchtime the actual day had made its own case.
We’d had three straight nights without power, and this was our eighth consecutive day on the Eyre Highway. Power meant charging devices, resetting the van, cleaning ourselves up and eating something we hadn’t cooked.
The day still belonged to the straight.
There were wider verges again now, and the country was barren, desolate and stunning in that Nullarbor way. I could look around and feel both the beauty of it and the repetition of it. The landscape was not empty, exactly. It had colour, sky, low scrub, road trains, light, dust, flies and the constant need to keep paying attention. But it was also long, straight and flat enough to get inside your head.
By lunch I’d run out of elegant description: warm, dry, dusty, long, straight, flat and full of flies. Not poetry, but accurate.
The fly net was earning its place again.
Late in the day, the 90 Mile Straight finally ended.
I had been thinking about that sign for days. Australia’s longest straight road is a simple phrase, but after four days of walking it, the scale had become physical. The landmark had become hours and hours of forward motion with very little change in the line ahead.
So when I reached the sign, it was a real achievement unlocked moment. Another piece of the route had been covered on foot, step by step, with no shortcut and no way to make it smaller than it was.
Then came the strangest reward: A BEND!!!
I had not seen one for a while, and it had become significant enough to photograph. A bend in the road should not really feel like a major achievement. On Day 29, it did.
Somewhere in those long, straight kilometres, I also came up with what I thought was a perfectly sensible infrastructure idea: a shared bike and pedestrian path from Norseman to Ceduna. It would make the route safer for charity walkers, runners and cyclists, and it might even help the roadhouses by making the Nullarbor a more popular challenge.
I told Ben I thought it made perfect sense.
He looked at me, smiled, and in his distinct south east England accent said, “yeah, but what you’ve got to remember Gary is that you’re a f@#!ing nutter.”
I still think the idea is a good one.
We reached Caiguna Roadhouse in daylight, which was its own kind of luxury. Showers. Power. Restaurant. After the previous few days, that little list had real emotional force.
The first roadhouse meal in four days didn’t disappoint. Ben and Ols got stuck in, and none of us needed persuading that hot food, chairs, lights and a roof were excellent inventions.
That night, part of my mind was also back in Perth. It was Perth Marathon weekend, and two years earlier I had run my first marathon. One year earlier I had run as part of a relay team. Now I was more than a thousand kilometres away, watching updates from running friends and thinking about how much that first marathon had changed my life.
Two years after that first marathon, I reached Caiguna in daylight with the 90 Mile Straight behind me.
The bend in the road still made me grin.
Videos From The Day
Warm, dry, dusty, long, straight, flat and full of flies
The planned easier 40 km day on the 90 Mile Straight, by then warm, dry, dusty, long, straight, flat and full of flies.
Open on YouTubeImages From The Day
