The Crossing 24 km short of Mundrabilla
Only A Marathon Distance
A cold start with a 55 km target became a shorter marathon-distance day, with Christian and Brigette stopping to say hello, Week 5 complete, and Mundrabilla Roadhouse waiting for the night.
At 4:35 in the morning, the plan still sounded like a big one.
I was a little behind schedule for the start of Day 35, which was also day 14 on the Nullarbor. I was hoping to be moving by 5:30. The target was 55 kilometres, then a drive to Mundrabilla Roadhouse for the night.
First, though, I had to deal with the cold.
It was properly fresh in the campervan that morning. Ols made the sensible choice and stayed in bed. Ben was using the warming technology of his hoodie. I had the beanie on pretty much from the moment I woke up, and the next urgent piece of business was a warm bowl of oats with honey.
There were numbers in my head too, because there were always numbers in my head out there. At some point around this day, if it had not already happened, we would be halfway between Norseman and Ceduna. The total distance covered had also passed the length of Land’s End to John O’Groats, which meant I had already walked and run the equivalent of one end of Great Britain to the other.
That is a ridiculous thing to realise before breakfast and then still have to put your shoes on. It also made me wonder why I couldn’t have had the idea to walk across the country I lived in BEFORE I moved to Australia…
I further amused myself by reducing the remaining crossing to parkruns. Less than 800 to go.
That sort of calculation probably says something about where my head was. The only way to live with the size of the crossing was to keep making it smaller. A roadhouse. A session. A kilometre. Five kilometres. One parkrun. One bowl of oats. One cold start.
About 90 minutes into the first session, Christian and Brigette stopped to say good morning.
They were heading east from Fremantle to a new life in Melbourne, which was already a lovely thing to hear in the middle of nowhere. Then it turned out Christian was from Bristol in the UK, just up the road from where I was born. I was between roadhouses on the Eyre Highway in Western Australia and, somehow, there was still a small-world connection waiting beside the highway.
Those moments kept giving the crossing little sparks of warmth. Out there, every small interaction mattered. Every hello, every word of encouragement, every person who stopped for a chat helped keep my head in the right place.
The day itself did not become the 55 kilometres I had hoped for. By the time we stopped, I had covered 42.4 kilometres: just a hint over the marathon distance, or “only” a marathon, as if that had become a normal way to describe a shorter day.
Week 5 was complete.
We finished about 24 kilometres before Mundrabilla and drove forward to Mundrabilla Roadhouse for the first of two nights there.
Mundrabilla was useful straight away. They had just had a delivery, so there were plenty of supplies. There was even pink Himalayan salt on the shelf which, as more of a luxury than a core essential, I found quite amusing!
The running total sat at 1468 kilometres.
The morning had started with a 55 kilometre ambition, a beanie, and a bowl of oats. It ended with the day scaled back, the week finished, Mundrabilla reached by campervan, and tomorrow’s starting point waiting 24 kilometres back down the highway.
On HAA, even the shorter days were never small.
Videos From The Day
Wide loads on the Eyre Highway
A couple of trucks carrying very wide loads rolled past during Day 35, another little reminder that the Eyre Highway was still very much a working route.
Open on YouTubeImages From The Day
