The CrossingInto Ceduna
The Nullarbor Has Been Crossed
Truckies called encouragement as I walked the final 47.1 kilometres into Ceduna. The Eyre Highway still continued, but the long stretch from Norseman was done.
The final day into Ceduna started cold, but not foggy.
At 7.14am I had 14.5 kilometres in the bag and Ceduna was about 33 away. The day was clear, dry and warming, and the end of the Norseman-to-Ceduna crossing felt real.
I was also getting pangs of jealousy from the Gold Coast Marathon updates. That is a strange thing to admit while walking across Australia, but there it was. A part of me still wanted to be around the running community, watching friends chase their own goals, soaking up the event feeling. Instead I was out on the Eyre Highway, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to finish a stretch that had lived in my head for so long.
Ceduna was more than a town. It was the end of the stretch commonly called “crossing the Nullarbor”: Norseman to Ceduna, through roadhouses, rest areas, silence, huge skies and a lot of time inside my own head.
There was still walking to do first.
Day 47 still had roadside check-ins from people who had become part of this section in their own way. Craig, the South Australian road maintenance guy I had first met out on the Nullarbor, stopped again to say hello. The Eyre Highway was basically his office, and it felt right that he would reappear near the end of the stretch.
Glenn also stopped in a Kalari company ute to check I was okay. We had seen plenty of Kalari trucks over the previous week, and the drivers had been generous with waves and toots of support. We had started referring to them as our mates: “here comes another one of our mates.”
The final sessions took me through the country around Koonibba and toward the edge of Ceduna. After the weeks behind us, the signs started to feel different. Ceduna at five kilometres. Ceduna attractions. Fuel, beds, food, toilets. Normal, basic things, but after so long measuring progress by roadhouses and unpowered rest areas, they felt almost luxurious and cosmopolitan.
Then there was the moon.
As I reached the edge of Ceduna, the full moon sat beside a wind-shaped tree. One of my photos stayed as my phone wallpaper for quite a while: beautiful, slightly unreal and tied to the moment this section finally ended.
Walking down the final stretch into Ceduna was amazing. A few truckies near the camper said “good onya”, and then there was a bit of a team celebration when I got inside.
The Nullarbor had been crossed. On foot.
There was a long way to go. Of course there was. But that did not take anything away from the moment. The space, the silence, the sense of achievement: it was one of the most amazing experiences I had ever had. Ben and Ols had been an awesome support team and good mates, and this milestone belonged to all three of us.
One of the oddly specific memories from that finish is Ols chatting to some truckies and looking nervous about me seeing that he had bought tobacco and was having a smoke. He and Ben had both voluntarily stopped smoking from Day 1 of the trip. For Ben, that had tied into training for a running event and later had some positive health benefits for diving. For Ols, I think the mental strain of the Nullarbor simply wore away at his willpower.
Having given up smoking myself in 2012, I knew exactly how hard it could be. Sometimes you quit several times before the timing is right. Ols didn’t need to look so nervous.
Images From The Day
