The CrossingOut Of Ceduna
Moonlight Out Of Ceduna
I left Ceduna by moonlight and found South Australia surprisingly empty again. After 55.5 kilometres of pipeline and farm country, there were bangers and mash in the van at Puntabie.
The rest day in Ceduna had done its job. I felt refreshed, but HAA wasn’t a touring holiday. The shoes had to go back on.
On Day 49, that meant slipping out of Ceduna before sunrise. I posted that it was back to work, thankfully a couple of degrees warmer, and said farewell to Ceduna with the hope that I would see it again one day.
The first big sign in the dark pointed toward Port Augusta.
For weeks, Ceduna had been the place in my head. We rested for a day, bought supplies and enjoyed actual facilities. Then I stepped out before dawn with Port Augusta taking over as the next big name on the signs.
The funny thing was that leaving Ceduna did not feel like stepping into a busy, built-up part of South Australia.
It still felt remote.
I’d imagined that civilisation might spring up thick and fast after Ceduna. It didn’t. There was still plenty of empty space, and the next stretch needed more planning than the Nullarbor in some ways. Towns and farms appeared more often, but overnight options weren’t suddenly simple.
The day also brought back an unexpected old companion: a water pipeline.
After all those weeks in Western Australia with the C Y O’Connor pipeline appearing beside tracks and highways, here was another pipeline in South Australia, running beside the route and making the landscape feel oddly familiar. It amused me at the time, and I joked that I wondered whether I had turned the wrong way and was somehow heading back toward Perth. It did have that strange deja vu feeling: new state, new section, same long-distance pipe beside the walking.
The country had changed, though.
There were paddocks, sheep, side roads, and farm signs. The colours were different from the treeless plain and the roadhouse country behind us. There was more green around. More evidence of people. More little signs that normal life was happening somewhere nearby.
But nearby is a flexible word in HAA.
The walking still had to be done one session at a time, and this was another big day: six sessions, 55.5 kilometres, and a long working stretch from about 5:15am to 8pm. The rest day had not made the next stretch easy. It had just given me enough of a reset to get back out there and start pushing east again.
By the end, we had taken another 55 kilometres off the distance to Port Augusta and ended the night parked by the roadside at the free, unpowered Puntabie Rest Area.
And the lads absolutely delivered on dinner.
A big plate of bangers, mash, beans, and onion may not sound glamorous, but after a day like that it was exactly what I needed. I said it at the time and I will happily say it again: thanks lads, that really hit the spot.
We had started in moonlight and ended in moonlight.
Images From The Day
