THE WALLABY TRACK WITH LIONEL MUSSELL

I overheard my owner , Lionel , talking to his friends about “ crossing the Nullarbor ”. I didn ’ t have a clue what that meant but I later found out he was talking about us travelling around Australia and this meant crossing the large treeless plain , the Nullarbor , to Western Australia .

This sounded exciting because up until then I ’ d spent my life running around Melbourne ’ s suburbs . Lionel belongs to the Australian Caravan Club and we were to start our around-Oz trip at a muster at Bendigo with a lot of his ACC mates .

Apparently they had a great time and we were going to plenty of musters in our travels . They all wished us well as we set off on our big adventure around the coast of Australia .

Lionel likes free-camping so we often stay in national parks and water reserves , or even in rest areas , instead of caravan parks .

Little Desert National Park , Vic , was the first time I ’ d ever been in a national park and it was very nice . We were the only ones there and I saw my first emus here as they came wandering past our campsite .

One evening at Eucla – about halfway across the Nullarbor – we were on our own in the bush just off the road . The road was quite good and on one stretch there wasn ’ t a turn for more that 100km .

I ’ d never been on a road like this before . It is used a lot by trucks . It was a bit sad to see all the dead kangaroos that had been hit by vehicles .

We went out to a lot of viewing areas near the cliffs and Lionel said the water we could see was called the Great Australian Bight and appeared on lots of postcards . He told me it was a treacherous stretch of water and there had been lots of shipwrecks along this coast .

The highway eventually reached a T-road at Norseman and Lionel decided to turn left and go to a place called Cape Le Grand National Park . He and his wife , Vi , went there for the day with their friends some years ago .

This time , he wanted us to stay a few days and when we got there I could see why . It was a lovely spot but I was a bit disappointed he didn ’ t take me on the beach for a drive .

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