Day 13

I awake as fresh as a daisy, while Steve is confused about my state after someone replaced me with a snarling invalid yesterday. With pathetic apologies from me, we charge into the nullabor again - actually looking forward to it.

As previously mentioned, travelling west to east means travelling in the same direction as the earth is rotating, speeding the apparent rise and set of the sun. The end result is that you have about an hour less to cross it in daylight than you did when going the other direction. We don't have time to stop at the various whale watching places, but Steve (resourceful fellow) manages an encounter anyway.

Steve making "Tee Hee" sounds. The sign reads: 'Please keep off the whale'. You couldn't make it up.

We jam the cruise control on the speed limit plus 3 per cent (the speedo reads slow, honest) and amuse ourselves with a combination of schmackerels, asylum escapee waving and hideous, hideous sing-a-longs to the ipod. There's a special hell for this kind of singing.

The wierd compelling feeling to take the next turn-off and wander north is back and my eyes are fixed on the northern horizon, which is approximately a bizillion further miles away than anything you can see in Collingwood. Steve is more responsibly looking at the road and for interesting things to photograph.

Me on top of a fossilized sheep. Ok it might be a rock. The pose is 'intrepid explorer No. 2'.

On the way past we spied a sign near the edge of the world. When you are on top of a really big cliff top at the edge of the world, this symbol somehow has more significance.

The international symbol for 'Fuck!'

Most astonishingly, wherever we stop there is a cornucopia of wildlife, especially strange looking bugs which probably aren't from earth (well, anywhere else on it, at least) accompanied by about a billion of their mates. I struggle to think of this as a desert.

We charge through the gathering gloom (getting fairly used to this by now) and make it to Penong, where the same roadhouse serves us the same greasy meals with the same cuddly attitude (Q: "Are you still cooking meals?" A: "If I wasn't I wouldn't be here"). We drink our stash of gluten-free cider to wash away the day.