The sign shown in the first photo below is encountered a little way East of Balladonia, and as advertised for the next 90 miles, all the way to the road house at Caiguna, the road is absolutely straight. A little while with google will soon determine that this is NOT the longest straight section of road in the world, that title belongs to a section of road in Saudi Arabia that is 60 miles (approx) longer. It is worth noting however that the railway line from Perth to South Australia does have the longest straight section of rail line in the world at 478 km (298 miles).

While traveling this long straight section of road we stopped at a rest area and were surprised to observe a couple of small birds (probably starlings) up under our vehicle catching the water dropping from the airconditing condenser. We were not sure whether this was a new behavior that local birds have developed in the age of air conditioned cars or whether it was opportunistic for these individual birds.

Second adventure of the day was to get to Baxter Cliffs and the Baxter Memorial.

Baxter was a companion of John Eyre (the first European to travel by land across the Great Australian Bight). Baxter was killed by natives April 29th 1841 at the site of the memorial.

We asked for directtions at the Caiguna road house and got the following advice.

"It's a rough track, 35 km about 3.5 hours. Through the caravan park, follow the airfield taxi way and turn left."

Yeh - right. An hour and 10 miles later we realized we were on the wrong track. Eventually we got on the right track and 10 km/h (6 miles/hour) was about right. So late afternoon we arrived at the memorial and a little later we were at the cliffs, the southern border of Australia, the Great Australian Bight, and the Southern Ocean.

The last picture is Nina with Antarctica in the background (though its a bit hard to see as its a long way off).

We camped on the cliffs overlooking the Southern Ocean, which proved to be somewhat of a bad choice as during the night the wind picked up and about 23:30 we had to pack up and move to a more sheltered spot. Still it was quite a treat to have camped in such a remote spot.