Feeling the heat in... Lincolnshire?

In march 1774 Matthew Flinders was born in the Lincolnshire village of Donington. Although expected to follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps to become a doctor, the boy, inspired by Robinson Crusoe, decided that he wanted the life of an explorer. A natural aptitude for mathematics allowed Flinders to teach himself navigation, and by the age of 16, he had been made midshipman in the Royal Navy.

Flinders established himself as a fine navigator and cartographer on his first voyage to Australia (then known as “Terra Australis” or “New Holland”) aboard HMS Reliance in 1795, arriving seven years after the first European settlement at Sydney. For his second voyage to Australia, in 1801, Flinders had been promoted to Commander of HMS Investigator. Under his command, Investigator became the first vessel to circumnavigate Australia, with Flinders charting much of the coastline with unprecedented accuracy.

And so it came to pass that 200 years later, two landlubber yellow-bellies (that's Lincolnshire folk, to the uninitiated), should find themselves among familiar names in a strange land. Though the region could hardly have been more different from his native Lincolnshire, Flinders must somehow have been reminded of that far-off place as he navigated the waters around the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, for many a fenland town is there commemorated. Our first overnight stop in Flinders' Lincolnshire tribute act was quiet little Louth bay, with its white-sanded beach that provided a taste of things to come.

From Louth we skirted Boston Bay before pulling into Port Lincoln. We arrived just in time for the annual “Tunarama” festival, which celebrates the town's history as a tuna-fishing port (though I suspect they don't actually bring in much tuna there any more, not least because we failed to see tuna on sale anywhere at the festival!). The festival kicked off with an impressive hour-long parade, with every local organisation and society seemingly being represented. The local Celtic Society wheezed out a rousing bagpipe rendition of “Waltzing Matilda” as they marched past, which was, shall we say, a novel experience.

Perhaps the highlight of Tunarama was the boat-build challenge, in which teams of two people built a boat out of plywood in two hours before throwing their trust (and themselves) into their craft for a race around the harbour.

On the starter's gun the teams carried their “boats” to the water.

Needless to say the result was carnage. Several vessels sank at the starting line. Two craft were sufficiently buoyant to make a good fist of the course. The spirited battle ended with our favourite (the boat nearest the camera in the previous photo) just pipping the other to the post.
The other big event was the tuna-toss, where competitors sling a (plastic) tuna as far as possible. Randomly, Robson Greene of “Soldier Soldier” fame put in an appearance, tossing off a respectable 6.5 metres.

After the excitement of Tunarama, we retired to the scenic serenity of nearby Lincoln National Park for a couple of days. We camped in a fantastic spot above Spalding cove on the Donington Peninsula.

We took a hiking and cycling tour of the peninsula, and to Stamford Hill, exploring one expansive white-sand cove after another.

Moving out of Little Lincolnshire, our next port-of-call was Coffin Bay National Park, where we camped with heath goannas (the lizard in the pic).

On a hike around the bay we encountered a great many emus, all of whom were too quick for our old camera to catch, though their footprints were not. At six-foot plus, the emus leave a tread reminiscent of Jurassic Park's residents. On the right is that of a chick, its mother is in the middle and my size-5 is on the left.

For the last couple of days, we had noticed that it was mighty hot and sticky. When we got back to the main road and into radio-range, we found out that South Australia was in the grip of the hottest week for 100 years – no wonder we were feeling a bit toasty! On the hottest day, the state capital Adelaide was at 46 Celsius, dipping to just 33 at night. Phew, what a scorcher! Somehow on those hot hot days we would come across a beachy cove with a cool breeze, else we'd visit a local air-conditioned library. So that's how we got by.

Near Streaky Bay, we came across Murphy's Haystacks – colourful weather-sculpted granite outcrops known as inselbergs. We couldn't bear to hang around for long though – despite it being 8.30am, the temperature was well into the 30s, with only a hellish hot breeze to take the edge off.

After checking out a sea-lion colony near Murphy's Haystacks, all that remained for us to do in South Australia was to make the epic journey across the Nullarbor plain to Western Australia. On the only road through the Nullarbor - the Eyre Highway – it's 1200km from Ceduna (the last town in SA) to Norseman (the first town in WA), as this sign at the border-town of Eucla points out. The several “towns” marked on the map along the road, are actually just roadhouses, which are glorified (and very pricey) service stations.

“Nullarbor” comes from the Latin for “no trees”, which turned out to be a fair description of only a surprising short stretch of the journey. The road actually skirts only the southern edge of the true Nullarbor, which, being near the sea, receives sufficient rain for trees to grow in most places. The other surprise was that the plain was blissfully cool, providing welcome relief from the blistering hetawave.

Where the Nullarbor meets the sea, you can get a hint of the geology of the plain. The Nullarbor is an ancient limestone seabed, 300 metres thick in places. 20 million years ago shells and other marine organisms settled on the seabed. Some 3 million years ago, the bed was gently raised to form a huge plateau, 700kn long and 300km wide. Beneath the surface are Australia's most extensive cave systems, all of which have now been closed to the public due to the high mortality rate among explorers.

The Nullarbor also can also claim Australia's longest stretch of dead straight road (147km), which Andy found he could quite happily traverse hands-free!

After a couple of days solid driving, we were thoroughly bored with all the songs on our iPod and and slightly sickened from watching prodigious quantities of road-kill zoom past, but otherwise we made it across with body and soul intact. The next instalment will follow our journey along the south coast of WA.