Day 8 Monday 27 July 2026

I never thought that I would say this but today's drive across the Nullabor was fascinating. The geography and vegetation was far different to what I expected.  I was expecting desert like sandhills with lots of camels, how wrong was I.  The land is primarly flat covered with green scrub and nary a camel in site.  On the SA side of the plain the road follows the cliff line close to the sea until just over the SA/WA border.  It is only then that you realise that the cliffs facing the Great Australian Bight are actually the southern end of plateau which drops down into the sea.  

At Eucla in WA the road descends to a coastal plain and there is an escarpment on your right which leads back up to the plateau.  Only after looking at all this for  a little while I realised that this escarpment was a continuation of the cliffs facing the Bight predominately on the SA end of the plain.

The road is in excellent condition with no, I repeat, no potholes.  Today driving to  Cocklebiddy, where I am staying tonight, I covered a couple of stretches of straight road exceeding 140k without a bend or curve.  The truckies are good with some indicating when it is safe to pass, however with the roads so straight and little traffic it easy to get past them even the big road trains trundling along at 100kph.

In some places the a 1.5k section of the road is marked out so that the RFDS can use it as an emergency landing strip.  In warlike Switzerland they can land fighter aicraft on their roads in peaceful Australia we can land air ambulances.

Today I saw two heavily laden cyclists heading east, one chap walking with his wordily possessions in some sort of wheel barrow heading west and a another chap on a pushbike frame which had been converted to push scooter scooting his way west.  As they say, it takes all types.

 However there is one fly in this seemingly ideal ointment and that is the dreaded "greyus nomadus" and the new sub-species I have discovered the "greyus nomudas avec automobilus towus behindus".  This irritating member of the grey nomad family drives a large motor home towing a little car behind them.  How come a truckie driving a prime mover with three 40ft trailers behind him can travel safely at 100kph and the grey nomad no matter what he (and it always a he) is driving can't exceed 80kph on the open road and must drive at 10kph below the speed limit in the built up areas.

Now, the moment you have all been waiting for, the full and untold story of the Battle of Broken Hill.  This is the only land battle fought in Australia during The Great War.

The 1st of January 1915 was a warm sunny day in Broken Hill and 1,200 of the town's population was eagerly boarding the picnic train for the short train trip to Silverton for the union annual picnic.  The annual picnic was a tradition with many of the unions and clubs in Broken Hill and traditionally they travelled in open goods wagon with seats installed for the journey.

Little did this happy and gay group faced a dis

aster beyond their understanding due to a war being thousands of kilometers away.  

Two Afghani camel drivers had decided to join the Ottoman (Turkish) cause and had stationed themselves near the railway line a short distance out of Broken Hill, they were both armed with military calibre rifles, were displaying the Turkish flag and seeking cover behind a white ice-cream handcart owned by one of the Afghans. 

One of the wagons attacked by the Afghans

As the train approached the Afghans opened fire on the undefended railway carriages killing 4 of the passengers (one man & three women) and wounding a number of others.  The local militia were alerted and arrived at the scene of the attack and opened fire on the Afghans.

The Afghans then retreated 2 or three kilometers to a small hillock topped with some white rocks and so began the battle of the White Rocks.

Why it is called the battle of the White Rocks

By this time the militia had been reinforced by members of various rifle clubs and some community minded citizens.  The battle of White Rocks was over fairly quickly with one Afghan killed and the other wounded and subsequently becoming deceased.

Story of the battle of White Rocks

So you would think that this would be the end of it, but not to be.  When the good folk of Broken Hill heard about the attack on the picnic train they formed a mob and attacked the disused German club and burnt that to the ground.  The mob then set off for the Afghani camp on the edge of town with a mind to create some sort of mayhem and extract some revenge however this mob was stopped on the edge of town by armed police and the militia.  Thus ended the only land battle in Australia in TGW, of course we had our own land sea battle in Victoria in the battle of Port Phillip Bay, but that's another story.

Now wasn't that worth waiting for.

I will finish off the blog today with some nice whale photos.  Don't blame me come and see me when you can do better.

No matter how dodgy the pics are the whale watching was a marvelous experience.