One has to know that Perth is the most isolated city in the world. You recognize it just by driving further out of Perth. Then you easily find villages being over 600km away from each other and in-between no civilization beside so called “Roadhouses” providing a fuel station and service area. A comparison illustrates the distances pretty nice: the next metropolis Adelaide is around 2700km away from Perth. Melbourne and Sidney are 3900km and. 4000km away from Perth, respectively (this equals the distance between Madrid and Moscow).
Using our small rented Mitsubishi, we were going up the West coast to the North. Driving on the left hand side and the automatic engine produced some difficulties, but driving a lot they were quickly overcome…
We were hoping to finally see some kangaroos on the street, but everything you see during the day is just dead kangaroos, cows (partially also dead), sheep and goats. So the first rendezvous with a kangaroo was still outstanding.
Another curiosity on Australian highways are so called “Road Trains”, tremendous trucks with 3 or more trailers (on the highways we used, they were allowed to have a maximum of 36.5m length). So overtaking or passing one of these Road Trains was really windy in our small car. 🙂
The farer we were moving away from Perth, the emptier the highways became. Sometimes 10 minutes passed before seeing the next car. Of course, everyone then greets each other 😉 However, it’s not too surprising, because due to its mines Perth is a very rich city and therefore all citizens have enough money for just taking the plane, since every “city” (meaning 3000 citizens or more) has a small airport.
Of course also the landscape changes from time to time during such an Odyssey. There are bushes and dunes next to the coast, steps more likely in the inner country and shiny red sand stone while going to Karijini National Park. All of them are cut through by the straight streets whose endings is sometimes only imaginable at the horizon.
One gets the feeling staying in a second America, one which is like you’ve always imagined. On the one hand side the endless roads and on the other hand side country music in the radio and inside the Roadhouses including cowboy look and Wild Western flair. We are going to explore if America will be able to beet this 😉

Street everywhere, as far as you can see...