Border Village, SA

The 600km that we drove to Border Village was the first day of our three day drive from Streaky Bay to Perth. After about an hour we arrived in a very windy Ceduna, and then after that there were no towns on this section of the drive – just roadhouses of varying quality – each consisting of accommodation, petrol pumps, a cafe, a bar, and a general store.

On the way we stopped briefly at each roadhouse and took photos of the various road signs and markers. This section of the drive also contained a few lookout points over the Great Australian Bight.

Border Village is literally on the border of South Australia and Western Australia – it’s right next to the border sign and the agricultural quarantine checkpoint – but crucially for us is located on the SA side. This meant that we could bring our own salad for dinner! Yes, if we had chosen to stay at Eucla, only a few kilometres away on the other side of the border, then we would not have been allowed our salad – as no fruit and vegetables are permitted to be carried across the border.

Border village itself was one of the better roadhouses – not too shabby, and with a ‘big kangaroo’ model to look at. Our room was a pretty standard ‘old rundown motel’ style room.

When we arrived we had a stroll to the border and explored ‘Eucla National Park’ – which seemed to start behind the caravan park. We followed a dirt track through the desert for a while, and then turned around. We also discovered that we were in a special time zone called ‘Central Western Time’ (UTC+08:45) which is only used by the roadhouses in this area.