Day 40/41. 13th and 14th June 2024. Bullara Station. Al fresco showering.

While a “Roadhouse” is code for “gravel pit out the back of a servo”, “Station” is code for meat dinners. Bullara is famous for it’s Friday night burger night and you have to book for it when you book the accommodation, but they also have a great café serving the campers and passers by, roaming cattle, big sites, very friendly staff and an eclectic range of artworks around the place made by the staff and a Perth school that comes up every year.

With some short walks and not much else to do, a non-car day and a very slow afternoon was welcomed, and the heat made sure we were ready for a few beers with the highly rated burgers and some live music that evening. The burgers were cooked on open hot plates over an open fire, and as they knocked off over 420 of them for the night, it is a testament to the quality of the meat in the burger, as normally the juices running off so many burgers into a fire pit would have caused a flare up the size of I have only seen at a new years party in Moonee Ponds when the host let his plumbed in BBQ melt the BBQ and threaten the biggest firework display we had ever seen.

Before we did our last trip, some friends of ours stumbled upon a station stay that had live music advertised and just happened to get the Melbourne band Amarillo – Jac Tonks and Nick O’Mara who we have been to see a few times. We have really hoped that on our travels we would luck out and see somebody like that, or someonde that just blew us away in outback Australia. Tonight was not that night, but some dodgy Neil Diamond and the Nutbush had some of the crowd up and dancing.

While I have been reviewing facilities as a post script for where we have stayed, here, they become the story. Bullara Station have made a name for themselves with having completely open air showers in old tanks, with modified watering cans and buckets for shower heads and so much room in the shower, two of them are growing trees. Linda said she had birds flying in which she found pleasant. It made me think of my late Aunt Brenda, I think she may have ran out naked and screaming as she had an aversion to “rats with wings”. I just had a dragonfly come and do their dance for me. This was also the first shower that I have considered putting on SunSense Water Resistant SPF50+ whilst in the shower instead of soap. These showers are big enough for two people, and there were some people queuing two at a time to go in together – I can only assume that they knew each other beforehand. 9.5/10 (showering by myself).