This time it was just us, no grandkids, no hurry.

We dodged school holiday crowds and found vacancies everywhere.

At a WA visitor centre, the lack of tourists was blamed on many of us fearing sudden border closure!

Saturating rains across the whole of the continent suggests that this is an ideal time to travel. The Nullarbor traffic was very light - we saw not a single NSW number plate.

Maybe we were too early for WA's tourist season.

On our return trip, we found a Lake Albert family just three rooms away at the Balladonia Motel on the Eyre Highway!

Spring is the wildflower season in WA, their peak tourist time.

Our journey there took us away from the usual shortcut route to The Nullarbor.

There are some lovely little places in SA's north, like Gladstone's pie shop, silo art in Wirrabara and eccentric truck-house accommodation in Melrose.

The road then enters the edge of the Flinders Ranges - a taste of calendar scenery before descending to Port Augusta.

We decided to linger in those sleepy little wheat towns that we usually race past on our way to Ceduna.

The large Gawler Ranges Motel attracted our attention at Wudinna, because the middle of nowhere seemed like a strange place for a motel. It was comfy, and the town pub provided good meals, but the mouse warning inside the room might have unsettled city travellers!

June in Ceduna is cold and showery. We met showers wherever we went. Even the Nullarbor Plain was receiving good rains.

Roads to WA are amazingly excellent, with the notable exception of two places - the highway from Kalgoorlie is poor, but the Sturt Highway is poorer! Nowhere did we see open potholes except on the Sturt, and some sections are quite disgusting.

Accommodation in Kalgoorlie was astronomically expensive, so look and drive on. Particularly see Kalgoorlie's unique historic town hall.

Yes, we saw the WA coast and visited Perth. Our son David lives in a very nice suburb near suburban rail, yet not far from the beach.

Premier McGowan is spruiking in television advertisements aimed at struggling families in Sydney, that a Perth home is half the Sydney price.

We stayed at Cervantes on the north coast, a quiet, neat resort town almost like we used to find on the NSW South Coast in the 1960s. We spent time in Busselton on the south coast, a beautiful town with lovely beaches and coastal trails.

Job vacancies are everywhere, particularly in hospitality, but in other occupations, too. WA has the lowest unemployment in Australia at 2.9 per cent. In seaside Busselton, Rio Tinto has an office to recruit mining workers, offering direct fly-in-fly-out jobs to workers whose real home is on the coast.

We drove west to see Collie, where 1200 workers have just been given the date for their unemployment. Collie is WA's only source of coal for their coal-fired power stations. The government has placed restrictions on milling regrowth forests, so many forestry jobs in that area will go, too.

From Collie, we drove across country, to Darken, a quaint village where an enterprising lady has set up a cafe, book exchange, and what appeared to be a community hub for the exchange of the latest news. We had afternoon tea there with old-fashioned homemade apple pie.

Country villages are tiny in WA's east.

There are few bigger towns. Wagin's "big thing" is a giant ram, located near the caravan park.

The lake with very large fish is worth a refreshment stop.

Hyden is home to Wave Rock, a tourist Mecca. We had often wondered if the "shortcut" dirt road from Hyden to Norseman would be worth a try. Not only is it an excellent road, but scenic, too.

From Wagga, it takes several days to drive to Perth, but it is something everyone should do at least once in their lives.

If you're not already impressed with what a big country Australia is, you will be by the time you've crossed The Nullarbor!