2015/10 Australia trip - Norseman |
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At Eucla Pass the road drops down to the Roe Plains with the Nullarbor escarpment off to the north. After a couple of hours it climbs back up at Madura Pass and we were back on the Nullarbor 
again. We stopped to take a look at the Caiguna Blowhole, intrigued that there could be a blowhole ten miles from the sea. It’s actually a breathing hole for some massive 
and hidden cave system and it may blow or suck depending on atmospheric pressure. This time it was blowing a cool breeze.
Beyond this point even the travel promotors are getting desperate and there’s an effort to promote the “90 mile straight” as a tourist attraction! It’s not as if the rest of the road is at all curvy. There was little traffic, just the occasional roadtrain or car pulling a caravan. It was a stark contrast to the USA’s equivalent road I-80 which carries a constant stream of trucks.
We’d been ploughing on west hoping to find a shop where we could buy fruit and veggies but all the places we’d passed, Mundrabilla, Madura, Caiguna, and Cocklebiddy, are just roadhouses selling junk food and beer. This was a problem as my plan was for us take the track from the next one, Balladonia, down to the coast and spend about four nights in the parks there, places that we hadn’t had time to see in 2006. Then we were taking a clockwise loop around the southwest coast to just north of Perth and back via Kalgoorlie to where we were. However we didn’t have enough water and fresh food on board for the two parks and Sandie was muttering about symptoms of scurvy. We decided to do the loop in reverse, going north to Kalgoorlie first and then following the flowers south.
We camped at Harms Lake; there was no sign of a lake but we were in denser forest and the soil was red. We’d crossed the Nullarbor! The flies were enjoying the warm evening and there were now a few of their carnivorous cousins amongst the crowd. Luckily it was dark at six, a feature of the WA time zone, and the moths took over. Unfortunately we had left the ceiling light on and we had a whirling swarm of moths up there. The only way to get any sleep was to set my headlight up as a lighthouse to keep them busy away from our faces.
Saturday October 10th
It was light before 5; this is a crazy time zone, about as bad as Japan’s. We were off by seven, avoiding the local flies who must have been working office hours. The road was a bit busier, maybe locals off on weekend trips. We passed a wrecked road train, with its rear trailer flipped over and its load all out in the bush. The police were already there directing traffic; we noted that they were wearing headnets. We saw this mulla mulla at the roadside, a reminder of our 2006 trip across the north when we saw entire valleys full of these flowers.
We arrived in Norseman just in time for the visitor centre to open; the guy was helpful and gave us directions to the fossicking area, but pointed out that Norseman is only a small town and we’d have to go to Kalgoorlie for some things. However it was definitely a real town with a shop and a café. We loaded up with veggies and fruit from the cave-like IGA and then drank our lattes in the corrugated iron café.
We set off walking to see the sights. There’s a statue of Norseman, the horse that kicked up a gold nugget in 1892 and started the area’s gold rush. Unlike most gold strikes this one is still productive. Nearby is a roundabout adorned with camel sculptures, celebrating the camel trains that used to haul supplies in this area. Norseman’s main street is abnormally wide, sized to allow a camel train to do a u-ey.
The town had this tidy little garden of local plants, a small sample of what we’d come to see.