Advertisement
Published: November 18th 2011
Eyre Highway
Been looking at this view for three days ! ....but mostly flattter !Leaving our secluded campsite after breakfast with the family of Magpies we made our way back to the Eyre Hwy and headed west towards Balladonia.
After passing more of the magnificent semi arid shrublands dominated by Mulga (s) we arrived at Balladonia. This arid shrubland is one of the world's oldest landscapes, containing seashells millions of years old from when the area was ocean floor. The Balladonia roadhouse (eating & fuel again!) has a cultural heritage museum setting it apart from all the other roadhouses exhibiting Aboriginal dreaming, Pioneers, Afghan Cameleers and the crash landing of NASA's Skylab in 1979. Balladonia is also the end of the 80 mile straight. We enjoyed a morning coffee here served to us by a young lady from Mildura. Like us, she is struggling with the sunlight at 4.00AM. No daylight saving in WA, just crazy, if you start work at 8.30am it has been broad daylight for 4 hours and when you leave work at 5.30pm, you would have just one hour of daylight before sunset !!! Nuts !
Travelling on from Balladonia 100klm up the road we called in at Fraser Range Station, a commercial sheep station which has diversified (why
wouldn't you!) into camping and accommodation and if it had not been so early in the morning we would have stayed here - great spot. The Fraser Range is home to the world's largest Eucalyptus hard wood forest surrounded by the granite hills of the Range. As the first station settled on the Nullarbor, Fraser Range Station has a lot of history much of which you can still see today with its stone buildings, gully dams and tanks, originally constructed using convict labour and Aboriginals. The station also had the best morning tea stop we have seen, check the photo!
Another 100 Klm and we arrive at our destination, Norseman. Norseman is the last large town on the Eyre Hwy. Gold put Norseman on the map in the 1890's with one of the richest goldfields in Australia this can be seen in its colossal tailings dump. If you could stand on top of this dump it is suggested that up to $50m worth of gold could be under your feet. I wonder how long it will e before technology makes it viable to re-process this tailings dump ?
The story behind the town's name is folklore when a
Balladonia Roadhouse
Part of Skylab is on the roof ! horse owned by prospector Laurie Sinclair pawed the ground and unearthed a nugget of gold in 1894 - the horse's name was Norseman, and their is a bronze statue of him in the town. The lookout at Beacon Hill has outstanding 360 degree views of the salt lakes, the township, tailings dump and surrounding hills and valleys.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.136s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0835s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
faye gronow
non-member comment
micheal, we are not seeing any photos, have you 'posted' any on your blog. Love the writings but would love even more some photos. The only time we have seen Kalgoorlie was when were on the Indian pacific, and it was nite time. did enjoy the trip around though. we were taken into the 'red lite' area. The girls do go home for a break and while the first shift does that the others arrive!!! so I guess 'no man goes without' business as usual. whoops this is the end of the Noresman reprot not up to Kalgoorlie but we do know tyou are there now or have you moved on! very hot today 32.alas no swimming pool. look forward to you next report xox