Lap Around Australia: Norseman

Perth to Norseman

Getting out of Perth during morning peak hour is not fun, especially if you happen to miss the exit to the Great Eastern Highway (as we did) and can't find a way to get off one highway and get back to the other easily (with a van in tow). We did eventually make it but not without some angst. Once we were on our way we did enjoy the scenery and pootled down the highway heading east towards Kalgoorlie.

Our first stop for the morning was the rather delightful little town of Meckering. We'd never heard of Meckering before, but its claim to fame is an earthquake that happened back in the sixties and was of such magnitude that the railway lines warped into an S shape and a big fault line appeared in the earth, still visible today. The town makes a very good attempt to attract RV traffic by offering low cost overnight parking in town with good clean facilities.

We had a lot further to go and we pushed on eastwards. Following most of the way beside the highway is a large water pipeline that carries water to Kalgoorlie and beyond. We arrived at Southern Cross mid afternoon and called a halt to travel for the day. Barb is still heavy with cold and coughing miserably so we parked up in a drive-through spot and spent a restful night.

We were able to get away early from Southern Cross, being still hitched., and the drive through to the old gold mining town of Coolgardie was uneventful. We stopped in Coolgardie intending to have lunch, but after walking around the town we didn't find anyway that really appealed. The town does have some beautiful old buildings and was obviously once prosperous, but now it's sad and tired.

 

 

We drove on towards Norseman, by-passing Kalgoorlie. We'd already done an open cut mine tour at Tom Price some weeks back and at this point our aim is to just get back home asap, and the sight-seeing will be secondary to that. That said, we arrived at Norseman in the early afternoon, so there was time to have a look around the town here. We got another drive-through spot at the Gateway Caravan Park, which pleased us immensely, then we drove into town.

Norseman features a roundabout with a big camel sculpture.....and not a lot else. We did a little shopping in town at the supermarket and then noticed a sign to a viewing lookout some 2 kilometres out of town. It's actually worth doing! There are great views over town and the surrounding saltpan lakes and the big line of lode slag heap. We even went to the lookout over a gold mine entrance.

Our final destination was the golf course. We had heard about the Nullarbor Links Golf Course which is the longest golf course in the world. It's an 18 hole par 73 course that spans the Eyre Highway for some 1,365 kilometres! It starts in Kalgoorlie and ends in Ceduna. We had already decided that we weren't going to play, as not only is the cost a bit prohibitive (and we don't have golf clubs or balls) there is the small matter that neither of us can actually play golf. Duh! We wanted to take a little look at the tee shot in Norseman, but it was not too impressive. The fairway looked a bit ordinary too. Not for us .... but might be fun if you're a keen golfer.