Off to See the Wizard - Southern Cross to Balladonia

Southern Cross is interesting in that it is the last town on the eastern side of the wheat belt and the start of the goldfields.  In fact, the first major gold discovery in the goldfields was here in 1887.

Therefore, we were entering a different landscape, once again.  Following along that all important water pipeline, the first town we came to was Coolgardie.

Coolgardie was founded in the gold rush, in 1892.  It had a population of 25,000 at one stage, being one of the largest towns in Western Australia.

It has now sadly been left way behind by Kalgoorlie, just 36 kms away.

There are some very grand buildings from those former times, but it is a sleepy place now.

There was an open air museum beside the road with lots of rusty machinery.  These cylinders are all that is left a water condenser to provide drinking water before the pipeline was connected.  It was the largest in the world at the time.  Water was such an important resource for the opening up of the area, probably just as valuable as the gold.

We didn’t visit Kalgoorlie this trip, as we have been there a couple of times before, and I think we were in the mood to just head towards home, so we turned south.

Shortly afterwards, we got held up by some road works and a vintage bike rally was also there.  We had a chat with some of the fellows, which was nice.

The drive was mainly about looking at the scenery and listening to audio books.  We had salmon gums.

Salt lakes.

Bare plains

Eventually, we arrived at the town of Norseman.  This is the town closest to the Nullarbor Plains on the western side.  It was time for lunch, so we called in.  The camels in the roundabout are a lovely feature.

I came across a statue of a horse.  It turns out that this is “Norseman”.  Norseman was owned by a man who originated from the Shetland Islands, who called himself a proud norseman.  Anyway, Norseman the horse was pawing at the ground and uncovered a large gold nugget, which started the gold rush around the area, so the town was named after the horse.

There was another colourful mural on the side of the information centre.

Last time we came across this way, travelling west, we were held up by a red light at the railway.  The first red light since Port Augusta.  We laughed at the time.  Fortunately, we were not held up this time.

Leaving Norseman, we started our drive along the Eyre Highway and were going to be travelling for about 1,200kms before reaching the next town.  It makes sense to be well stocked with water.

This makes you realise how large the country is.

There was not a lot of traffic on the road, mainly road trains and caravans.

Then we came across a group of cyclists pedalling across the country for charity.  Good on them.

We weren’t sure how far we would get for the day.  We had initially thought Norseman, but as we were travelling well, we made it to the road house and caravan park at Balladonia.

Balladonia was made famous in 1979 when the remains of Skylab crashed in the area.  They have a little museum in the roadhouse.

It was a pleasant evening with  nice sunset.

The roadhouse looked lovely, all lit up, in the evening light.  This would be our last night in Western Australia.

The highlight of the day was starting to drive across the Eyre Highway.