Eucla to Norsman
We are in WA now and the rest of the Nullarbor Plain in this state.
 
 
The cliffs we have got used to are know inland a bit and not quite so straight up . We are on a plain between the cliffs and the ocean, the road travels to Norsman [ the gateway to WA], some 700 km of nearly straight road. We pass through and past roadhouses with some accommodation and some very small towns of 2 or 3 houses and farm stations.
 
Eucla started back in 1877 as a telegraph station linking WA with the rest of the world sending 11,000 messages annually, and had a population of 100 in the early 1900s . This was only 33 years after Samuel Morse invented the telegraph. The first massage was sent to Perth on 8 December 1877. We went down to beach to see the ruins and had our daily walk by walking the dunes and beach.
 
 

 
Now Eucla is a stop for travellers of the Nullarbor with a caravan park, accommodation and a museum.
 
 
Our travels took us through the Eucla pass then descending to the plateau we passed Mundrabilla with service station, a place for caravans to park and a museum. Australians biggest meteorite was discovered here weighing 10 tonnes.
   
 
Next Madura this is midway between Perth and Adelaide. The station was settled in 1876 for breeding horses for the British Army based in India. We went up to Madura pass lookout which looks over the plains with the ocean beyond.
 
Next Cocklebiddy originally a Aboriginal mission now has nothing just a road down to Eyre bird observatory and Twilight cove which are dirt/ sand roads down to the ocean some 32km.
 
Next Caiguna and the start of the 90 mile [146.6km] straight road, the longest straight stretch f highway in Australia. Yes it is straight but does have some little up and down and ends in a small bend in the road going west.
 

 
Next came Balladonia has hotel complex , a museum and van park. In 1979 space debris from skylab landed 40km east at Wooriba sheep station.This area is surrounded by arid desert woodland , one of the worlds oldest and dense woodlands.
 
Norseman historic gold mining town Western Australia’s gateway to the Nullarbor.
Legend goes like this – a prospector named Laurie Sinclair tethered his horse for the night and the horse got a piece of gold bearing quartz stuck in his hoof. This was 1890 and the horse was named Norseman. Sinclair named his claim norseman reward and a town began as word spread of the gold find. After some time the claim was sold to a big mining company and it went on to be the richest reefs ever mined in Australia.
 
 
In the centre of town is statues of corrugated tin camels, a tribute to the early camel trains which carried all the goods to the town. The roads were made wide to allow for the camel trains to turn around. Of course there is a statue of the horse Norseman . We walked and visited local sites like Beacon Hill lookout with 360 views of the town, woodlands walk and went fossicking for gemstones.


We get a certificate to commemorate our crossing on the Eyre Hwy into Norseman
We left Norseman and decided we would travel the 300 km. dirt road to Hyden and Wave rock.
This is called the Granite and Woodlands discovery Trail.
 
We start at Lake Cowan lookout and its 45min woodland walk , then on to Gemfields. There are lots of old mines in the area , but close to the parking area is a place you can go fossicking, not that you will find gold but people find what is known as false opal which is not worth anything but for making jewellery pieces if you can polish as it is a quartz.
 

 
We push on to Disappointment Rock. You walk a track up ,over and around it, this takes about an hour so when we get back to the car park its lunchtime before we move on.
Lake Johnston is next and this is where we will stay the night. We have a vast salt lake infront of us with very little water in it , the woodland has now changed to an open woodland of salmon gums and red trunk gimlet with saltbush undergrowth. 


 
 
 
The next day its on to another big rock this one is Mcdermid rock we have to go down a even smaller dirt track of 1.5kms to get to the parking area, this is getting a bit slippery and narrow for the caravan in tow as it has been raining on and off for the last couple of days. We make it and do the 2hour walk over this rock, the trail is not marked very well you just rely on the instruction board at the start. We take a photo with the phone so we can find our way,you would be surprised how easy it is to get disorientated up there. We find little pools in dish like shapes in the rock, these support some hardy plants and some have a small shrimp and some tadpoles in them.

 
 
 
The next place is a lookout over a mine trail, we stop to see the different vegetation and how it has changed again to mostly eucalypt woodland with evidence still showing of the 2002 bush fires. The woodland changes with the minerals in the ground here it is nickel and gold.

 
We stop this night at The Breakaways a ridge of rocks weathered and as some minerals break up quicker parts break away revelling colourful rock faces. We camp beside these and have a couple of other people camping here too, we have not seen too many people on this track.We walk around and there are signs not to get to close as it breaks away, and that it is worth a early morning photo to see the different colours as the sun rises. This might be right but not for us we wake to a very thick fog and no light shinning on cliff face, after waiting for awhile for it to clear and it does not, we move on. 
 

 
The next couple of stops are for the Forrestania plots- areas divided years ago for people to try and live on, this did not work. We are now into mallee scrub and sandy heath and still a few mines. The next place is the State barrier fence or rabbit proof fence as it was known.This fence was put here along time ago to stop rabbits getting into the agriculture land to the west, it also stops other wildlife and feral things like camels 

 
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By this time the bottom half of the caravan is red with mud and thick in parts, just think in summer we would be covered with red dust everywhere not just red mud on lower parts. The road is also getting slippery in parts so slowly we finnish the trip into Hyden.
80 spices of Eucalypts grows here either in Heath, shrub-land or woodland. The shrub on the sandy soils, woodland on the loamy/clay soils. It also goes from yellow to red soils depending on the minerals so tree trunks go from mottled grey to deep red. 
 
Hyden and wave rock we stay at the caravan park at wave rock , the entry fee to wave rock is included in the site fee. We walk around and over wave rock and around their lake walk which takes you around the resort and little airport. We got some photos of wave rock but there was a bus load of people there plus a group of Chinese visitors so we went back latter only to find a Chinese or Japanese wedding beside the rock. 

 
 
Early the next morning we set out for Northam which is only about 100km from Perth, we heading here for a car service and new tyres. About an hour in we find we have to return to Benalla Vic in a hurry . We can not go back the dirt sand road to Norseman, it is now too wet, so we have to detour 200km to Kalgoorlie. The toyota dealer there will service the car the morning after so we are only off the road for the night and morning. We do not look at anything here we get the car back and head east. Stopping at night in wayside or truck parks and travelling by day stopping only for nature breaks, lunch and fuel. So there will be no more travels for a couple of weeks and then we think we will head up to Alice Springs, Darwin and back down the west coast of Western Australia the opposite to what we were doing.