Day 8 Balladonia to Norseman

Friday, 26th December 2014

We wake up early but have to wait until 7.00am to grab breaky and we gotta say it was good value for the price. We fill up with diesel ( we paid the highest price for diesel at Balladonia ), grab ice for the esky and make tracks. Today we?re heading to Norseman via the Telegraph Line Route, approx 220 kms. This track runs south of the Eyre Highway and comes out about 20kms south of Norseman on the Coolgardie ? Esperance Highway.

The track is littered with trees most of which had recently fallen and evidence of a recent storm passing through the area. We move them out the way as we come across them, some are easy, some have to be axed and we winched a couple. This went on for the whole trip to Norseman and we can tell you after 30 or so it gets a bit ?oh no, not another one..? but we did our bit 🙂

Along the way we see our first remnants of the old telegraph line ? a single one ? rising out of an un-named salt lake, it?s solitude is quite eerie. More than half of the telegraph line route runs through the Dundas Nature Reserve.

A bit further down the road the track goes over the salt lake. We take a look before continuing and thanks to someone else driving over the lake we can see although the top was firm where it is broken it?s quite slushy and boggy and a bit deep. We elect to use the go around and are surprised the previous traveller didn?t preferring to scar the salt lake.

The salt lake is quite large and it’s interesting that some of it’s shoreline is littered with grey dead plant life while other sections are green and thriving.

We see some more telegraph poles as they cross Lake Dundas, it?s mid afternoon and the lake is pink rivalling Esperance?s Pink Lake but our photos don?t seem to do it justice. Some people think that there’s nothing to see out here but they’re wrong, if only they’d open their eyes. We saw another sand goanna and some bird life including a hawk and a little willy wag tail who kept buzzing the hawk.

About 25kms short of Norseman the track crosses Lake Dundas just south of Mount Dean, however there is a built up causeway to travel over. At the end of the causeway there is a sharp LH bend up a steep hill, go too fast and you could miss it. The track continues on and we continue toward Norseman. It looks like there is a little lookout off to the right ( coming from Balladonia ) which gives you a lovely view of Lake Dundas.

We?ve arrived at Norseman, grab a room the Eyre Motel ( $8 more than Balladonia and the TV was smaller ) and look forward to tea at the restaurant ( reception open from 3.00pm and because today is Boxing Day the restaurant is open from 6pm to 7pm.) It?s tea time, we?re first there and order 2 surf-n-turfs. Mmmmm they were good, good size meal again, gee country folk know how to serve up a good size meal- definitely value for money. Tummy satisfied we head back to our room.

NB:- Trees – We believe if everyone cleared a few trees on each track it would help keep the track true to its original path; allow the go arounds to recover and return to nature and make it safer for other travellers; we saw evidence of people already doing this with a chainsaw ? kudos to you, so please do your bit next time you?re out there.
Track – The track itself is not too bad bar for the fallen trees and this made progress slow. If not for the trees you could safely do 60 ? 70kph

Petrol ? Balladonia $176.0 cpl we got 7.59 kpl on this leg

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