Day 19 - 100kms east of Norseman to Home

Tue 1 Sep 2015

Today is the first day of spring! This morning we decided to have a quick breaky and head for Norseman. As soon as we opened the door the cold hit us like a wall of ice. Change of plan, we quickly threw everything in the boot and jumped back in the car where the thermometer told us its 7 degrees. Hmmm we both thought it was much colder than that. We plugged the car kettle in for a warming cuppa (gotta love the car kettle 🙂 ) and listened to the news as we drove off. The radio station broadcasting from Norseman  said its 7 degrees in Norseman but the wind chill factor droped the temp to -2.8 degrees, Ah!! No wonder we felt a bit cold.

We grabbed breaky in Norseman and headed out to the old Hyden-Norseman road to clear a few more trees before heading home, we should be home today.

This old “road” never disappoints us and we always enjoy travelling it. The old Hyden-Norseman road falls within the Great Western Woodlands which is beautiful bush land. The Salmon Gums and Gimlet are found here although we’re too early to see the colorful bark of the Salmon Gum. Some of the wildflowers were also starting to bloom.

There were some puddles on the road from recent rains and these were added to as the rain continued. In dry regions like this where the landscape consists of hard rock and or granite outcrops it only takes a bit of constant rain before Gnammas (aka Gnamar, Gnama, Ngamma, Ngamar ) start appearing. Gnamma, and other Aboriginal language variants roughly translate into pool or hole of water in a rock. Although they take on different shapes, sizes and depths they can generally be a source of fresh water to the wildlife and for man.

It’s not just the trees, scenery, birds and in the warmer weather, reptiles that you see along here. If you look down at the ground you will see a myriad of insect life very different to what you see in the city. Maybe we see more insects due to clearing trees and branches from the track. Speaking of trees, after clearing 6 trees (this trip) we called it a day for tree clearing.

The rest of our journey along this road was spent negotiating many more puddles. One puddle didn’t look like much but it was very slippery on a clay base, this puddle claimed us; we got bogged! It wasn’t long though before our trusty winch got us out and we were on our way.

We travelled along the old Hyden-Norseman for another 5hrs before we reached the turn off to the new Hyden-Norseman road. This was due to the track & weather conditions – including hail – and we were enjoying the drive. The new Hyden-Norseman road was created to service some of the mines out this way.

At Hyden we gave the oil companies some more $$$$ and decided to drive home tonight. As nightfall washed over daylight we saw heaps of kangaroos along the Brookton Highway so we dropped our speed.

As always when on our home leg we were sad our trip had come to an end but we cheered ourselves up by recapping our adventure and discussing our next destination. About 100kms west of Hyden the temperature dropped to 8 degrees; this was our cue to put car kettle on and have a couple of in car cuppas. Cuppas out the way and we eventually pulled in our drive way a couple of minutes past 10.00pm – Home.

Below is our map showing The Corrugation Way route we took on this holiday.

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