Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Today was a rest day, and while Norseman may not be everyone'c choice, it has it's own intrinsic charm and is certainly relaxing. Yesterday we popped into the info place and the nice man launched into his spiel about all the wonderful things to do in and around his town, one of which was the self-drive Coach Road tour. It's part of the old coach road from Norseman to the now non-existant Dundas, which sprang up with the start of the Dundas Goldfields, 'Second in importance in WA to Kalgoorlie-Boulder'. The amounts of gold they extracted from these old mines is positively eye-watering in todays $1500 plus per ounce terms. We're talking about 100,000 ounces from this one goldfield. Even at the then rate of ￡3 an ounce it's more than the economy of some countries. It would be fascinating to track where that wealth ended up as it dissipated around Australia and the world. Certainly not much of it stayed here judging by the lack of grand civic buildings and commu...

Norseman WA April 1, 2015 A rest day today. Time to go and experience all that Norseman has to offer. First stop was the info centre where we enquired after the Heritage Trail, something to do with Old Dundas some 20 km down the old Cobb and Co road. On our way to the start of the road we took a snap of Hardy Norseman, the nag that started it all back in 1894. The story is that the prospecting party out in the field from Dundas had given up. Obviously there was nothing here. One of the blokes was Lawrence Sinclair, who was from the Shetland Island and known as the 'Norseman'. Well, anyway they are ready to pack it in when his horse kicks the ground or something and bingo, right there was a nugget as big as your fist. They started the mine that became the town and the town was known as Norseman after the horse. Or so they say. Hardy Norseman, founder of Norseman WA Having bagged our nag, we went into the museum, housed in the old School of Mines. Interesting collection of...

Norseman WA April 10, 2015 OK, I’ve had enough of this pussy-footing about. We set out this morning from Madura with the express intention of driving the 530km to Norseman. The thing is, when your’e literally parked on the gravel next to the highway, and the sun comes up at 530 and you're fed and watered by 8, there’s is no point in hanging about. That means of course that you've done your days run of 300 or so by 1130, and there’s just no point in stopping in yet another gravel yard to watch the trucks roll by. We pulled into the Balladonia Roadhouse at 1130 after 330km and had an early and leisurely lunch before knocking over the last 190km to Norseman by 230.  Norseman looks a little town compared to the last few stops and half of it seems to be boarded up with old corrugated iron. Anyhow, we are a day ahead of our next scheduled booking in Esperance, so we might as well stay here, at least they have water and a shop and some ‘things’ to go and gawp at. One th...