The Nullarbor Plain

The Nullarbor is approximately 1200kms from Norseman to Ceduna. It is LOOONG and feels it! The scenery changes much more than I expected it to, so in that regard it isn't boring, but it is a long, long way between 2 towns, with only a number of roadhouses between. There's not a lot to see or do on the way.

Coming from the west, I was surprised by how hilly and vegetated it was, with the first part of the drive being part of the Western Woodland. I was surprised to come down off an escarpment and still have it follow along the northern side of us for lots and lots of kilometres. For the first part of the journey there was a lot of roadkill. In one 42km stretch I counted 248, with the majority of them being roos. There was an occasional rabbit and a couple of birds like eagles.

 

 

 We stopped at the Caiguna Blow Hole. This is pretty cool really. It is the entry/exit of a cave and the cave “breathes”. It breathes in when air pressure is high and out when it is low. When we got there it was breathing out, and a cold wind, cold enough to give me goosebumps, was blowing out of the cave. The theory is the Nullarbor is full of limestone caves throughout and the wind is drawn from the ocean, through these caves, to exit at places like this Blow Hole. It was pretty unique and worth stopping for 5 minutes to check it out, and break up the drive.

Our first night on the Nullarbor we free camped at Jillbunya Rockhole. It was quite a nice spot to stop for the night as we could get a long way off the road and there was only one other van a fair way from us. We played Kubb... Greg and Tilda vs Rory and I, and I was pretty stoked that Rory and I won as he is a very big handicap! It was very windy, which made it a bit unpleasant to be outside but we'd been in the car so long it was good to get out. We went exploring the area and found some pretty cool things. We saw some roos, which wasn't a surprise given how much roadkill there was. We came across camel poo and footprints, but didn't see any camels which was very disappointing as we had hoped to finally see some in the wild. We also found some round rocks that were very easy to break open, and they were layered inside. We had lots of fun finding rocks and breaking them to see what was inside.

We had an awesome sunset to enjoy

We crossed into SA early on our second day. We stopped at the Nullarbor Roadhouse because, well, it's the Nullarbor Roadhouse! It has an historic building (not sure if it's original or not but it looks pretty cool).

The camels in SA apparently "prance" (the ones on the WA sign were much more dignified!)

We also stopped at Eucla for lunch and visited the old Eucla Telegraph Station, which is slowly being swallowed by sand. I remember going there about 30 years ago when we did our family trip to Perth. I am guessing it is much more swallowed up now than it was then.

The playground at Eucla is a little bit "historic" 

We stayed that night at the 51km peg (51kms east of the border crossing). We were a short (150m?) walk to the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight which was very cool and we had an amazing view of the coast, although I was quite paranoid about the crumbling cliff tops and Rory being close to the edge without any fencing. We just held on tight to him and carried him and stood where we could see it was perfectly safe, so it was all good and a great experience. We watched as a massive storm approached us, and got to see lightening out over the plain. The storm was pretty big... lots of thunder, lightening and rain, and we felt a bit exposed being the tallest thing around for a long way. But we were safe and it was a great thing to experience.

See the lightening to the right of the photo?

Our third day we reached Ceduna in the afternoon and then spent 2 nights/1 day there to give us all a break from long driving days. Our days aren't as long as some people, who did the Nullarbor in 2 days and drove 12 hours in one day with kids! I just don't know how they do it. We didn't do anything much at Ceduna... Tilda and I had a walk down the street to check out the town and had a “date” at the bakery, then Tilda, Rory and I went for a walk on the jetty and played at a playground with some new friends we'd met at the caravan park.

Here's a snapshot of the Nullarbor as you drive it. I have a bunch of 60-90 second videos to ut together into a longer "trip across the Nullarbor" when I get the chance to

Kalgoorlie

We had 3 days at Kalgoorlie, which was enough for us. There is quite a lot we could have done, but it wouldn't have been interesting for the kids and sometimes it's just easier to go with what works with them. I often think about how much different this trip would be if we were doing it without kids.. we certainly wouldn't have done the playground and Maccas tour of Australia and may have been able to absorb more history and eat out at yummy places.

Hammonds Park
We visited Hammonds Park, which is a great public park and playground. It has beautiful green lawns to run, play and picnic on and a range of other fun activities for kids. There are some cages with different birds in and a flock of emus that wander across the back of the park behind a fence. The emus have quite a large space to roam and every so often you would see a group of them roam across the back of the park. There are 2 fenced in playgrounds, which are suitable for kids of all ages and peace of mind for parents. There is also a pond with ducks swimming in it – one had ducklings following along behind her when we were there – and a bridge over it. And for some reason that I never found out, a Bavarian castle and surrounding town built using all sorts of local stones and gems. There is also a cafe there that serves coffee, which I was told was very good, and food options. It was a great place to spend a couple of hours.

The Bavarian Castle

The little kids playground

Kalgoorlie Museum
The Museum is by donation (suggested $5 per family, which is pretty good value). We went in time to do the free guided tour, as we have been on some very good and very interesting tours that made our experience so much more worthwhile, unfortunately this one wasn't one of them. The tour guide was worried the kids wouldn't handle it....given how incredibly dull she made it, she's lucky any of us handled it. I know that sounds horrible but she made something potentially very interesting into something very tedious. The museum had some early settler buildings, which I enjoyed because I love that style of building, displays about the local environment, finding gold, the local Indigenous community and the development of the town. It had some historic vehicles, which are always interesting to look at as well. There were a bits that were the most interesting.

Rory checking out a dingo

Miners hut

Police station (was on rail cart to be mobile)

Of the things we found most interesting, the first was the headframe. You could catch a lift up to a viewing platform on the headframe and get a really good view of the town and surrounds. The kids enjoyed it so much that we went up and down it 3 different times.

The Museum entrance (the viewing platform is the yellow bit)

Greg, Tilda and Rory in the lift

The gold vault has lots of different items made from gold, including necklaces, broaches, pins and a pocket watch, as well as some examples of different types of nuggets and a 400 ounce gold bar worth around $680.000. This bullion is the first one ever poured in Kalgoorlie from the Super Pit. All of this is housed in a vault that was especially built to store and display it.

The British Arms pub makes up part of the display. It is the narrowest pub in Australia, standing at 5.6m wide. There was a small bar area downstairs and 2 rooms upstairs for the owners to live in. The pub ceased operating following a scandal involving a gold theft and a dentist took over lease in one of the rooms, so in the upstairs they now display the dentist's room and the sitting room from the Pub when people lived upstairs. There are rumours of foul play in the death of the publican's wife and of the pub being haunted but the information given by the tour guide was so patchy and all over the place, so we don't really know what it was all about. But it had an intriguing clock, with the face on the outside of the building and the workings on display on the inside, and staff at the museum have to wind it every day to keep it running.

Kalgoorlie Mining

Kalgoorlie is absolutely a mining town. As you drive in from the south, you see old spoil heaps and exploratory drilling holes and as you approach the town, the Super Pit dominates the landscape. It's a big town, steeped in history since the late 1800s-early 1900s and there are a lot of historic buildings. There are two towns that merge into one – Boulder and Kalgoorlie – and both have historic main streets with lots of interesting buildings. You can do a self guided audio tour of both streets and learn all about the historic buildings but we didn't do that as it's not something we could easily do with the kids. Having said that, there is still lots to do.

Kalgoorlie Super Pit
The Super Pit is the result of a number of smaller mines being bought up and becoming one massive open cut mine. It is impossible to get your head around the sheer immenseness of the Pit, even when you are standing there. Even knowing how massive the trucks are that dig and haul the rock, and the fact that from the lookout at the top of the Pit they look like teeny, tiny toys, it is still impossible to really comprehend just how big the Pit is. We visited the lookout all 3 days were were at Kalgoorlie, as it is really worth just standing there and trying to absorb it all.

Some (most?) days they blast and that is pretty cool. You phone the information hotline around 9:30am and they have a recorded message saying what time blasting is going to happen, if at all. They did blasting on the Wednesday and Thursday we were there. Both times it was scheduled for 1pm, and both times they went early (5 mins and 10 mins) and so we just weren't quite ready with out camera to get a video, much to Greg's disappointment. There is no warning to let you know and on the Wednesday, the trucks were still working, rumbling up and down the massive roads while the blasting occurred. All you see at first is a bit of a lift/disturbance on a patch of ground, then a dust cloud begins billowing up and then you hear a bit of a boom. It is very cool to watch.

The dust is from the blast. I can't get the video to upload

Hannan North Tourist Mine
This is a great little tourist attraction set up to show off how mining used to occur “in the olden days”. There are lots of different buildings to explore, including miners huts, managers office, bank, stores and explosives storage. There is also a lot of different equipment used in mining, from simple ore carts, to different types of drills and different mine shaft headframes.

A rescue pod, that produces oxygen and scrubs CO2 for I think it was 36 hours. I guess they have them at strategic points in the underground mines in case of collapse

The most exciting part for Rory was a modern digger and a modern dumper. You could climb up into the cab of the dumper. The sheer size of these trucks is mind boggling! It was good to get up so close (and into) one of these to get an even better perspective of just how huge the Super Pit really is.

 

There is also a Chinese Rememberance Garden, complete with koi ponds which entertained the children. I don't think either of them have even seen koi before and they were amazed at the size and colours of them.

You could also pan for gold in a little stream. They must seed the water daily with gold, as we all found some little flakes. I can see how gold fever hit so many, as once you find one bit you just really want to keep trying to find more, not because you are greedy but because it is exciting to go through the process of digging the dirt, panning it and seeing that little flake of gold come out of all the mud and mess.