North to Norseman: Canola to Wheat to Mallee Scrub

This post won't be a very interesting read I'm afraid, as neither the country we've been travelling through nor the riding have been particularly inspiring. Nonetheless, I'll share the odd highlight that we did enjoy as it might be a while before I can do another post.

Esperance to Salmon Gums: Out of Canola and into Wheat

We set out from Esperance with our rain jackets optimistically in our pockets but stopped at the first major road junction to put them on as the precipitation started falling ...

Wardrobe adjustment #1

We kept the raincoats on for about 10 kilometres: even though it had stopped raining there was still a lot of moisture in the air and it was quite cool. However, when we arrived at the base of a long hill we decided to take them off again. Wardrobe adjustment #2.  Here's a photo looking back towards Esperance at the top of that first real hill ...

Looking back towards Esperance

I kept my jacket off for the rest of the day, but Di eventually got cool again and put hers back on. Wardrobe adjustment #3.

Our first real stop of interest was at a little place called Scaddan. It was an early pioneering settlement in this part of the country, and they have documented their history for passers-by with a timeline and some murals, including this one ...

Note the bike in the mural!

I stopped a little farther along to capture this nice view of some canola behind a dry lake and some gum trees ...

A slash of yellow behind the gum trees

It was about the last canola we saw as the country gets too dry further north and transitions briefly into wheat before there isn't enough rainfall for cropping of any sort.

Lunch was at a quiet little town called Grass Patch. They've got a lovely sign welcoming visitors ...

Welcome to Grass Patch!

For those who like their history, Grass Patch is the home of Tom Starcevich, a Victoria Cross winner for his actions in Borneo on the 28th of June, 1945.

Not surprising, due to the amount of rain that had swept through this part of the world there was plenty of water in the many shallow lakes along the ride. Di took this moody photo which I quite liked ...

Is that more rain coming?

Not long before arriving at Salmon Gums, the town where we would spend the night, I stopped to take a photo of some roadside gums which, although not pink in colour at the moment,  I presume were of the eucalyptus salmonphloia variety ...

Roadside eucalypts

We lucked in with our destination for the night: a lovely, quiet community caravan park well away from the main highway. Here is the sign that welcomes one to the caravan park ...

The community caravan parks often rely on an honour box

I apologise in advance for the next photo but felt that I had to include it due to the sentiments contained therein ...

Please think of others

And I thought the following sign really encapsulated the friendly and informal nature of the folks looking after this particular caravan park ...

Showering instructions

On this occasion Collis was shouting the pizzas for us at the Salmon Gums Hotel, which was nice. The pub itself is a lovely old stone building ...

Salmon Gums Hotel

The pizzas were great, as was the company. I let Fran beat me at a game of Eight Ball, and then it was off to bed, as the morrow promised a steady plod into a headwind.

Salmon Gums to Norseman: on to the Edge of the Nullarbor

Conditions from Esperance to Norseman were really quite benign: relatively cool but almost no wind whatsoever. It was a lot colder when we got up this morning: just under freezing! There was a bit of frost on the ground, but the high humidity meant that all of us had significant condensation inside our tents. Di and I even had quite damp sleeping bags. 

We started off with a light headwind of only 5 kms/hour. However, that increased fairly quickly and for most of the 100 kilometres of our journey were into a 15 kilometre headwind with gusts to 22 kms/hour. That much wind on the nose isn't bad for 20 or 30 kilometres but it gets pretty tedious when you're banging into for as long as we were today. Combined with a pretty dead road surface, the day wasn't one that will go into the memory bank to be pulled out and shone up from time to time. Of course it could have been a lot worse, given that we knew there was a strong chance of headwinds and they can get pretty strong in this part of the world.

Because of the conditions we just plugged away steadily, and there honestly wasn't much to photograph. The most pleasing thing was the fact of there being very light traffic on the roads and relatively few road trains, despite it being a week day again. I did stop to take a photo of yet another shallow lake. What I found interesting about this particular lake compared to the ones we'd been past the previous day was that the setting was much more reminiscent of Central Australia, with mostly grass and low shrubs on the margins rather than trees ...

Another shallow lake in this flat country

Just as a bit of a contrast and to see if you're really paying attention, I'll throw in a photo from our rest day in Esperance which I missed out of the previous post ...

Roots and bark and such

It's the base of a tree along the main street of town. Loved the textures.

Anyway, back to the arid interior. Peter, who is a forester in his working persona and interested in all things climatic tells us that the annual rainfall in Norseman is only about 11 inches per year. He's pretty much spot on, as the BOM says the median rainfall over the past 105 years has been 277 millimetres. Not enough to grow trees for timber: Pete says you need about 1000 mms per annum for that.

Perhaps this set of camel sculptures at the entrance to town is a bit of a give-away to the arid nature of this part of the world ...

Norseman camels

The great thing about the day was that it didn't rain and we were all able to dry out our tents upon arrival in Norseman.

Here's camp ...

Settling into the Norseman Caravan Park

 In the photo at the back is Fran in red; Jim is the one carrying the bag in the foreground; Pete's back can just be seen poking out of his orange tent on the left and Di's purple shoulder is poking out of our tent on the right. Everyone is happily settling in: unlike some of our recent camps set up either with rain threatening or in progress, the sun is shining and it's warm!

Tomorrow will be a big day. We've got 140 kilometres to a bush camp, and the first 20 or so kilometres look like being into the wind again. So that's about it for this post, but I will leave you with this image showing the route and relative altitude gain and loss for the past two days' riding ...

Esperance to Norseman

The distance isn't quite correct: all our computers say that we covered about 208 kilometres rather than the 200 shown (it all adds up!).

Oh yes, one more thing - the right hand turn tomorrow morning that takes us into the next stage of our journey: off the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway and on to the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor towards Adelaide ...

Into the desert via the Eyre Highway