Another long drive today, we packed up the car and went into town to pick up lunch plus filled the car up and we were on the road by about 9.15. The first part of the drive was just along the highway until we got to Red Hill Lookout which gives fantastic views over the LeRoy Salt Lakes, this is on the edge of the Great Western Woodland which is a 16 million hectares woodland about the same size as England. Our next stop was Norseman which is the start of a historic trail along the old coach road. In 1892 gold was found in the rocky Dundas Hills which is about 20km south of Norseman, as news of the gold fields spread and people came to see if they could make their fortune, one came by rail from Colgardie but most came up from Esperance and other ports on the south coast so the ‘road’ soon became established, most of it has been turned into the highway but about 25km still runs along the old road and information boards have been put in place at key sites, there is evidence of old gold mines some of which have been re-explored recently as methods of mining improve there was also the old dam which is now completely empty that they built to collect rain water as again this is one of the most precious commodities. At least one of the mines along the old road is still being worked today and a new road that links up with the highway has been built in a dead straight line across from the mine to the highway, in fact a feature of todays drive has been the way they built completely straight roads. The end of the coach road is Dundas which pretty much became a ghost town before it had chance to get established, as more gold was found at Norseman so everyone gravitated towards that town but they have still got the street names in the bush although no buildings remain it is very strange. The Royal Mail Coach pretty much used the route we took from Norseman to Esperance although for them it took two days rather than the almost seven hours it took us! After exploring the trail it was back on the highway and another straight road we stopped at Bromus Dam for lunch, built in 1925 to create a reliable water supply for the steam trains it was finished in 1926. It was designed to hold 6 million gallons of water: 3million at ground level and 3 million within the banks, however it never met its full potential as it started to leak soon after filling. The bank eventually burst and was paved to become a permanent spill way which is still in place! After lunch we continued driving and finally arrived at our B&B about 4pm. The guy that runs it was really nice if a little talkative, he actually runs the farm we passed on the way in at Grass patch and they seem to do this in their spare time. His wife was out but he gave us a tour and some really useful information so we can make the most of being here, he also offered to book a table for us this evening but as we cant quite decide what we want we will just take our chances and see what we can find. We are on top of a hill quite a way from the town so Chris is hoping for a dark sky tonight, hopefully we will be lucky.
