Norseman and the Southwest of WA

Norseman (or Nawsman as they pronounce it in Australia) was named after the horse of the guy who found gold in the area. The horse was pawing the ground and uncovered gold; so, naturally there are a lot of horse statues and themes in the town.

We used the internet at the information office and charged my camera battery for a bit before heading off to walk some of the trails in the area. We found one that went past a big gold mining area (there's still gold in them thar hills), and went to the top of a large hill; it's a really neat, and beautiful area. We didn't spend a lot of time in Norseman before heading down to Esperance in the South.








We had decided in advance that we were going to stay at Cape Le Grande National Park just to the East of Esperance because it looked like a neat area and was close enough to get to before nightfall. We originally had wanted to visit Cape Arid National Park further East, but at this point it would have been cutting too deep into our petrol funds and it didn't look like a very 2-wheel-drive friendly park. We got to Cape Le Grande in just enough time to put up out tent and go for a walk on Lucky Beach, just next to our campsite. It's a beautiful place that we really want to go back to (and it being only a few hours drive from Perth, it's doable!!).
We cooked in the open air camp kitchen by torchlight and met a very nice middle-aged couple who were just cleaning up their cooking.

Ant blops (I would hardly call them hills)




The next morning we went for another walk on the beach to get some views that we couldn't in the dark the night before, then packed up (while a kangaroo and her joeys, one in pouch and one at heel, hung about). We headed out and went and climbed to the top of Frenchman Peak that we saw on our way into the campground, the view from it was amazing!


Kangaroo tracks

This was how the trail was marked, so it was kind of make-your-own-trail up to the top. Lots of rock scrambling, awesome!









Then we were off to Stirling Ranges National Park!!

AND back to our trip... The Nullarbor

Sorry for the long hiatus, and emotional upchuck that was the last post. Now that the semester's over, and you haven't heard a word about what's happened these past 5 months, it's time to catch up (now that I HAVE time). Starting where we left off on our trip:

The Nullarbor!


We left Ceduna, the last main town before the Nullarbor, and drove. There are some tree-like shrubs and some trees for a while

before you hit the sign that says:


and then it's null arbor (no trees) for a long ways. We were told we must stop at the Head of the Bight, so we did so. It's a great spot to see Southern Right Whales, and boy did we! They said that day they had spotted about 15, and we saw at least 5 or 6 ourselves. There was at least one that we could tell was a mother and baby, it was just amazing! Such a beautiful area too.

You can see 3 whales in this picture







We ate lunch there and started off again, and it wasn't a whole lot later that we needed to stop for gas (or petrol as they call it here), which as you can see was the highest price probably of anywhere in Australia! (it equals about $6/gallon)




Luckily at the start of the Nullarbor is where it's the most expensive, from there on out it was cheaper (however, we were still excited to see $1.70/litre when normally, in cities, you can get as cheap as $1.30/litre).

We stopped at a few spots, and saw some lovely rainbows, and some dingos, but overall there aren't a whole lot of places to stop, so we decided that in order to be able to spend more of our time around southwestern WA, we were going to drive all night through the Nullarbor. After the WA border (where we had to get rid of any fresh fruits and veggies as well as honey) We stopped at twilight at a place called Eucla, mainly to stop so we weren't in danger of hitting kangaroos but we then found out there was a famous old telegraph station down by the beach. We drove down there got out and walked to it and down to the beach. I should mention too that at pretty much every stop we would see the same people, cause everyone pretty much stops at the same places, cause they are the only places to stop! It was kind of neat, we were like a big family driving separately across the desert. :P We talked to some guys that were hitchhiking with an older gentleman for a ways (they had hitchhiked all the way from Melbourne I think). After it was sufficiently dark we went back out onto the road and David drove until we had to stop for a sleep (my eyes were being pansies and I didn't trust them to drive, so it was mostly David).












When we woke up we drove to the next gas station to gas/freshen up then headed on to Norseman.

Death to Start and Death to End

Of course being busy with uni (and procrastinating on blog writing) has made catching up on the blog, well, difficult, but I beg to take a short diversion for a moment. Before we finish writing about our trip, and get you caught up on what else has been going on since uni started... which might take a while longer, I would like to share my thoughts for the day.

My day started out watching a preview for the movie "Earthlings", which is about human's cruelty to animals. I have seen quite a few images/videos of cruelty to animals, and even though I think it horrible, I am usually not much effected beyond that, as I am quite good at removing my mind from linking the actual life and spirit of the animal to the dead one. I grew up dealing with death in various forms, and being a hunter also has enabled me to separate myself a bit, but of course when hunting I always try and do what is right by the animal in every way possible. More than halfway through the video I was feeling the same as how I have always felt when watching these sorts of things, very sad about what some of my "fellow" humans (although in a way I wish I could not link them with myself) do to animals, but overall it was not having much more of an emotional effect than that. Then there was a scene of some men skinning a hyena, I believe, which I first thought "that's sad, but it's dead and I have done such things with deer", although I obviously didn't believe these men to being killing it for meat. And then the next shot cut me to the core, there was a close up of the animal's face, and it was still alive! I burst into not just tears, but sobs! At the same time I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and I also was very surprised at how much it hit me! It's interesting how this one particular shot brought out these emotions while all of the other horrible shots did not. Why? I can only really speculate, but I think part of it might be that I have always thought of being skinned alive as an absolutely horrible way to die (yes, I've thought about it, as I'm sure most people who have seen "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" have... most gruesome movie I've ever seen by the way, will never watch it again).

I then started thinking about my feelings, and realized something. When I see cruelty to animals, if it is for a reason I can at least understand (what humans are getting out of it, eg. money, meat, etc.) even though I might not agree with it (the brutality or the reason), I think I have a slight tolerance to in my mind (not that I don't think it shouldn't be stopped). BUT, when animals are treated horribly for no discernible reason at all, that just blows my mind! What the hell is the purpose of skinning the poor animal alive, why, WHY beat seals to death with a club!!! There's no fucking point (excuse my language, but I feel it REALLY is needed here)! I am not one of those "crazy" save all creatures great and small, vegans (I am not dissing them, I love them, I have friends that are them, we are all a bit "crazy" for something, and that's a good thing to be "crazy" about, but it still does not make me like that), but I just can't understand these things. Yes I am going to be a vet (and my God after watching that, it comforts me to know there are people like us that really do care for animals) but I don't care, even if you are someone who doesn't get on with animals much, you have got to be a bit messed up in the head to think some of those things are ok!

I will just briefly mention that there is a big controversy over here at the moment about live export to Indonesia. There were films taken over there of them slaughtering the cattle sent to them from Australia and they were being quite horrible to them. Australia saw this and out of panic from the shock of the public stopped it for a time. I won't go into all of the details, cause we'd be here a while, but I think live export should continue for MANY reasons, and that they should just find a way (and it won't be an overnight solution) to make the Indonesians use stun guns on the cattle first... or just find a more humane way of doing it. That's another thing I don't understand, why take so much time torturing these animals when it would be quicker, and thus more cost effective to just hit them over the head, slit the throat and move on to the next one! It would be better for cattle, and humans! Anyway, there's that.

On my way home from work on Roe Highway I was caught in sudden stop and go traffic (more stop than go) and stayed that way for about 30 minutes (just between one exit and another, it was pretty bad). Now, this never happens, so I knew something must be up. I assumed an accident, and after a short time I saw ambulances rush down the opposite side of traffic, then come up the exit onto our side; I then knew it was an accident. I started thinking about how people tend to get really annoyed in situations like that, and I admit I was starting to but then changed my tune and just enjoyed my music. But what about the people in the accident! It's something that people do think about in those situations, but usually briefly and without much real, honest worry (me included), but I really did tonight.
My inconvenience was nothing compared to what those poor people must be going through, were they ok? Even if they were, it would surely be a horrible night, maybe the worst in their lives, so me having to sit in traffic for an extra 30 minutes listening to Death Cab for Cutie was ok by me in comparison. I jokingly started to think, as I got closer to the accident, that if this just was a fender bender, THEN maybe it would be ok to get annoyed, but it wasn't. The speed limit on the highway is 100 Km/h (62 miles/h), as I drove by the flashing yellow arrow, the 4 police cars, one fire truck, and two ambulances, all with lights flashing I saw the two cars on the side of the road. Both barely resembled cars anymore, and the firemen had had to take the roofs off of both of them to get the passengers out. Looking at the cars I would be very surprised if no one died that night. It's something we tend to think about, but not at the same time, they were just like I was, probably coming home from work, or maybe going to a friends house when they collided into another car whilst merging. I found it very sad, but at the same time very refreshing to put myself out there, to think about these things. I wonder if I had thought about the same things had I not watched that video earlier today?

I challenge everyone to, when they are in a similar situation, instead of getting frustrated that you're going to be late for your hair appointment, or that you're really hungry and want to get home for dinner, to think that you were that percentage of people that gets to go on with your daily life that day.

Death to start and death to end the day.... not happy, but provoking....

Wudinna and sundry

As is our habit with blogs, we are filling this one in months later, now that the trip is over.

We made it to Kimba that night, stayed in a caravan park, and set off in the morning. Our target for that day was the Gawler Ranges, a national park that looked like it had a lot of neat sights. When we made it to Wuddina (wood-nuh), we stopped at the tourist info center and asked about the best way to get in to the park. Well, it turns out almost the entirety of the park is only accessible to high clearance 4WD vehicles (our tourist map of the park didn't show this), and given some of the trouble we'd had on the 2WD roads in national parks, we asked what else there was to see around here. It turned out it was quite a bit. There are two tourist drives to do in the area, and we only had time for one, but that involved seeing some awesome granite monoliths, including Mt. Wudinna, the largest in South Australia and third largest in Australia. Cassie and I hiked up it and were hit with a blast of wind. It towers above the surrounding landscape and so seems to be a magnet for high winds and affords some great views.





We then enjoyed lunch in the picnic area at its base. Did you know that many Australian picnic areas have free gas grills? You can just go and turn on the gas and get bbq-ing. Australia definitely has some perks.


Then we drove on, hoping to stay in some state park near Ceduna, the gateway to the Nullarbor. But by the time we got there, the winds were blowing something awful, and rain was coming down hard. We decided it might be best to stay at a caravan park in the town because the state parks were exposed on the cape. So we went and checked out our options. The first one we went to, the cheapest one, turned out to be cheap for a reason. It was a bit seedy, and when we saw the state of the camp kitchen, we made our way to the next cheapest one. This turned out to be great--it was mellow and uncrowded, the camp kitchen was great, and the camp hosts were very nice (we had to borrow a hammer to pound our stakes in--every place before this we could just stick them in the ground by hand). By the time we were all set up, the storm had blown over, and we thought we could probably have camped in a park after all. But when we were cooking in the sheltered kitchen, we were hit with another deluge, and were really glad for our choice.