Esperance to Cockabiddy

This is our second night since leavinged Esperance. Tuesday 19th was a fairly uneventful day, mostly driving, till we reached Norseman. We did stop for a lunch break at Gibson Soak. This is a very small town with a pub and combined post office. Also as we were driving through I noticed what looked like a bottled water operation. I guess Gibson Soak is a spring and they bottle spring water. After arriving in Norseman we took a little time having a look around. We took a look at the fairly new visitors centre and I made the comment that the town looks much fresher than when we were last here, 5years ago. The local girl on the counter said that the Council were really putting an effort into making the town better and I think it certainty is. We fueled up and headed out of town a few kms to Frasers Ridge and camped for the night. This was the first night in quite a while that we were able to sit around a fire together, we even had a game of yahtzee.
The next morning we woke up to another fine windy morning and set off to our first planned stop, Balladonia Roadhouse for morning tea. After the usual refuelling, we headed inside to look through the museum. This was a small but interesting place with bits of space junk, Skylab, which fell to earth in 1979 in Balladonia, through to the early history. After leaving there and not far up the road you reach a special part of the Eyre Highway, the Ninety Mile Straight , Australia's longest stretch of straight road, 146.6kms. Some people call this road boring but this our 7th trip across here and we love it. Next stop was Caiguna but not before checking out two blowholes. These holes allow the caves below, some of them are huge, to 'breathe'. Although not over active today you could certainty feel the coolness coming out of them. We toyed with the idea of leaving the vans at Caiguna and driving down to Baxter Cliffs not a long way to the South but after talking to the guy in the Roadhouse, we quickly changed our minds. He reckoned nobody had been down that way for six months. He said try tackling it from Cockabiddy which was our next stop. We asked the bloke there for his thoughts and although it was only 32ks from there we were advised it was a two hour trip of serious 4wd driving. Again we gave it a miss. Topped up the tank and left. Not far up the road we stopped again in a free camp. No fires, too cold and windy.Læs mere