The Nullabor has been conquered! We drove 712km from Eucla to the end of the Eyre Highway in Norseman. Weather conditions were pleasant and far cooler than yesterday’s 48.
The day started by exploring the old telegraph station, about 5km off the main highway from the present day village. Whoever thought of going for a walk out in the desert in the middle of the Nullarbor? Although for many travellers Eucla is just a stopping point when driving across Australia, Eucla was established as an important telegraph repeater station during the days when morse code was required to send messages from one side of the country to the other. Eucla was a translation point between two different types of morse code that were used in eastern and western Australia at the time. The ruins of the telegraph station are now being swallowed by the sand dunes, but are well worth a visit. From the ruins, there is a 1km walk across some low sand dunes to reach the Southern Ocean and the ruins of an old jetty along a beautiful white sandy beach. There is a rough track to follow.
Then it was back on the road toward Norseman. Highlights: Old Telegraph Station (ruins) and beach/jetty at Eucla, bits of Skylab space junk which fell to the earth near Balladonia in the 1970s, and the corrugated camels in the middle of the roundabout at Norseman. We learned that Norseman was named after a horse which found a gold reef here in 1894 (or so the story goes).
