Hello from Norseman,

On Wednesday morning in Ceduna, I “slept in” ’til 5:45; I’d been woken ’round 5 by the song of a Willie Wagtail sitting on the balcony railing, so I shut the sliding door, and attempted to go back to sleep (with limited success). After checking out around 7:30, following my free breakfast (part of the room upgrade), I filled the petrol tank and visited the bakery to obtain provisions for the day. Since it was to be a relatively short leg, I decided I’d travel at 100kmh, rather than 110kmh. At my first coffee break, I spoke to a bloke who was riding a bicycle, pulling a little trailer, from Perth to Melbourne via Albany. He’d allocated 6 weeks for the trip. Despite having been delayed for a couple of days in Esperance waiting on a new tyre, and now nursing a buckled rim, which he was hoping to have fixed in Ceduna, he was still on schedule. He wasn’t too pleased about the strong headwind he’d encountered that day though.

I lunched around midday, and on arrival at Eucla after travelling 487km, I refilled the tank, then checked in to the motel. It was 2:00pm (CST) by my watch, but somewhere I’d crossed into a new time zone, which subtracted 45 minutes (Western Central Time). There’s usually a sign indicating a change in time zone, but I didn’t see any. I spent part of the afternoon in the bar at the hotel/motel, chatting with a couple of couples who were doing the around Australia thing. One couple were “grey nomads”, the other a young couple with two young children, aged 3 and 5.

The chicken schnitzel for dinner was OK, helped by a glass of chardonnay.

I was unable to send my daily trip log, as there was no telephone in the room (which, apart from that, was OK for a 3 star rating), and no mobile ‘phone reception, so I couldn’t use GPRS.

This morning, I was up at 5:00, and away by 6:00, woken by various (unidentified) birds in the low scrub just outside the window of my room. I had a coffee, sans food, around 8. At 9:45 I filled the tank at Caiguna, and bought some tucker (a pastie for morning tea, and a roast pork and lettuce sandwich for lunch).

It was a fairly uneventful trip, apart from a road train behind me trying to bully me into going faster than the varying 40, 60 and 80 km/h speed limits posted along a very long section of road work. It was a quite a while before I got a chance to pull over and let the prick past.

On reaching Norseman, after travelling 701km, I filled the tank again, then checked in to the motel. It was 2:15 by my watch, but it was 1:30 locally (Western Standard Time). There’d been another 45 minute time change; this time I’d seen a sign, but didn’t bother to stop just to reset my watch. The motel room is OK, but I’d rate it at 3 stars, rather than the 3.5 the NRMA has given it; it’s big enough, but there’s not enough bench space, and no room service. The restaurant, however, deserves the 3.5 stars; the Chicken Parmagana (sic) I had for dinner was good, and the Apple and Blueberry Pie, with cream and ice-cream was superb, especially after a couple of chardonnays.

I’m off to Albany tomorrow, about 690km.

Cheers,
Julian