On the Nullarbor

Our day crossing the plain began with a wake-up delivery of coffee to our cabin room. Very civilized. In yesterday's post, I had said that there was sunrise, and there was (and we were up in time), but the train was going directly towards it, so we missed out again.

Most of the passengers slept in. We had been out last evening, on a tour of Kalgoorlie organised by the company. There were buses to meet us at the train station, and they took us to the operating gold mine, as well as a miner's museum. This area gets enormous wealth from its mines: gold, silver, copper, iron, uranium. We saw the gold mine - an open-pit mine about 1 km by 2.5 km at the surface, and about 500 metres deep. It goes strong 24 hours a day. we saw it about midnight, and there were trucks hauling stuff as we watched. And then we moved on to the mining museum, where they had some of the trucks and diggers on display. These are a testament to human engineering. Each tire is about nine feet tall, and apparently costs over $60,000. The truck has about eight of them, and will go through a hundred in its lifespan. As the bus driver said, when you sit in the cab, it is as if you are in your living room chair and driving your house. The size is similar. I will include a picture or two of them.





Back to this day. The words "God-forsaken" come to mind. It goes on for hundreds of miles, flat and covered with low sage brush. Very occasionally, there will be a brave shrub standing above the rest. The soil is reddish, like that of PEI (although not so red as that). So imagine a still lake, colour of red sand, with small waves of sage blue extending to the horizon in all directions. They tell me it rains at times, and you can get flash floods and washouts. But today it is very dry. There is a stark beauty to it, but also, for most of us, a monotony. My kingdom for a tree...! How did the aborigines do it? When I look at this landscape, it seems the world has been reduced to its elements: bronze earth, sage green plants, blue sky. It is at once monotonous and magical.





We will get out again at the town of Cook, population four humans and several million flies.

And after that, the Nullarbor is soon over. Within a kilometre, the landscape changes to rolling, with trees, and a more sandy soil. We are on our way southerly to Adelaide, although we won't be there until tomorrow morning.

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Location:Nullarbor Plain, Australia