a one horse town

Yesterday, as we walked round Kalgoorie, I couldn’t help noticing that the streets were extremely wide.  Wide enough that you’d probably want to stop for a coffee half way across.  I wondered why.

Today, a little town half way between Kalgoorie and Esperance - also with very wide streets - provided the answer. But more on that later.

Another thing I couldn’t help noticing in Kalgoorie was the enormous spoil heap to the south of the town. Kalgoorie is home to the Super Pit, one of the biggest holes on the planet. The stuff that comes out - ore - goes to China, where it produces, among other things, the means by which you can read this.

The mining company that owns the hole has kindly built a public viewing platform so that we can gaze into the hole in wonder.  And wonder we did; we wondered why, of all the days in the year to close the viewing platform for maintenance, it had to be today.  If you want to see what the Super Pit looks like you’ll have to look on the internet like we did.

So after not seeing the big hole, we set off, a little earlier than expected, to drive down to Esperance and the Southern Ocean.  We stop at the little town of Norseman.  This is a curious place; wide streets and pictures and statues of horses everywhere.  There are so many equine references in the town.  They have a fondness for horses in general and one horse in particular.  But more on that later.

They also have a thing about camels.  In the days before railways and road trains, camel trains were used to haul gold from the local mines down to the port at Esperance and bring back supplies  to the growing towns.   When they got to the towns they had to turn the trains round.  A camel train has a very large turning circle so they made the streets wide enough to cope.  

Once the camel trains were no longer needed, many of the beasts escaped or were released and there are now large wild herds in centre of the country.

Norseman lies on the western edge of the Nullarboor Plain.  I had always imagined that the name was Aboriginal in origin.  It’s not - and once the first syllable is separated from the rest, its Latin roots become clear; Null Arbour - no trees.
 
How the town got its name; you have to cast your mind back to the late 1890s.

gold prospector 1; “what’s that ‘orse doing pawing the ground?. We’d better investigate.”
gold prospector 2; “stone the crows - he’s discovered gold.”  
gold prospector 1; “I think we should name the town after him as a sign of gratitude”.
gold prospector 2; “you can’t name a town after a norse.” 

But that's exactly what they did.  Because that's exactly what the horse did.