The CrossingKambalda to beyond Widgiemooltha
Shattered Beyond Widgiemooltha
About 54 kilometres beyond Kambalda left me shattered and my feet properly sore. Bree, Ols and Ben helped me through, and there was spag bol waiting when the walking finally stopped.
The morning began at the BP servo in Kambalda.
Not romantic, but the servo had what we needed: power, water, somewhere to repack and refill, food, coffee and the next town waiting beyond it.
Bree came out first thing and walked the opening 15 kilometres with me. She’d solved our accommodation problem the night before, then returned to sign a heart, make a donation and give me company out of town. Not bad for someone who had only just entered the story.
Ols took the next 10 kilometres. By the time we were 25 kilometres into the day, we were moving well and the first couple of sessions had been close to ten-minute kilometres. It was a genuinely strong start, but the day got harder. Kambalda had dropped behind us, Widgiemooltha was ahead, and Norseman was starting to appear on signs as a real place rather than a name we kept saying.
The landscape had opened into Goldfields-Esperance Highway country: blue sky, red dirt, signs to Norseman and Esperance, and the campervan leapfrogging ahead with Ben keeping the whole operation moving.
The day warmed up from midday to about 2 pm, and the early pace became harder to hold. By the end I was shattered. Sore feet were the main problem, with tiredness and a small chafing issue making themselves known as the hours stacked up. I remember getting close to struggle street, but not quite moving in permanently.
We stopped about 14 kilometres beyond Widgiemooltha Roadhouse after roughly 54 kilometres and thirteen and a half hours including breaks. Then we drove back to the roadhouse and parked at a powered campsite. In the morning, I’d resume from where my feet had stopped.
There had been a lovely offer to stay at a mine camp at Higginsville, complete with a feed. Dan Baldwin, one of my Canning River parkrun friends, had put the word out through his industry contacts. I was disappointed that the timing and distance didn’t line up, but we would pass Higginsville halfway through the next day. With the replacement vehicle due at Norseman on Thursday, we had to keep moving.
The internet was patchy, and the daily journal was harder to maintain than I’d imagined. The days weren’t short of material. They were full. Walk, eat, refill, update, sleep, solve whatever had gone wrong, then do it again.
Dinner was Poppet’s Pantry spaghetti bolognese, cooked by Ben. After that many hours on foot, it only needed to be hot, familiar and waiting.
Images From The Day
