The CrossingFinal approach to Norseman
Across Lake Cowan Into Norseman
Lake Cowan led me into Norseman and a first sign for Adelaide sent a shiver through me. Then the campervan needed rescuing, because even the big days on HAA refused to stay tidy.
The boys dropped me back just over 20 kilometres short of Norseman, and I started again from where I had finished. By the end of the day I would walk all the way into Acclaim Gateway Tourist Park.
The first kilometres were beautiful. I was on a track about 17 kilometres outside town, surrounded by bush, with birdsong, fresh air, and sunlight. The track ran close to the highway, and at times I could see the traffic and hear it, but it felt like a different place. If I had been driving to Norseman, I probably would not have known it was there. I would have been watching the highway and thinking about getting to town.
Plodding along had its benefits.
Then came Lake Cowan.
Walking across a lake had never been on my to-do list, but once I saw it, I wanted to do it. The country opened right out: deep blue sky, bright sun, dried lake bed, red dirt, hills, and bush. I stopped in the middle, took photos, and just stood there looking around.
There was this sudden, simple thought: I am here. I am doing this. I am seeing this. I am experiencing this. How lucky am I?
Then it got cheesy, because of course it did.
I had meant to bring my didgeridoo on the trip. I had learned to play a few years earlier, not especially well, but well enough to get some reasonable noises out of it. I had imagined there might be spare time to practise, which is funny now. Somewhere on Lake Cowan I remembered I had forgotten to bring it, searched YouTube for didgeridoo music, and played the first thing that came up.
So yes, I walked the rest of the way across the lake with didgeridoo music playing from my phone.
And that was when I cried. Tears of joy and gratitude. Not sadness, not pain, not the tired end-of-day sort of emotional wobble. It was the feeling of being inside a perfect moment: the land, the light, the strange impossible fact of being out there, step by step across Australia. Something deep in me knew I was exactly where I was meant to be.
It sounds huge written down, but it felt huge. Lake Cowan gave me Australia in the way I had carried it in my head from books and films as a kid, and Australia as a real place under my feet. Deep blue sky, bright sun, dry salt lake, red dirt, hills, bush, and this overwhelming feeling that I belonged here. Not just liked it. Not just appreciated it. Belonged.
I’d always loved this country, but at Lake Cowan I felt as though I was inside the reason. Somehow I was meant to end up here, make the changes I’d made and be walking from Perth to Brisbane, hopefully inspiring people and doing some good. I couldn’t explain it cleanly. I only knew it went deep.
At the same time, because HAA liked to keep the ridiculous and the profound in close company, campervan number two had decided it was done. I was heading into a final 10-kilometre session to Norseman and thought I might be the first HAAmigo to get there. The van had the oil leak we had been watching since Kalgoorlie, a suspected water tank leak, and now it would not start.
Then it passed me on the back of a tow truck.
We were already due to swap vehicles at Norseman, so this was extra theatre rather than disaster. With the Nullarbor almost upon us, a leaking water tank still wasn’t comforting.
I reached Norseman on foot, all the way into Acclaim Gateway Tourist Park. The van reached town by recovery vehicle.
The signs made everything feel bigger. Limited water. Norseman. Ceduna. Adelaide. Seeing Adelaide on a road sign sent a tingle down my spine, even if it was still 1,950 kilometres away and very definitely not 200 metres.
By the end of the day, the first signs of the Eyre Highway were right there. We weren’t talking about the west-to-east part of the walk as something coming later.
It was outside town.
Images From The Day
