Day 12

So, we've said our goodbyes and we get in the car and point it east, aiming at an office chair in Collins St where Steve's bum had better be parked by Monday. We're hoping to cross the nullabor tomorrow, so we need to be at Norseman tonight.

On the way, we find a great fixer upper for anyone interested in hinterland real estate:

Steve: No, we can NOT buy it.

I've been driving with a mild headache that gets steadily worse until we get to Kalgoorlie, where the setting sun feels like it is lancing through my retinas, bruising my brain and searing the back of my skull. So naturally, we get out and take pictures of the super pit:

Lancing. Retinas.

Kalgoorlie feels like the place where they invented simmering, menacing violence. There's a stain of it outside every pub door and tattoo parlour awning. People have the look of having come here to hide. It would be extremely cost effective to put a fence around it and call it a prison. I'm sure it's a lovely place to live but.

While I cower in the passenger seat nursing a full-on migraine, I have glimpses of Steve resolutely hunched over the steering wheel, peering into the gathering darkness for a hint that we're going the right way.

Sunset. They mostly come out at night. Kangaroos, I mean.

Steve finds Norseman in the dark. I crawl into bed and wait out the migraine until dawn.