We had seen on our map Parmango Rd, which went from Condingup, about 65km east of Esperance, up to Balladonia on the Nullabor. The tourist information centre in Esperance initially had this road closed due to the wet weather but by the time we'd left town it was open again to 4WDs only but not if they are towing. We decided we'd head from Cape Le Grand to Condingup to get further advice there. Unfortunately they had little to add. They just said 4WDs were getting through but that it was wet. We decided to give it a go anyway. The Parmango Rd progressively worsened as we drove along it. We eventually decided to turn around at the 80km mark before the road/track got any worse. It was a concern that we had seen no-one coming the other way and supposedly the worse section of the track was still to come. So we decided to take the took long way round to the Eyre Highway via Esperance and Norseman.

Heading to a roadside camp area Kumarl Siding, 73km south of Norseman, we passed a sign offering wood fire oven pizzas at the Salmon Gums hotel. We stopped and sampled some pizza and have a couple of beers. We were only 20km from our camping spot for the night. The pizza was delicious and we had a good chat with a old guy from Esperance who was in the area working as an insurance assessor for all the farms following the wet and stormy weather of the past week. He had a lot of great stories from his life including a time in the 70's when he drove a truck for a mining company up the Kalumburu Road, off the Gibb River Road in the Kimberley's, when there was no one else on the road and no air conditioning. He would stop in at the cattle stations to see if they needed anything, a PR activity from the mining company. He was an interesting man.

The camp area was quite large and there were only a couple of other people using the area. We had breakfast there before heading to Norseman.

Kylie and David