RIDING THE ROAD TO DISCOVERY
The golden dawn lit the crowns of the mist-shrouded trees as we walked from our campsite to the summit of McDermid Rock. An uninterrupted 360-degree view to the horizon awaited us — a mosaic of kwongan heath, mallee scrub, eucalypt woodlands, granite outcrops and salt lakes — of one of the world’s greatest untouched temperate woodlands.
McDermid Rock is a feature of the 300km Granite and Woodlands Discovery Trail between Hyden and Norseman in Western Australia. The trail passes through the environmentally significant, sixteen million-hectare Great Western Woodlands, regarded as the largest and healthiest intact Mediterranean-climate woodlands left on Earth. It contains about 80 species of eucalypt and 3000 species of flowering plants — about a fifth of Australia’s known flora.
The road is a good dry-weather gravel road suitable for all vehicles, including those towing a caravan or camper. This short cut saves travellers from driving north through Kalgoorlie, or south through Esperance from the Eyre Highway and the Nullarbor. However, we have travelled this road
