WE had left the tiny outpost of Rawlinna, Western Australia in the mid-afternoon a little later than expected as one of the vehicles had developed alternator trouble. While Rob had stripped said alternator in an effort to fix it, it was to no avail, so while he headed to Kalgoorlie to get a new one, we struck to the north, and would meet up with him at Warburton in a few days’ time.
Rawlinna has been a major railway siding from the time the Trans Australian Railway was established in 1917 to the demise of the steam engines in 1951 that had once necessitated a major engine support facility in the town. With diesel-electric trains now hauling people and freight across the continent, the railway siding has seen less and less maintenance workers, but it is not completely abandoned with occasional telephone people and railway maintenance crews still making use of its facilities. Today, the weekly Indian-Pacific train stops here for a barbecue so passengers can get a ‘real’ taste of the remoteness. And the hamlet gets a huge influx of people during the annual Nullarbor Muster, usually held during April; the).
