| Come to the Best Western Great Western Motel and discover the historic town of Norseman the gateway to Western Australia and the Nullarbor. Norseman is a mining town at the Western Australian end of the trip across the Nullarbor. Located 726 kilometers east of Perth and 278 meters above sea level, Norseman is the last major town in Western Australia before heading east across the Nullarbor Plain. For people heading across the Nullarbor Plain it is essential to stop at the Norseman Tourist Bureau in Roberts Street (signposted off the Eyre Highway) where there are a number of invaluable sheets available which provide detailed and up-to-date information on the cost and availability of accommodation, water, credit cards, food, fuel and other facilities at all the major stopover points on the route. The quest for gold in the Kalgoorlie-Coolgardie area led to the establishment of Norseman. The story of the town's origins and its naming has become folklore. The first discoveries in the area were made in 1892 on what became known as the 'Dundas Field' and the town which sprang up in this harsh and inhospitable environment was called Dundas, for the lack of anything better. Two years later (and here legend and fact become rather confused) the town was named Norseman after a horse owned by a prospector named Laurie Sinclair. It has been claimed that Norseman kicked at a large nugget on a site which Sinclair later pegged and discovered a substantial reef. Like most of the Goldfields towns, Norseman grew rapidly. It was proclaimed a town in 1895, became a municipality the following year, was connected to the telegraph in 1896, and by 1905 had a population of 3000. Modern Norseman is basically a large, sprawling town driven by mining and tourism and dominated by a huge (4 million tones of fine quartz) tailings dump.
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