Made it safely into Kalgoorlie and had also booked my trip to see the Super Pit as it is called which is a deep open cast gold mine. Now don’t go thinking that there are large nuggets of gold lying around just being dug out of the ground, what they mine here is called alluvial gold, which is gold that has been moved by water and due to the weight has rested at the bottom, its very fine almost like dust. Anyway I was very much looking forward to my trip the following morning. Kalgoorlie is really two town and on maps is usually shown as Kalgoorlie/Boulder, Boulder being the old town and Kalgoorlie has sprung up due to the mining, the high street in Boulder has been beautifully restored/preserved and is well worth a walk around to see it all. Well anyway the following morning dawned, well I think it dawned but couldn’t be sure as it was absolutely persisting down with rain, in fact it was the rain on the roof that woke me up. Needless to say I got a text from the tour company saying that the days trip to the mine had been cancelled due to it being unsafe because of the rain. The next available tour would be the following Tuesday (it was currently Thursday) as it was the Easter weekend. I wasnt aiming to be in town for that long so I asked for and got a refund. On the upside though I was able to get to the local DIY store and purchased my rattle gun. Just for those who aren’t aware a rattle gun is the tool they use in tyre dealers and garages to do up and undo your wheel nuts. Rattle guns are what they are called in Australia other countries may have different terminology.
Having purchased said gun I was now able to change my tow bar over to an adjustable one. This raised the height of the towball by about 5cms (2ins) and the reason for this was I had found that quite often due to a lot of sites not being completely level I couldn’t get my jockey wheel in place to raise the van to unhook from the car. I was having to put the front stabilising legs on the van down to raise it up and then inserting the jockey wheel. Now having this extra bit of height seems to have done the trick
So on leaving Kalgoorlie it was onwards North to my next stop which was a place called Gooncarrie, now when I say place I use that term in the very broadest and loosest sense. It was basically three abandoned and heavily in disrepair buildings which were once part of the train station that used to be here. The train line was still in use as I found out at around 3am when a grain carrying train came passed and the driver thought it was a good jolly jape to sound its horn, as if the noise of 200 or so carriages weren’t enough to wake up the neighbourhood. AnywayI was only going to stay overnight and then make my way up to Menzies.
Menzies is a small mining town with a population of around 110 people. It had a hotel which also had a small shop for a few essential bits and bobs in one of its back rooms. the caravan site was virtually brand new very well looked after and very clean and tidy. All the sites had a hard standing and there was a largish patch of grass outside the camp kitchen for people with swags (tents). The other plus to Menzies and really the reason I was stopping was because it was only 50kms from Lake Ballard which was where Sir Anthony Gormley had placed some of his human like sculptures in and around the lake. He is a British sculptor who did The Angle of the North just outside Newcastle North East England and also some of his sculptures have been dotted around the coastline in the UK. Now on the maps and local info (which it was revealed were a little out of date) it was showing a gravel road from just outside Menzies all the way to the lake, in reality all but the last 8kms are now fully sealed and the final bit had recently been graded so it wasnt too bad at all. Lake Ballard was completely dry and was just a large salt pan, and its good size (50km long and up to 30kms wide in places). Reading the information boards at the edge of the site, you need to give yourself at least two hours to walk around all the sculptures, but walking on a salt with the sun beating down and reflecting off it is no fun. I managed to do a smallish loop around in about 45mins, but didnt fancy doing much more. I was glad I went to say that I had been, but in all honesty I was a bit underwhelmed by it, maybe that says more about my under appreciation or even lack of knowledge of art more than anything else.
The next stop was in the town of Leonora which gave me the chance to stock up on some supplies at the local supermarket, but the main reason for the visit here was the a placed called Goalie, which is basically a ghost town going back to when it was a mining township but it was abandoned when the mine closed in 1963. It was started in the late 19th century by some welsh miners and an interesting fact is that the former President of the USA Herbert Hoover was the mine manager in its early days from May to November 1898. In the 1980s a couple of brothers started mining it again and in 1999 having concluded mining the open pit they started to develop and underground mine. in 2003 the mine closed again after known gold resources were exhausted. in 2008 the mine was bought by another company and after a 3 year development the mine was reopened. By 2019 it had become the deepest underground gold mine at 1600mtrs and is the deepest truck mine in the world, and they are still digging down. All in all it was a place that was well worth a visit and its even free to visit the museum and to wander around Herbert Hoovers old house.
The one other sort of interesting thing that happened while I was in Leonora was that the van park well a line of about 4 or 5 caravans got hit by a willy willy or dust devil. These are like mini tornadoes but thankfully not nearly as deadly or catastrophic. The dogs and I were sat in the van quietly minding our own business when I felt the wind was picking up mainly by some flapping of the awning, the next thing I knew was that the four guy ropes holding the awning were ripped out of the ground and the awning had folded itself back against the caravan. Before going out to check on things I looked out of the kitchen window and saw next doors caravan awning was folded right back and was laying on the roof of his van, and I could see the willy willy moving down the line. Each vans awning was damaged in some way but luckily no injuries ro serious damage. I got away with just a couple of rips in the awning I will end up having to get a new one, but thankfully no damage to the actual hardware of the awning. My awning is now dotted with several strips of gaffer tape where it ripped.
Still trundling Northwards next township was Leinster, which was built in I think it was 1974 purely to house mining staff. I only stayed one night as the free camp spot wasnt crash hot and the van park it town had closed down and also there really wasnt much to see or do there, though I did managed to pop into a really well stocked supermarket there. Now I was going to continue North from Leinster but look at my trusty app/map there really wasnt much between there and the next town of Wiluna, so instead I turned left and started heading West towards Mount Magnet.
I stopped overnight at Peter Denny Lookout which was a lovely large free camp and rest area with some lovely views across to the horizon. A couple of hours or so after pulling in it started raining and then the thunder and lightening started to join in. It rained most of the night and when I got up in the morning to let the dogs out I was surrounded by water. Now Cody didnt have a problem jumping out and finding a spot to do his business but Whisper was most reluctant so I had to carry her over the water. During the night the dogs woke me up two or three times with barking and I just put it down to the the storm, but on speaking to a couple who were also parked up the man asked me if I was bothered by the Dingos during the night. Apparently he got up in the night and saw about 3 or 4 dingos roaming around the area so I guess that is what the dogs were getting excited about.
Just 30 or so kilometres down the road from the lookout was the town of Sandstone were I booked myself into the van park for 3 nights. Quite an old van park with lots of permanents there, mainly mine works by the looks of things, but it was a clean and tidy little spot. Sandstone is best described as a dying town it has a hotel and a tearoom but not much else, lots of building boarded up with for sale signs. A bit like Menzies once again the small shop (even smaller than the Menzies one) was in a back room of the hotel. The tearoom was well worth a visit had a lovely cup of coffee and a slice of home made banana cake. While in Sandstone I did the Heritage trail which was quite a nice drive and actually managed to get a couple of photographs along the way. Due to the rain we had though there were quite a few place where water was across the road so going around it was not an option. I now have quite a few rust coloured water streaks all over the car. Most of these little towns have what they call heritage trails, some you need a lot more imagination than others to see what was meant to be seen.
Next stop was Mt Magnet which the lady at the Sandstone tearoom had recommended the museum as a must see. I did the Heritage trail trip on the second day its about 45kms long, I mainly wanted to see an old miners hut from the 1800s and hopefully get some decent photos of it. Well when I found where it was it was surrounded by fencing so you couldn’t get within 20mtrs of it, very disappointed. The remainder of the trail was one of those you needed quite a vivid imagination to see what they were asking you to see. But credit to the tearoom lady the museum was well worth the $5 entrance fee. To see it all fully would probably take you a full day, it took me about an hour and half as I was worried as I had the dogs in the back of the truck and the day was warming up. But I managed to see what I wanted to without delving into finite detail.
Meekatharra was the next town on the trip but I got side tracked and pulled into Nallan Station for a couple of nights. Nallan station is mainly cattle running to 98,886hectares or 245000acres or 231sq miles, and I had it all to myself. Very friendly host with lots of animals running around loose. The owner had two sheep that followed him everywhere like a pair of dogs. Sheep chickens donkeys and a pig were all near the camping area and all were very friendly and enjoyed a pat.
And then on to Meekatharra where I am now, leaving tomorrow. Probably the last reasonably sized township in the goldfields region. Once we get another couple of hundred kilometres North of here it will be back to Iron Ore mining. There are 3 decent sized gold mines here unfortunately no trips available to visit any of them though. Im parked up at the roadhouse caravan park with is old but good enough. Manage to top up my supplies as the next town is over 400kms away and its nearly 300kms to the next fuel stop. Again another one of these towns fully geared towards mining with not a lot else going for it. I will say one thing though it probably has the busiest fuel stop in WA. it caters for a constant stream of road trains from about 6am through to about 10pm. it is a very rare sight not to see as truck fuelling up. I think if you owned that franchise you would be living very comfortably.
Ok people I think that’s me all up to date now, only about 300kms before I cross the Tropic of Capricorn line, probably sometime next weekend
Geoff1511 Travels 