Goodbye WA ... I'm Bound for South Australia

Hmmm.  A lot has been happening and, at the same time, not much has happened.  After that cryptic comment it's time to tell you all about the adventures of the past few weeks.  I seem to have traveled huge distances for not much ... so let's start with Sandstone.  This is a lovely little place with some rather beautiful rocks, a closed pub, a lovely little cafe, a caravan park and not much else.  If you want to buy the pub, it's only a million dollars ... dreaming! said the lady from the cafe.

London Bridge - a pretty cool rock formation

I walked around a beautiful Aboriginal rock art site near Mount Magnet, called the Granites.  There were lots of walking paths and impressive sculptured rocks.

Driving along, Google Maps would say "look, you're passing a lake" and I would peer out at the clay and salt pans, dry and cracked in the sun ...

... with an occasional giggle at the artwork. 

I headed east to Leinster.  This is a mining town.  BHP.  I saw more hi vis here than anywhere else since the only reason to be in Leinster is to be mining, living in one of the 700 houses or 700 single quarters.  Dongas everywhere!  Back in 1897 they mined gold but now they mine nickel.  I was impressed by the olympic-sized swimming pool, the 24 hour squash courts and the pub that opens at 6:30am for the miners coming off shift!  (A week after I was in Leinster, I heard that BHP was shutting down their nickel mines in Leinster, Kalgoorlie and Norseman.  That's a lot of people out of work and a town that will now have little reason for existing.)

A little bit down the road, near Leonora, I visited the Gwalia mine and ghost town.  Actually, I thought it was a bit rough calling it a ghost town since people still live there.  Gold was discovered there in 1896 and soon there was a mine called Sons of Gwalia operating (cool name, huh!).  Herbert Hoover (he who became a president of the US of A) was a manager there for a short time ... long enough to build himself a swanky house and try to break the miners union by importing cheap Italian labour.

The old corrugated tin and hession houses have been lovingly restored - it's quite fascinating walking around the precinct.

This, would you believe, was a State built and owned hotel.  The theory was that the State Government would control the sale of alcohol and stop the sly grog trade.

The Sons of Gwalia mine still exists today, only now it operates as an open-cut mine.

So on to Menzies.  I had planned to do some free camping around here and first went to Niagra Dam.  This is a lovely area near Kookynie (another gold rush ghost town) with some lovely walks and a huge camping area.  We were having a very nice time walking, swimming (Maggie, not me) and relaxing when Maggie's first disaster happened ... explosive diarrhoea!  Evidently the water in the dam is full of awful bacteria and I had missed the sign warning of illness, meningitis and death!  Bummer!  So I moved camp and went to Lake Ballard.

Kookynie Hotel ... also for sale and a bargain at $500,000

The overflow barrier at Niagra Dam

Niagra Dam - full of nasties!

Lake Ballard is a huge salt lake which, due to the recent rains, had turned into a huge mud lake, impossible to walk on.  This was a pity since it is also the site of the "largest art gallery in the world" which is just a way of saying there are 51 sculptures scattered around the 10 square kilometres of the lake.  Antony Gormly (evidently a world-renowned artist) created the metal figures, each representing a local resident of Menzies.  I would be seriously pissed off if I was one of them since they all looked the same ... men with skinny pointy penises and women with saggy pointy breasts.  Not flattering at all!

I spent a delightful afternoon exploring the Menzies cemetery, which is home to some very unusual tin graves and headstones.  There had been a lot of research on who had been interred in the cemetery and the stories were heart-breaking: children dying after days or weeks, prospectors dying of thirst, many victims of the outbreaks of typhoid.

Row of markers, mainly typhoid victims, whose graves have not been located

If you're interested (and it is fascinating), his story can be found at https://outbackgraves.org/burial-records/person/5338

And now we get to Maggie's second disaster ... we were relaxing after a walk when I look in the van and there's Maggie, drooling all over the place and wheezing like she couldn't breathe.  Aaaahhh!  Oh no, I thought, it's a bait!  Where's the nearest vet?  Kalgoorlie!  So I quickly packed up, drove 150km to Kalgoorlie with me in a panic and Maggie drooling and crying (I might have been crying a bit, too).  To cut a traumatic and awful story short, it wasn't a bait ... she had inhaled a bitey thing which had bitten her in her throat.  An antihistimine or two later and she was fine.  I had a VERY LARGE whiskey!

Kalgoorlie is a cool place!  I was blown away with the beautiful buildings and the interesting museums.  I walked around and around, taking photos of all the hotels (and there are a lot!) and the beautiful old facades of buildings.  And I got my revenge on Maggie, sending her off to a groomer who didn't quite get the instruction "just a wash and a comb" and instead removed half of her hair.  Maggie is quite cold these days!  

So then it was time to cross the Nullabor again.  This time I wanted to take it quite slow, do a few nights camping on the cliffs and really savour the experience.  This was not to be!  No, you're wrong if you think it was time for Maggie's third disaster ... this time it was all down to me.  I got an ear infection!  I blame the non-existant whale shark of Ningaloo since I got some water in my ear when snorkling.  What to do?  Back to Kalgoorlie or on to Ceduna?  So Ceduna it was ... one doctor and one hospital later, two lots of drops and a course of antibiotics ... I'm sure I'll mend.  So much for relaxing travel!  So here I am in South Australia ...

Can you see this amazing rainbow effect?  Unfortunately I missed when it started off and was really bright ... just a sheet of colour.  Evidently it's called a circumhorizon or firebow.

Having missed out my camping time on the Bight, I went camping at Tcharkulda rock near Minnipa.  I was tucked away behind a shed to get out of the wind and enjoyed walking around and having a fire.  My ear, however, wasn't much better so I've moved on to get more antibiotics and to try and find somewhere where I can wait out the wind, rain and frost that is coming my way.

It sort of looks like a horse!?

Maggie at the base of Pildappa Rock, South Australia's version of Wave Rock

Questions & Big Things in the Pilbara

After a lovely stay at Bullara Station (thanks heaps to the Howletts!) it was time to continue north.  I was on a bit of a serious road trip, since the distances I was going to travel were substantial and I hadn't realised just how little there was in between towns.  No side roads to explore (or none that I'd take Van Morrison down after the rain that has fallen) and very few weird little towns to visit.  Just busy roads, full of roadtrains.  I entertained myself by singing (loudly) to old faves like Meatloaf and the Rocky Horror Picture Show and by pondering some interesting questions ...

Why do the clumps of grass on the verges grow in lines parallel to the road?

A beautiful spray-painted mural at Bullara

Red sand, red rocks

I stayed in some lovely free camps (roadside rest areas mainly) which were alive with birds because of the recent rains.  It's very interesting seeing who stays in the free camps.  I've divided them into two groups: the backpackers/little vans who like having a fire, sitting outside and chatting (that's me) and the super-rigs belonging to cashed up grey nomads ... you never see them outside the van unless they're setting up or packing up.

Robe River rest stop

Sunset at Peawah River

Look at the colour of that water!  In the background is the depth indicator for the crossing - 2 metres

Why have the ravens been replaced by raptors, the more north I travel?

At one camp, I was delighted to see a pair of bee-eaters and I took quite a few photos.  Then at dusk, all of a sudden, there was a flock of them - probably about 20 birds!

Black duck and a grey teal

Wedge-tailed eagle 

If you cross a bridge and the sign says "Unnamed Creek", doesn't that mean that the creek has a name?

As I drove and drove, each burnt out and trashed wreck became interesting ... and there were quite a lot of them!

Lovely, huh!

Not every river bed had water in it

Does anything eat spinifex?

Big.  The Pilbara is full of big things.  Big rocks.  Big mines.  Big trucks.  Big trains.  Big distances.  I had to be careful that I got out of the road of some of the oversized loads that came my way.

This huge load needed two trucks, pulling in tandem, to shift it.  I talked to the driver and he said that they would get to top speed after about 4 kilometres.  Top speed was 75 km/hr.

Big, dirty, long road trains

Big tyres

Another tandem effort.  Big and dirty!

Yep!  Got off the road for these!  Big!

Big bucket!

Big, long train

How will the mining companies rehabilitate the land when they have removed the land?

There might be some lovely National Parks in the Pilbara (not that this dog owner got to visit them) but really the area is dominated by mining.  Everywhere you look, there is evidence of the huge amount of money being made from mining our natural resources.  The roads are stained with the dust from the mines, the towns have grown rich by catering for miners, the infrastructure is quite mind-boggling.  However, it is an ugly sight to be gazing at a beautiful rocky range and then realise that half of it is now missing ... disappearing road train by road train, leaving behind barren terraces.

How many cracks and chips should you have in your windscreen before you replace it?

I got to Port Hedland, got some cracks fixed in the windscreen, drove down the road and a gust of wind blew gravel off the top of a truck's load ... three more chips!  I left Port Hedland.

I saw these all over the place ... I'm assuming they are small test bores

A mine ... eating away at a range of hills

Newman.  An 'interesting' town.

I spent a few days in the delightful town of Cue.  OK, so there wasn't a lot going on in Cue but it was very pretty and had heaps to see in the district.  By now I was heading south and was out of the iron mining ... and into the gold mining.  Standing around the communal firepit, I came to realise that nearly everyone staying at the Cue Caravan Park was a gold prospector ... not sure what gave it away.  It could have been the sign saying "Picks 4 sale" or the conversations that went around in circles as they tried not to let on where they had been searching or how much gold they'd found.

The Club Hotel - a saviour on a freezing cold night

The old courthouse and police station ... still in use

I had to laugh ... Spirituous & fermented liquors!

This is the old Masonic Hall, a two storey tin building

One day, I headed out to Walga Rock.  This is the second biggest rock in Australia and also boasts the largest Aboriginal art gallery in WA.  It was a 47 km trip on dirt roads (only the last 5 km were corrugated enough to shake Maggie off the bed) and was well worth the trip.

One of the strangest drawings is of this ship.  There seems to be arabic script underneath the picture but no-one really knows what it is and how it got there.  The most likely theory is that an Indonesian pearl fisherman called Sammy Hassan drew it early in the 20th century.  Or it could have been a survivor from the Batavia.  Or the Zuytdorp.

Gold mining doesn't seem to have the longevity that iron ore has.  Cue, for example, had a population of about 10,000 in 1900 but today has 178.  I went to one of the many deserted gold mining towns in the region, Big Bell.  The town was gazetted in 1936 but the mine closed in 1955.  Now, all that remains is the enormous shell of what once was a glorious art deco hotel, some footings of buildings and the four walls of a church.

Inside the old hotel

I'm just a little bit early for the wildflowers ... and I think it's going to be an amazing season because of the recent rains.  So I was surprised to see a sea of pink as I drove along a back road.  Not sure what they are ...

I'm a bit over towns at the moment and feel the need for a roaring fire (it's been a bit cold lately) so I'm heading into the 'bush' for a bit of free camping.  And you never know what I might find!