Tjukayirla to Kalgoorlie

October 1: A beautiful morning, and at 5:30, it was fourteen degrees inside the van. Lovely blue skies with a light breeze coming in from the east. After breakfast, I went in search of two more caches, one several kilometres from the roadhouse and one just hundreds of metres away, and I was successful in finding both. Filled up with diesel at $2.35 per litre before heading west. Throughout the day, the road surface changed from minor corrugations to very sandy sections, then to very hard-packed terrain like bitumen with stones protruding through the surface. We stopped at a place called White Cross, which actually has a large white cross erected on a small breakaway. It was placed here by Aboriginal Christians in 1991. I also found another cache at this location.

The scenery changed often from savannah-type grasses to areas containing gum trees, and at times, we were surrounded by lovely red sand dunes. We were surprised to see grass trees, more commonly known as black boys.

We passed by another Aboriginal community called Csomo Newberry before stopping for the evening at the Giles Jindlee Breakaway. It's half a kilometre east of the access road to the Jindalee Operational Radar Network Facility run by the Department of Defence. The landscape at this breakaway is quite stunning, featuring cliffs and jagged rocks near the lookout. Our campsite was perched high on the breakaway with commanding views over the plains below, and we both agreed this was the most spectacular campsite along the Great Central Road. We sat outside having our drinks while our fire died down, and as the sun set, we could see the flickering lights of the Csomo Newberry community in the distance. We ventured inside just after 6:30, as the sun had long gone, along with our wonderful view.

 

 

 

 

Today's statistics from the navigator include three 4WDs heading west and twelve heading east, including a pop-top van. She also set a new daily record of eighty-six wrecked cars and one caravan.
The distance covered Today was 257 Km.
 
October 2:
Another cool morning with fourteen degrees inside the van at 6:00. Today, we have just 50 km remaining of our journey across the GCR, after which we will again be on the bitumen at Laverton. 21 km east of Laverton, we stopped to deposit our fruit scraps in the quarantine bin.

We thoroughly enjoyed this trip with its ever-changing landscapes. These included breakaways, stunning mountain ranges, caves, cliffs, and beautiful desert oak forests. We were completely surprised by the lack of wildlife and did not see a single kangaroo. A total of 254 wrecked cars were counted, and we are sure we missed many more because the GCR has been realigned in numerous places over the years. We stopped for coffee and cake at the Explorers Hall of Fame in Laverton, then refuelled at $1.81 per litre before continuing to Malcolm Dam, about 100 km further west, where we would spend the next two nights.

After setting up camp, we drove the 13 km into Lenora to shop and buy some alcohol before heading to view the remaining houses at Gwalia.
 
The 'Sons of Gwalia' reef was discovered in 1896 by prospectors Carlson, White, and Glendinning. The London-based firm Bewick, Moreing and Coy sought investments in the WA Goldfields and sent a young American mining engineer, Herbert Hoover (later to become the 31st President of the United States), to Gwalia to assess the prospects of investing there. The rest is history, with Hoover being appointed as the mine manager. It is reputed that he was the only twenty-three-year-old in the world earning more than $30,000 per year at that time.
The nearly deserted township once housed over 1,000 people in the late 1890s, many of whom were European migrants. They left when the Sons Of Gwalia mine closed in 1963. This mine is one of only two outside Kalgoorlie Boulder's 'Golden Mile' to produce over two million ounces of gold. Currently, about twenty people live in the township.

 

 

 

Most miners who came here were single men, and guesthouses such as Patroni's Guest House were built to accommodate them. 

 

The Western Australian Government previously operated a chain of state-owned hotels, and this hotel was both the first and the last to run. Due to limited entertainment options, the State Hotel provided a steady income for the Government. It was sold to a local residents' syndicate in 1960, which managed the hotel until its closure in 1964. The building is magnificent, but unfortunately, the timberwork at the front requires some maintenance.





We plan to return tomorrow to view the rest of the museum on the hill, including Hoover House. Distance travelled Today: 169 km.
 
October 3:
This morning, we were woken before 5:30 by the wind flapping the awning. We always secure it with two guy ropes on either end because we've seen the damage caused to a van that hasn't been secured in this way. Around 6:00, the wind had intensified enough that we both went outside to put the awning away. We are still experiencing battery problems, as the batteries cannot hold their charge overnight with the fridge on. We contacted an auto electrician in Lenora to perform a load test on the batteries tomorrow. This morning, we refuelled in town at $163.9 per litre, then bought some phone cards and drove 4 km south to Gwalia. The entry fee of $10 per person grants access to the main buildings, including the assay office, mine office, machinery shed, and, most significantly, Hoover House, which is now also a bed and breakfast. After completing our tour, we enjoyed coffee and cake on the wide veranda overlooking the lawns surrounding the house. Hoover House was designed by Herbert Hoover before he left Gwalia and was built between 1898 and 1899. Hoover departed Gwalia before its completion to work in China. However, he returned and stayed at the house several times after coming back from China in 1902.

 

Distance Today: 38 km.

October 4:

At 5:15, it was twenty-one degrees inside the van this morning. Looks like another hot day. The auto electrician confirmed that two of our batteries did not pass the load test and will need to be replaced. They were unable to supply the batteries I required, so we will have them replaced in Perth. Our option until then is to turn off the fridge once the sun goes down and restart it in the morning when we have enough solar input. We headed south Today, and our camp tonight is just 60 km away. We are camping at Niagara Dam. There are three areas designated for camping at the dam. Two of these have a view of the dam but are situated on a small hill, making them quite exposed to the elements, especially the wind.

So we chose to camp below the dam wall among the trees for some protection from the consistently strong winds. I found another cache here, located inside a small cave to the east of the dam wall. We cooked our meal over an open fire this evening after the winds had decreased. Temperatures were extremely hot Today, with the van interior reaching 37.8 degrees at 6:30 pm.

 

Distance Today: 95 km.

 

October 5:

At 6:30 this morning, Van's temperature was fourteen degrees. Another perfect-looking day with the forecast temperature not as hot as yesterday. We are heading today for 11 km to view Kookyn. It's described as a living ghost town, but to us, it looked pretty dead. In the early 1900s, the population was 3,500; however, there are now just a handful of residents. In its heyday, there were eleven hotels, a brewery, and many businesses supporting this population size. Interpretive panels scattered around the mostly empty streets described what buildings were at each site. The Grand Hotel, which is over one hundred years old and appears rather run-down, still operates and provides accommodation, meals, fuel, and camping facilities, which are located just a dirt car park to the side.

These steps led to the now-demolished railway platform.

One of the remaining walls leading to the National Bank.

Ruins of one of the many hotel ruins.

 

I discovered one of two caches in the ruins of the town. Temperatures were about ten degrees cooler than yesterday, making for a pleasant change.
Distance today: 28 km.
 
October 6:
Another cool morning with fourteen degrees. I sound repetitive, but for the past twenty-eight days, the morning skies have been beautifully clear with no clouds, ever since leaving Quorn in South Australia.
With only 18 km remaining until we reached the Goldfields Highway, we turned south towards Menzies, which was another 42 km further on. Menzies is similar to other goldfields towns that rapidly developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At one point, thousands of people lived in these towns, with Menzies' case, for example, involving over ten thousand. However, by 1910, the population had shrunk to just one thousand. This decline was due to a fall in gold production and the outbreak of World War I. We stopped here only briefly for a few photos, and I was unsuccessful in locating several caches.

 

We deflated our tyres before heading towards Lake Ballard, another 50-odd kilometres north-west of Menzies. The road was in relatively good condition, with only mild corrugations, so we maintained a comfortable speed of 70 km/h. Antony Gormley created fifty-one life-sized sculptures of residents from Menzies and cast them in alloy. The sculptures cover an area of seven square kilometres and are embedded in the salt-encrusted lake bed.
 
Our plan was to stay here for two nights, but with the strong westerlies blowing and dust billowing everywhere, we decided that after taking photos this evening and tomorrow morning, we would leave. I found two caches near the lake, and we drove three kilometres to Snake Hill Lookout, where I discovered the third cache listed for this area, located about 500 metres from the lookout—hwouldn'twouldn’t find out why it was called Snake Hill.

 

Today the distance is 120 km. 

 

October 7:

Fifteen degrees inside the van at 5:30 this morning, and cloudless skies. I climbed the hill that sits on the lake this morning to take some shots while Ros prepared the coffee for when I returned.

 

We drank two coffees each outside until the flies drove us inside at 6:30. We left our campsite and continued west for several kilometres before turning south onto the Riverina to Snake Hill Road. We were heading to Coolgardie along part of what is called the Golden Quest Discovery Trail. This section of the trail is 190 kilometres long, and it is all dirt. The first 100 kilometres were quite good, with the road surface better than the Menzies to Lake Ballard road, but then the road deteriorated into corrugations and rough stony patches until about 20 kilometres north of Coolgardie.

 

 

 

On the way, we detoured into Rowles Lagoon Nature Reserve, only to find the lagoon to be bone dry, and of course, there was no bird life to be seen.

The only consolation was in finding a cache within the area. I also found caches at two former gold mining towns of Davyhurst and Kunanalling,

Before we arrived in Coolgardie, where I reinflated our tyres for the drive east towards Kalgoorlie, we had planned to camp at another free site on this side of Kalgoorlie. However, with school holidays still ongoing and trail bikes kicking up dust everywhere, we decided to continue to Kalgoorlie and camped in the free twenty-four-hour rest area nearly in the centre of town.

 After setting up, we headed into town for a coffee on the main street before returning to have our evening drinks without flies. Later, I cooked steaks and stir-fried vegetables outside the van on our gas ring with another bottle of Shiraz. Distance covered today: 271 km.
 
October 8:
Another one of those beautiful mornings with temperatures inside at 14 degrees at 6:00. Today was a busy day for both of us. We washed our clothes at the local laundromat, filled the car with fuel at $1.58 per litre, I had my haircut, and Ros had some TLC at the local beauty parlour. Then she enjoyed a great lunch at the York Hotel, followed by some sightseeing, including a visit to the Superpit.

 

 

Distance today: 38 Kms.