DAY 14 Pilbara – Kimberley Trip
MALCOLM DAM – 130km SE MEEKATHARRA
The sun rises much later in the west. As we woke up we could see the first rays of the sun over the dam from our bed. A spectacular sight.
After the usual morning routine we hit the Old Laverton Road towards Leonora and Gwalia. Quite a bit of traffic on the road this morning compared to what we had been experiencing. No tourists/nomads seem to be heading in the direction we are going in.
Gwalia is situated right next to an open cut mine. The town became a ghost town nearly overnight in 1963 when the mine closed down. Residents in Leonora have taken it on themselves to restore and maintain the historic little town. We were too early for the museum but had the opportunity to visit one of the little cottages. Life must have been very difficult living in corrugated iron homes with bare rock floors. It must have very hot and dusty living in them. Yet what pride people had –just look at the door below.
Leonora was a lovely little town. Visited the library to check emails and post to the blog. A problem with the photos as the computer had a different set up and I ran out of time. They will be up next time.
We changed our itinerary a little as so many people had commented how nice Sandstone was. So instead of going to Wiluna we headed up to Leinster and then turned off to Sandstone. I keep forgetting to comment on the number of open mine sites we have seen scattered around the country in the last several days. The vastness of the land does not cease to amaze us. Min commented that it is hard to imagine how the early settlers survived here, how they travelled and worked as this is a dry land. How did they find water?
We took a little detour into Leinster. What a lovely little place that claims to be the home of the wedged tail eagle. Saw quite a few eagles in the skies today as well as some sort of lizard/dragon.
On our way via Agnew, the remoteness of the area hit home several times as we saw the road double up as a Royal Flying Doctor Service emergency airstrip twice along the way. On our way to Sandstone we saw the first lot of natural ranges since Madura. The landscape changed incredibly on our route. From burnt out scrub, to dense scrub with tall trees to burnt out low scrub with lots of tall green grasses, to gibber plains and sparse scrub.
We left the Goldfields area and have entered the Murchinson area. We were at 563m above sea level. At Peter Denny Loukout we had our first good glimse of a breakaway rock formation.
Somebody also decided this was a good place for doing their stretches in preparation for the ski season. Who else would be thinking about skiing out in 40 degree heat out west?! I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out!
Back to breakaways. Breakaways occur when wind erosion erodes the lower part of the basalt rock and then the top collapses. The weathered basalt is believed to be about 350 million years old. There are some very interesting breakaways in the area. Along the Sandstone heritage trail there is the London Bridge.
It is part of an about 800m breakaway that varies in height from 3 to 10 metres. It was a popular local picnic spot in the town’s hey day between 1907 and 1913. Then there was the brewery in a rock cave that an Irishman by name J V Kearney established in 1907. Sandstone was a lovely well maintained town with very old buildings.
Now we are camped 130 km SE of Meekatharra near a rocky outcrop.
The moon is shining, the sky ablaze with stars and I am writing the blog outside because finally we have a night where we are not swamped in insects. Mind you, I haven’t said that there are no insects!!!
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