Mining history and wildflowers

July 23

Leaving Laverton, we rejoiced in the pleasure of bitumen roads as we headed south-west to Leonora, one of the several old gold-mining towns in the area. It was dreadfully quiet, even for a Saturday, with a supermarket sporting a sign stating that money from bras and underpants would no longer be accepted due to health concerns. Don’t ask!!

South of the town, and almost attached to it is the old settlement of Gwalia, site of the Sons of Gwalia gold mine as well as another, St Barbara. (After seeing all the current gold and nickel mining in the area, we’ll have an increased interest in mining news in future). The original Sons of Gwalia (a poetic name for Wales) was started in the late 1890s and a young American mining engineer, Herbert Hoover, was the manager for a time until he went on to China and coal mines there.

Of course, he also went on to become the 31^st President of the United States.

He designed and had built the mine manager’s house, the assay office and the mine office, all buildings that have been retained and house collections of interest. While his manager’s house was not quite completed when he lived there, Hoover celebrated his 24^th birthday in what is now the dining room.

A view of the opencut Sons of Gwalia mine from the

garden of Hoover House.

It is open to visitors, but is also an up-market B&B with a glorious outlook over the new Sons of Gwalia open-cut operation, which opened in the 1980s after the old underground mine had closed in the 1960s.

The wondrous machinery used to lower men and machinery into the mine, as well as the timber angled head frame, designed by Hoover and the only one of its kind in Australia, is on show, along with all kinds of other gear, and we had a wonderful few hours poking about. Some of the little old mining cottages have been grouped and restored and they certainly bear visiting, along with Patroni’s guest house, a motley collection of mostly corrugated iron buildings that served as home for many miners.

Leaving Gwalia and Leonora behind, we drove north to Leinster, a modern mining town, but almost as ghost-like as those others. BHP Billiton has Leinster on a care and maintenance level after a seismic event made its underground Perseverance mine unsafe in 2013. Nickel prices are also low but it is still processing ore from some surrounding mines.  The caravan park was fairly busy (pay $20 at the supermarket to stay there) and one group grabbed our attention. Driving in a big Iveco truck with a huge covered trailer, as well as a matching ute, were five blokes, all part of the Darryl Beattie adventure team.

He’s a former top Aussie motorbike rider who now leads expeditions to some of our wilder bits of dirt. They were heading to Wiluna, the southern end of the Canning Stock Route, where a party of blokes would fly in from Perth and spend 13 days battling sand and spinifex to reach Halls Creek. The organising team had all the dirt bikes in their trailer and for the privilege of making that trip, each client paid more than $9000.

July 24

Today we headed further west to another mining town, Mt Magnet, passing through a small place called Sandstone, with a long gold mining history. All around are current mines, mostly gold, with much industrial-level activity, but Sandstone proved fascinating with a heritage drive through the bush.

First there was a brewery built on top of what we call a rocky ridge, but known in WA as a breakaway. An Irishman started it in 1907, brewing in a building on top of the rock, then the beer flowed through pipes to a big ‘cellar’ made by tunnelling into the rock.

John really should have had a beer in his hand

while standing in the brewery tunnel.

There it stayed cool in kegs and supplied the thirsty miners, with up to 6000 living in the area at one time. When a railway opened from Mt Magnet in 1910, it brought beer in from other sources, so the rock brewery closed.

There was also London Bridge, a basalt rock formation that had been a picnic spot for 100 years and once was wide enough for a horse and cart to drive over it. Nowadays it is weathering fast and people are warned not to walk on it. Even further on this bush track we found the remains of a battery that operated from 1908 to 1982, crushing ore in latter years from small operations and prospectors.

We keep seeing different wildflowers and trees coming into bloom, all because of recent rains so it

London Bridge near Sandstone.

looks like we won’t have to wait until Spring to see some great displays.

We completed the day by pulling into Mt Magnet, a prosperous little town on the main Northern Highway and tomorrow will follow its mining heritage trail on our way north to Meekatharra.

July 25

We continued our mining heritage interest with a special drive from Mt Magnet which took in not only the current mining sites but also some of the historic areas. From the top of one hill we tried to take in all the open-cut mining as well as the underground sites mentioned.

Then there were the interesting geological features, such as the Amphitheatre, formed by large rocks. It was apparently a favourite picnic spot for the people of Mt Magnet, and apparently very romantic by moonlight . . . so much so that many people in Mt Magnet claimed they had been conceived there!

Sadly, life was tough in the early days, and a grave of an unnamed mother and child, who died in a typhoid epidemic of 1908, was a touching spot. Further on, at another mining settlement that is just about invisible these days, all that remains is a railway platform, and a cemetery which has only one headstone, and a list of those buried there. Far too many are children, and one unfortunate couple lost four children between 1900 and 1908.

That back road eventually brought us back onto the main highway north to a delightful little town called Cue, once again a former mining centre, but it still boasts some glorious old stone buildings. While there we saw two new enormous dump truck bodies, minus their buckets, being transported on low loaders to points north. We presumed the drivers, and pilot vehicles, might spend the night further on at Meekatharra, but like us, they came through there and pulled in at a camping spot by a billabong of the Gascoyne River. While we, and some other campers, were gawking at their huge

size, two more low-loaders arrived, going south, bearing slightly smaller dump trucks.

The drivers were set to sleep in their quarters behind their cabs and the pilot vehicles were vans with sleeping accommodation so all the fellows settled in for a time by a fire (they had firewood tucked into the low-loaders) and the campers retired to their caravans and motorhomes.

July 26: We left at the crack of dawn, bound for Newman, as were the first two dump truck bodies. At 8 metres wide each, they would have blocked the highway fairly successfully, and made the 160km trip to Newman rather slow. Anyway, we beat them away and travelled well to Newman, stopping only for a truckies’ breakfast at a roadhouse . . . a bacon and egg toasted sandwich and a coffee. We’ll overnight here, and get some much-needed washing done.

Next stop: Karajini National Park.

Completing the Great Central Road

July 19, Day 1

A glorious day for travelling one of the NT’s great roads, the Great Central Road, south-west from Uluru into WA. We started early, so had time to take in some of the glories of Kata Tjutu, formerly known as the Olgas, 36 domes rising from the surrounding countryside, a couple of them 200m higher than Uluru itself.

Then on we went towards Kaltukatjara, also known as Docker River, almost on the WA border. A guide book we had been following said the campground there was a delight . . . and so it might have been at one stage, with several little campsites, each with a fire ring, set among desert oaks, and little individual toilets (flushing) for most campsites. Trouble was, when we arrived, in the info shed just off the road was a big apology for no water and no toilets, because of vandalism, with the Docker River Rangers promising to rectify as soon as possible . . . so no $5 charge per person.

It didn’t worry us and we had a lovely night camping there, with an almost full moon shining through the desert oaks. About four other groups came in, but we were all well separated. Late in the afternoon, a trio of donkeys appeared and went around the campsites, monstering people for titbits but we hunted them away.

On our way, we had visited Lasseter’s Cave. This was where poor old Lasseter, of lost gold reef fame, had sheltered for 25 days in January of 1930, after his camels bolted with all his food. His diary was found in the cave after he died soon afterwards trying to reach the Olgas where a relief party may have been. Whether he really had found a huge gold reef ln 1897 has never been determined, as he could never re-find it, despite a few expeditions. There have been people searching for it even after his death, and we found that cave rather moving.

We’ve been driving on relatively rough red dirty roads, still with a lot of water on them after recent rain, so there’s a fair bit of weaving about, but luckily the roads are wide and the traffic is light. There are wonderful ranges all around this area and we look forward to even more tomorrow.

July 20, Day 2

We made an early start, driving west about 6km to the WA border, where we stopped to have our breakfast, looking at some of the wonderful Central Australian ranges. Once over that border, the road improved rapidly and we had a wonderful 300km+ run to Warburton.

On the way we stopped at the Warapurna roadhouse for fuel, and drove up a road behind it to visit the Giles Weather station, the most remote in Australia. It welcomes visitors, but that day there was nobody about, although a room full of exhibits about its history was open.

Remains of the first Blue Streak rocket

set off from Woomera in the 1960s,

recovered near Giles in the 1980s.

The roadhouse had its own small art gallery, with quite a lot of interesting paintings by the local community, as well as some carved figures and dishes, one of which John bought me. On the east coast they are called coolamons but I don’t know the name in WA . . . and the young German backpacker who served us was not much help.

About then, we had to change to WA time (1.5 hours behind Central standard time) so by the time we pulled into Warburton we’d been on the road many hours, but it was only early afternoon on the clock.  There was a lovely grassed area for campers. Green grass? We didn’t know whether to photograph it or roll on it!

The whole area beside and behind the roadhouse, for campers and also overnight stays in dongas and cabins, was enclosed in a security fence, with barbed wire on top, and a huge gate that was kept closed, and was tightly locked at night. Added to that were notices on the roads warning to keep unleaded petrol secure, particularly in extra jerry cans on roof racks. This is because of the petrol-sniffing problem in Aboriginal communities, and the only unleaded petrol sold is the special Opal fuel that does not have the same appeal . . . or effect.

We’re out of the lovely ranges country now, with low scrub and spinifex the norm, no more desert oaks, and quite a lot of plaques reminding travellers of the role Len Beadell played in making roads through this area. One of the Caterpillar graders his Gunbarrel Road Construction Co had used is now displayed at Giles weather station, enclosed in a huge wire cage built by a team of Army engineers in an exercise named Lennie’s Cat Cage. Don’t you just love our Australian sense of humour?

July 21, Day 3

On we went towards Laverton, through the last of the ranges and into the southern part of the Gibson Desert before entering the Great Victoria Desert.

There has been so much rain that there are still some pools beside and on the road, and we couldn’t believe it when just a few kilometres out of Warburton, we came onto a bitumen road. This continued for 35 km . . . and then it was back to red dirt.

Because of the rain, and plenty of waterholes well away from the road, we’ve seen very little wildlife, particularly some of the nearly one million camels in Central Australia. But before we reached our stop for the night, the Tjukayirla Roadhouse, we saw five, one right on the road.

We’ve been fascinated by the plants that have erupted from the desert after the rain, and are in full flower. The spinifex is looking great, and the desert heath myrtle, which has tiny pink-mauve flowers, looks like a larger-than-heather mauve covering on the sand hills.

Tonight at the roadhouse we had an evening meal with a chap called Norm, travelling in his vehicle with a swag, determined to celebrate his 75^th birthday in August by completing the Outback Way (which actually goes from Perth to Cairns in a vaguely diagonal way).

He comes from Goondiwindi, and will meet his wife in Perth. I don’t think she’s too keen on swagging it across the outback.

July 22, Day 4

The final leg, and we made it! The road actually was not as bad as some we have travelled, and in some sections, was the best dirt road we’ve seen.

The Tjukayirla (pronounced Dook-a-yirla) roadhouse camping area is set among lots of native trees and shrubs, and therefore had lots of small birds greeting the dawn, although it was chillier than we had experienced for a few days.

Forget the t-shirts and shorts of the past few days. We were back in jeans, long sleeves and jackets for the 300km drive to Laverton, which was fairly uneventful apart from noticing lots of water lying around beside the road.

When we checked into the fairly-full small caravan park in Laverton, the manager told us that because lots of dirt roads had been closed around the town by wet weather, she’d had campers stuck there for days in the past week.

We visited the local Explorers Hall of Fame, which was most interesting, and checked out the statue of one Dr Charles Laver, pictured with a bicycle, to mark his arrival in the town after travelling hundreds of miles from Coolgardie on his bike as part of the 1880s gold rush in the area. He stayed on to become a much-loved town doctor, as well as a regular visitor to England to raise money for local mining ventures. When a town was eventually gazetted in 1900 it was named in his honour.

We’ve re-stocked some fruit and vegies, as well as honey, because quarantine regulations forbid any of that from entering the state. When we reached the quarantine bin just east of Laverton, we just had one manky carrot to throw in it as we’d used up everything else.

Tomorrow we start exploring what is known as the Goldfields area of WA, gradually moving north-west until we reach Newman in the next 4-5 days.

A magical night in the desert

July 17

After we jolted our way out of Palm Valley, once again, driving quite a lot along the bed of the Finke River, and past the sort of river gum and red rock landscapes made famous by Albert Namatjira who lived in nearby Hermannsburg, we negotiated a relatively rough dirt road called the Mereenie Loop to reach Kings Canyon Resort.

There we stayed just one night, taking a walk in the canyon that afternoon. It’s touted as being Australia’s answer to the USA’s Grand Canyon, but it really isn’t. There’s a longish walk around the rim we could have done, but as that means a steep climb to start, and we really only have two good knees between us, we opted for the shorter walk along the creek bed.

There were notices everywhere in the campground about not feeding or encouraging the dingoes or wild dogs, and they seemed to be everywhere, slinking around. We’d seen one trotting along the

riverbed road that morning at Palm Valley and he seemed to be all dingo, but some of those around the Kings Canyon Resort caravan park were real mongrels.

Anyway, on we went the next day for a short drive (on bitumen roads) south to the Lasseter Highway, the main one from the Stuart Highway to Uluru, and we made a stop at a cattle station called Curtin Springs, where there is a campground. It also has a restaurant, bar and shop, and in the past few years has been making paper from local grasses, spinifex and desert oak needles.

We joined another couple that afternoon for a paper-making experience, which was fascinating. The Severin family, which has run this one million-acre station since the early 1950s, had diversified into tourism some time ago and to perfect the papermaking, Ashley and Lindy Severin travelled to paper-making workshops in Burnie, Tasmania. To establish the enterprise, they cleared out an old abattoir building beside a set of working stockyards, using a good deal of the equipment there and making what they needed out of other bits and pieces.

That afternoon John and I each made a small piece of paper from oats grass. They would take a few days to dry so they gave us some completed paper to take with us. We chose some from spinifex and native couch grass, one sheet of which was mixed with some of the tail hair they gather when doing bangtail musters (snipping the end hair from the tails when dealing with cattle in the stockyards so they know which ones have been into the yards, and it’s a way of counting them).

We had a great chat at the bar that night with Ashley, a Nuffield Scholarship winner in the 1970s, who now spends a good deal of his time dealing with the 16 backpackers he employs and the bureaucracy from various government departments . . . as well as his 3000 cattle.

It was less than 100km from Curtin Springs to Uluru and the Yulara Resort, where we were booked into the campground. There are also several hotels and apartments, a shopping centre, art galleries and a small theatre, medical, police and fire facilities, as well as a camel farm and an airport on the outskirts. It’s all arranged in a rough oval with a shuttle bus patrolling every 20 minutes.

An impromptu serenade

at a waterhole at the base of Uluru.

We did a guided tour to Uluru, about 10km away with just a New York family as the other passengers, so had a great five hours, walking and driving around the great rock. It looks so smooth from a distance, but is full of folds and crevices . . .  and hundreds of tourists on the walking track around its base. Our wonderful afternoon ended with sparkling wine as we watching the sunset change the colours of the rock, and by then the evening cold was starting to settle.

Some of the great folds and crevices in the Rock.

The next night was a magical experience at the Field of Light. This is an art installation of 50,000 handcrafted light stems, each topped with a glass globe, all working on solar power from 36 portable solar panels. We were collected by a coach that took us to a sandhill overlooking the area equivalent to seven football fields where the exhibition has been installed. After being plied with bubbly and superb canapes from the local five-star hotel, Sails in the Desert, as the light died we saw the globes starting to glow. When they were fully lit, we descended the sandhill and wandered the show along defined paths. There are 380km of optical fibre used in the installation so no straying from the paths is allowed.

At sunset: The Field of Light shows white.

Like much of the Central Australian landscape, it was impossible to capture the sheer scale of it in photos, but like everyone else, I tried.

Glowing in the dark.

We’ll spend our last day restocking the pantry and fridge, relaxing and getting ready for about five days on dirt roads, crossing the WA border on Tuesday. We have all our permits to travel through Aboriginal lands, big smiles on our faces, and you may not hear from us again for about a week, depending on where we find internet access.

Spectacular globes of light in many colours.

Right in the Centre now

July 11 (more than 4000km from home)

Leaving Marree we drove about 70km on the Oodnadatta Track, then turned south to Roxby Downs and Woomera. It was a dirt road, but hard-packed after rain some days before, and very pleasant. A highlight was a set of sculptures close to the Roxby Downs turn-off, including some planes, with tail-ends in the ground, figures made of bits welded together, and one of the traditional railway water tanks (for the old steam engine Ghan, beside whose old track the road travelled) transformed into a dog.

From Roxby Downs we deviated to the opal-mining town of Andamooka, with much more mechanised mining than I had expected. It was not as extensive as at Coober Pedy, a day later, where for kilometres either side of the town, the landscape is a series of ‘molehills’ from excavators having extracted dirt, sieved it to find possible opal-bearing stone, and piled the leftovers.

Anyway, on to Woomera, which has special significance as my late sister and her family lived there for about 10 years to 1976. It is still quite a big town, though many of the houses are no longer occupied and some have been demolished. The rocket range is still used and there is talk of making it an official RAAF base, which

A reminder of Woomera's heyday as a rocket range.

will bring in more families. We met the principal of the school where my sister was a secondary teacher and he told me it’s still an Area School but has only 10 pupils, from one in kindergarten to one in Year 12 . . . and as everything in Woomera is still controlled by the Commonwealth Govt, it’s unlikely to close just yet, and certainly not if more families come in.

Then we joined the Stuart Highway, and drove north on one of our longest days (abt 600km) to a place called Marla, having a quick look at Coober Pedy on the way. We left Marla on a cold and windy morning, drove through torrential rain at times which at least washed off most of the Flinders Ranges mud, and arrived at Alice Springs on quite a hot day, so we quickly stripped off jeans and heavy jackets for shorts and t-shirts.

Would you believe that right next to us in a caravan park is a couple from Lismore, and I knew him years ago when he lived in Jiggi. (For members of my family, it’s Dr Keith Bolton).

A highlight of our day was the National Transport Museum and Hall of Fame, especially the Jack Hurley pavilion, honouring the late Kenworth distributor in Kyogle; and then the arrival at Alice Springs of the Ghan train from Adelaide, with 34 carriages! It was so long it could not all fit into the station in one stop.

A tribute to the Afghans and their camels

at the railway station.

We’ve acquired the last permit we needed to travel on Aboriginal land after we reach WA from NT; filled up with fuel; bought extra beer and water; and re-filled a gas bottle. We also took on enough supplies for about 10 days as tomorrow we leave for the West McDonnell Ranges, Uluru and then the Great Central Road.

We want to share some of the little things that have kept us amused on the road.

* We often hear truckies chatting to each other on the radio, and the other day one commented that caravanners were like potholes, ‘always in the road’.

* Then there was a Victorian caravanner (they’re everywhere!) who must have been watching old films about Smokey and the Bandit, as he prefaced several inquiries about passing a wide load with ‘Breaker, breaker’. Now that’s not something we hear much in Australia these days.

* When we reach caravan parks or camping areas and watch people backing caravans or camper trailers into their designated spots, often with a wife madly giving hand signals or even on a walkie-talkie, we recall an old bloke we met at Bedourie 2 years ago who used to say to his dog, “Come on, Dog, let’s watch Caravannus australis and their rituals” when a group of caravans would arrive.

* Yesterday afternoon, some chap wandered by our camp spot in the caravan park for a chat, a bit unsteady after his own personal happy hour, and when he heard we were heading for WA, insisted we must go to the Dampier Bowling Club, where camping parking is available behind the club . . . as long as you are prepared to do some stints behind the bar, not in front of it.

* Not everyone is aware of, or follows, the Outback protocol of greeting other drivers. Those who do have three versions: A full-blooded wave of the right hand and forearm; a raising of the right arm and hand in a kind of salute; or the more laconic one or two-fingered salute with the right hand still firmly gripping the steering wheel.

July 13

Another instalment: there was no internet coverage in Alice Springs. The caravan park wi-fi didn’t work (they blamed the NBN workmen nearby) and even our Telstra hotspots would not hold (so we blamed the NBN chaps also).

We headed west to the West MacDonnell Ranges, which are just glorious. All those Central Australian colours were present and jostling for attention. There was the deep red of the rocky hills and mountains, the bright green of fresh grass and spinifex, white of the sand in the creekbeds, and occasionally, the bright blue of the sky. It was cloudy and getting colder and windier each day as we traversed the ranges, visiting gorges and waterholes, chasms in the rocky hills, and finally spending the first night in the National Park campground at Ormiston Gorge.

From there we went south and east again to Hermannsburg, and then south down a strictly 4WD track to Palm Valley. It certainly was 4WD only and it took us an hour to travel the 18km to the campground. We decided to drive on the 4km to see the actual valley of palms, and that’s when the journey really got hairy. The track . . . which could not be dignified by calling it a road . . . climbed up and over boulders and through many creek crossings. We actually parked the truck on a rock slab and walked the last 1km or so as the boulders were becoming larger and sharper-edged. Smaller 4WDs were negotiating the track with some difficulty and we were so much bigger and heavier that we thought it best to be prudent.

In the end, we could see some kind of information shed, obviously all to do with Palm Valley, but our way was blocked by the Finke River and we had no intention of trying to wade through it on a rather cold day.

I might add that the road from Hermannsburg actually ran along part of the wide bed of the Finke River for several kilometres so the road shuts when the river is in full flow. After that adventure, probably the roughest road we’ve ever taken the truck along, and that includes Cape York and the Kimberley, we returned to the campground and set up for the night.

From Cobar to Marree . . . movies, ranges and fresh bread

It's two for one in this blog, as we've been out of service area for days (isn't it wonderful?) so there are two posts:

July  3

It was a big day of driving from Cobar to Broken Hill, through Wilcannia, but fascinating. Green, green growth surrounded us and at one stage John was sure we were seeing patches of white clover. I was a bit more sceptical, so we stopped to investigate . . . and it turned out to be small white wildflowers popping up after recent rain.

Lots of goats were grazing either side of the road, quite a few sheep, and just a few cattle, as well as small groups of emus. The Darling River at Wilcannia is a bit sluggish, but there’s nothing listless about all the caravans, motorhomes and camper trailers on the road. There was an enormous queue for diesel in Wilcannia and many were heading for Birdsville, via SA.

For those of you who know their Australian history, particularly its mining history, you’ll be delighted to know that we spent the night at Mt Gipps station, north-west of Broken Hill. It was there, in the days when the station covered one million acres, that a boundary rider, one Charles Rasp, found an interesting rock on a ‘broken hill’ and he and six other men from the station registered a mining claim that eventually became BHP.

Mt Gipps, today only a property of 82,000 acres, runs Dorper sheep, a meat breed that does not need shearing. The owners, John and Kym Cramp, have started a small tourism business, using former shearers’ quarters as accommodation, as well as just a few caravan/motorhome sites. We thoroughly enjoyed one night there, then went into Broken Hill to do a heritage walk, check out a museum, try to stay warm in absolutely freezing, bleak conditions, and took a drive north-west to the former mining centre of Silverton.

It’s now just a small village, with several artists running galleries, and the day we visited, it was full of technicians, their vehicles, and a hive of movie-making activity.

The rain scene at Silverton.

Outside one of the galleries, a friendly driver told us it was an HBO production, for the third season of a series called The Leftovers (never screened in Australia) with most of the crew from Melbourne, and others from the US. He was waiting for the director’s PA, who was in the gallery trying to find just the right gloves for the director, who did not want to leave after two weeks of filming without a pair of woollen Aussie gloves.

As we watched, from an elevated position, two huge gantries started spraying water on the action below. The driver told us it was to create rain for a particular sequence. All most interesting, and one look at the huge assembled technical crew (apart from any acting talent) explained why movies and TV series cost so much.

We stayed in Broken Hill overnight, then left for another fairly long drive into South Australia, through saltbush country to where the Flinders Ranges start to appear. During a quick stop in Peterborough we were lucky enough to see the Indian Pacific train go hurtling through on its way from Perth to Sydney.

North of there, we turned off the bitumen onto a rather wet dirt road leading to Almerta station, where we’d arranged to spend a night.

What a delight it was. Friendly people, and a wonderful campsite in the pebbly bed of a wide creek. We had it all to ourselves, were provided with firewood for a lovely campfire (but the cold

In the bed of the creek on Almerta station.

eventually drove us into the motorhome) and were even loaned a book on the area’s history. It’s coming up a busy time, and the family running sheep here have already told their three children they’ll be spending their school holidays marking lambs. It’s been a family concern for three generations, and they also run a shearing and crutching contracting business, with 20 people working in SA and NSW for 11 months of the year.

July 7

After a fabulous few days in the Flinders Ranges, which so impressed us we ran out of superlatives to describe them, we headed north to Maree, which was not only getting ready for the Marree Camel races, but also hosting some of the 7000 people who had attended the Big Bash at Birdsville and had driven down the Birdsville Track on their way home.

We spent several hours driving around the Flinders Ranges National Park, from our nearby base at Rawnsley Park station, which has quite a sophisticated range of accommodation, ranging from a caravan park (where we stayed) to cabins and eco-villas (not sure where they differ, maybe the eco-villas have long-drop toilets!). There was also a restaurant, where we washed down lamb and kangaroo meals with a local red.

We jolted around 4WD tracks through the park, with some of them actually running along the beds of creeks. The geology of the gorges is amazing, spectacular, and colourful and markers along what is known as the Geological Trail told us how old some of the rocks were . . . from 525 to 600 million years.

The glorious Flinders Ranges

It was a cloudy, slightly cold time, so we didn’t have a joy of seeing those rock formations with sunshine on them. The motorhome is no longer pristine, with quite a bit of mud underneath, but not doubt it will get worse.

A work in progress . . . the old post office.

Then on we went, north to Blinman, and then west to Parachilna, through more spectacular gorges, and we reached a main road spearing north into the great flatlands of Sou

th Australia, past the great coalfields of Leigh Creek until we reached the fascinating area of Farina.

It is just a collection of stone ruins, like many other ruins in this part of SA, but the difference is that there is a restoration group which annually travels from many parts of Australia to work on those buildings. Along with that work, they bring a bakery caravan and marquee, with signs on the main road that the bakery is open bringing large numbers of travellers.

The 1880s underground oven at Farina.

The baking is done in an underground oven built in 1880 and restored about seven years ago. We bought fresh bread rolls which we scoffed for lunch, then checked out the bakery chamber where two volunteers were trying to decide if a tray of pies was ready or not. The retired Army baker who’d made them had retired for a rest, so there was a bit of debate going on, and much laughter.

The volunteers with their pies.

We helped their fundraising for the restoration project by buying two bottles of the Barossa wine they’d had specially labelled Farina Restoration, enjoying the first that night at Maree, about 50km north, where fellow campers included many who’d driven in from Birdsville, and were looking forward to their first showers in five or six days.

On the road again . . . to Western Australia

Left home June 30:

Brrrr! We thin-blooded sub-tropical dwellers really noticed that it was winter when we drove from Richmond Hill (Lismore, for the non-locals) through Casino to Tenterfield, then turned south to Glencoe, south of Glen Innes, where we spent the night in the driveway of a niece’s home.

All seven of us dined that night at the Red Lion Tavern, the focal point of that little town on the New England Highway, with big open fires really warming the blood . . . as well as the red wine.

Then off we set the next morning, having woken to find it was 8C inside the motorhome, and 2C outside, so on went the diesel heater. South we drove to Armidale and Tamworth, then we headed west to Gunnedah, busy and prosperous, though cold in the bright sun. We were delighted to see the country between Tamworth and Gunnedah a bright, fresh green, the result of recent rains, and so it continued, with water lying around even as far west as Cobar. By then we’d travelled more than 1000km from home.

The green paddocks go on forever.

When we reached Coonabarabran, we decided to head due west so we could visit Siding Springs Observatory, and stay at the Warrumbungle National Park. Up, up, up we drove on the access to the observatory, which had narrowly escaped disastrous bushfires in early 2013, as evidenced by blackened tree trunks all around, with newish sapling growth.

On top of the old volcano where the observatory is located, it was extremely cold and blowing a frightful gale. We were told later it had been the site of the deepest snow in the past week, so we were grateful not to have been there that day.

Try picking up the milk from the Sun! It's heavy!

We thoroughly enjoyed the visitors’ centre, complete with mind-boggling displays such as the comparative weights of a carton of milk on the various planets. Then we went up to the actual observatory, where from the visitors’ gallery we witnessed the great dome slowly rotating. We thought one of the huge apertures might be about to open, but one of the staff who came out to see us told it had just been done for a film crew which had been there months earlier shooting footage for a movie, and had returned for some more.

The full name is the Anglo-Australian Observatory, opened in 1974, and operated by the Australian National University, but despite the gravitas of its pedigree, there’s a slight frivolity outside the great dome with a steel sculpture of a bird holding a telescope to one eye.

Telescope in hand, the bird outside Siding

Springs Observatory.

Soon after we descended the mountain, we entered the Warrumbungle National Park, and set up for the night at a delightful camping ground, ready for yet another cold night, with a promised minimum of 3C the next morning.

As long as the water is hot for a shower, the kettle boils for tea, and we have plenty of doonas . . . and each other . . . we’ll stay warm.

Then on to Gilgandra, past an emu farm on a back road, with hundreds of the feathery chaps around the paddocks, then west past Warren and Nyngan to Cobar, where we arrived about 2pm. This gave us time to explore the town, particularly the Great Cobar Heritage Centre . . . it is ‘great’, but the name comes from the building’s first purpose as the admin centre for the first Great Cobar Copper Mine. It later was derelict, then a series of flats, before a community project turned it into one of NSW’s best museums.

        

The entrance sign to Cobar, celebrating its mining heritage, plus helpful hints from the museum.

As well as the pioneering and pastoral history, it is full of info on the town’s mining heritage, with five mines still producing copper, gold, silver lead and zinc.

We also discovered some interesting formulae for getting rid of flies or mice, and then peered into the green water filling the original open cut copper mine.

The caravan park is full of travellers . . . mostly from Victoria and some from Tasmania. It was warm enough to sit outside with sunset drinks and nibbles and chat with passers-by . . . the joy of travelling.