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.