Tuesday 19
July 2022 – Breaking new ground
We aimed to
be on the road by 8.30am and had packed up all the outside stuff last night
which was just as well as this morning we woke to thick fog and everything
dripping wet. It was kind of eerie
driving north in thick fog, not what we were expecting at all, and having cars
and trucks looming out of the mist at us.
Two idiots not quite sure how to drive in fog – one just had park lights
on which you couldn’t see at all and the other had a light bar across his roo
bar completely dazzling us. Just normal
headlights people!
By the time
we got to Menzies the fog had burnt off and the sky was blue and sunny. Menzies was a surprisingly neat and tidy town
with very clean public toilets so that we felt no worries about abandoning our
van and H&M’s car and van in the hotel carpark whilst we made the side trip
to Lake Ballard. Popped into the tourist
bureau to let the lady know to keep an eye on them for us and were reminded
about Covid being a thing with the requirement to be completely healthy and to
wear a mask before entering the threshold.
It was a
quicker drive than we expected out to Lake Ballard on a predominantly sealed road
and were soon hiking out onto the lake to check out statues. Our progress became slower and slower as the
mud built up on our shoes and H thought it was probably the closest he had come
to wearing high heels! We walked a half
hour circuit around half a dozen or so and thought about going up the small
conical hill for a great view across the lake to more statues before Jenny and
Miranda realized that what goes up steeply also comes down steeply and doing it
in slippery, muddy shoes was probably a bad idea and left it up to the boys to
risk it instead. Of course, our excuse
was that we needed to be at ground level so that we could get the great photo
opportunity of the boys silhouetted against the crest of the hill!
We had
found that there is a great campground at Lake Ballard complete with picnic
tables, toilets and even a dump point so we took advantage of the former to
consume our sandwiches and have a cuppa.
Back to Menzies to retrieve car and vans and then continued north
towards Leonora. All along this road we
heard on the radio “Southbound 4 and a half” and took us a while to figure out
that she was alerting southbound traffic to a wide load so we assumed we would
eventually come up behind a slow moving big vehicle but we never caught them so
will never know what the wide load was.
Just as we were heading into Leonora we did another quick little
diversion to Gwalia where we checked out the tiny cottages of the ‘ghost town’
and then headed up to the museum precinct.
It is done very well with access to lots of the old Sons of Gwalia
mining equipment etc and inside the museum is old trucks, a tram and even a
hearse from around the area. M had a
little oopsy out of the tram but fortunately didn’t injure anything other than
her pride but we all couldn’t believe the boomer who just stood and stared
instead of politely moving away once it was clear no real damage had been done.
We made our
way up to the lovely house once lived in by Herbert Hoover and is now a B&B
with a café and were super impressed by the lush, green surrounds and the
lovely furnishings in the house. The
door to one of the guestrooms was open as there were no occupants and it looks
a lovely place to stay. Maybe next
time! The most incongruous thing about
it was the garden ending at a fence which had a 1700m deep mine pit on the
other side of it. No kicking the footy
on the grass little Johnny in case it goes over the fence!
We could
have stayed much longer but we still had another hour or so to go including a
stop in Leonora to top up the fuel.
Finally made it to our overnight camp spot at All Hands Well rest area
where we parked in an L shape around a conveniently pre prepared campfire spot
and soon had a lovely fire going. It was
about this time that the two MDC campervans that we had had lunch next to at
Merredin turned up and camped nearby.
Funny if they are doing the same trip as us and we keep bumping in to
them. Nice to sit staring at the flames
and eating M’s yummy lasagna and a glass or two of wine. Dessert was icecream with H’s chocolate
liqueur poured over which was a taste sensation and then we sat back, digested
and viewed a sky full of stars.
Absolutely no light pollution (apart from the glow of Leinster on the
horizon) meant starts very close to the horizon were visible.
Eventually
the roar of road trains passing stopped and we headed to bed and snuggled under
the doona as clear skies mean chilly nights!
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