Well its been along time between any sort of updates on our blog and we are so far behind, trying to remember anything over the last year will be a stretch. Most of this will be pretty random stuff with almost all of it guaranteed maybe not to be to factual.
After Kaye had finished her little return to work we packed up the car and headed off around the goldfields area near Kalgoorlie for a few days. We were still waiting for the new caravan to arrive and it just seemed to be taking forever so a trip away was hopefully going to keep our minds off it a bit.
We were just going away and using the roof top tent and intended to just camp wherever we decided to stop for the night. As our luck would have it the day we left Perth it was cold and raining quite a lot and pretty much continued until our first stop for the night at Boondi Rock not far from Coolgardie. Luckily for us not long after arriving the rain stopped and cleared away very quickly. The camp area at Boondi Rock was very good and the walk around the rock itself really interesting as all the water catchment walls and channels were still intact with a lot of water in the storage dam.
After a cold night it was up early and a drive onto Kalgoorlie and a short trip down memory lane for us both. It was in Kalgoorlie that we first met and as they say the rest is now history. Kalgoorlie still doesn’t do much for me personally and we really didn’t spend much time in the town at all. We drove around and looked at a few places that we both lived in, had a coffee in the main street and then headed out of town. Sorry Kalgoorlie but I was finding it very hard to find anything that would keep me in town for very long.
After leaving Kalgoorlie and having a picnic lunch at Broad arrow it was a drive through Ora Banda where I was surprised to see that the tavern was still operating. For some reason I thought it had closed down so it was great to see it still open and quite a few people there as well. Rowel’s Lagoon was our next stop and the low level of water in this was disappointing. I can remember going out here years ago and water skiing. Not sure how deep it is now and I doubt you would get a boat in it anymore. Next was a drive to Ularring Rock for our night stop over. What a great little camp are we found. We were also the only ones here as well so that made it even a bit more special.
Next day it was up early and off to Lake Ballard. Had wanted to see the statues in the lake for many years and was quite excited at last being able to do it. The lake surface was very wet and slippery that also caused mud to cake to the bottom of your footwear. On seeing this Kaye immediately decided that looking from the edge of the lake was better. What was surprising was the amount of people that were there. Great to see this is still attracting people to the area.
After Lake Ballard it was off to Leonora for a lunch stop and a look around Gwalia. We did a walk through the refurbished Hoover House and a walk around the old miners huts that are on display. This is a great free entry display that shows how hard they lived back in the early days. There were donation tins around so if ever there do the right thing.
We travelled the short distance to Leinster next and stayed the night at the caravan park. After a few nights of camping in the bush it was time to freshen up in town. While in Leinster I showed Kaye the water tank that we built many years ago when Leinster was first being developed as a town. It was good to see it was still standing. After a good night sleep it was off towards Agnew and Sandstone. We hadn’t decided where we were going to spend the night and thought we would see how the day panned out. We were both surprised and disappointed to see that Agnew was just a ghost town – if you could call it a town. The mess and rubbish where the old hotel was was a bit of an eyesore. Sandstone had a couple of sites near town worth visiting and was a very neat tidy little town. London Bridge and the Sandstone Brewery were both excellent visits. The Sandstone Brewery would have been something very unique in its day. Although there is only the cave left that they used for brewing, the site itself is very informative.
With the weather forecast for the area we were in not looking good for the next couple of days we decided to travel back the Perth via the farm and end our little goldfields tour. It was a great little trip and we would like to come back one day with our caravan and spend more time around and having a much closer look.