East from Geraldton to Laverton – Murchison goldfields and desert gateway

We are writing this whilst sitting at a park bench in the Wirabarra Conservation Park south of Port Augusta. It is damp under foot, with oh-so-bright green grass between many of the trees. It feels very strange, if not too cold as yet. The contrast with everything we have experienced for months past is so strong, and it is going to take a while to get used to again. Hopefully this verdure foretells of a wet Victoria.

We picked our way across country, away from Geraldton, with the weather now much improved. The countryside was aglow with Canola, planted to capitalise on the apparent break in the drought there. Within the hour we were on the road towards Mt Magnet and camped that night beside the Greenough River in readiness for a botanical visit to nearby Bindoo Hill Nature Reserve to indulge Helen’s latest passion. Helen had made contact with a colleague who lives on an outback station, called “Thundelarra” (the name now immortalised by J K Rowling as one of Harry Potter’s places, amazingly enough) who we visited for the next night’s stay. They sensibly de-stocked eight years ago at the start of the drought and have been making a living on the feral goats, for which there has been a strong market until recently. But their time on the property, in the one family’s hands for almost fifty years, will soon be over as they have sold to the Dept. of Environment & Conservation. We heard fascinating stories of remote life, particularly those involving home schooling with School of the Air. For the first year since 2000 the wild flowers had made an appearance, and they carpeted much of the place, and eastwards for a hundred kilometres or so. The Wreath Leschenaultia were much in evidence near Pindar, with travelling flora lovers descending on them in significant numbers.

From Mt Magnet we visited the National Trust listed old gold town of Cue (Queen of the Murchison), and explored the old mine sites and ghost towns that still speak through the decades of very different times. Not least was Big Bell. This town, gazetted in about 1934, boasted perhaps a hundred houses, an enormous two storey brick pub and a doubtless brassy social life, that all fell in a heap in 1954; the gold price fell through the floor and everyone upped stumps. There are going to be similar stories to be told after the current mining boom has passed us by. In fact the main storey to tell as we travelled eastwards is that of mining. The roads in WA are first class, and they need to be. If you drive up to a lookout and scan across the intervening country towards the horizon you will see road trains carrying ore of one variety or another, travelling from right and left, converging on the main road to the coast. In the other direction, and often with police escorts waving you aside, go dongas or vast assemblies of bright steelwork. Amazing what the Chinese revolution can achieve, and there are many WA residents who are very unhappy about it. General labour is simply not to be found.

North of Mt Magnet we found Walga Rock, drawn as we are by the sniff of rock art. We were not disappointed, and we enjoyed a night equal to any on this trip camped beside it. Walga Rock is a small version of Uluru covering perhaps 20 hectares, without the people. It was a magnificent place with an ancient aura that has you talking in whispers without realising it. Completely on our own apart from a small herd of feral goats the other side of the hill, it was euphoric.

The road forward took us to Leinster, a BHP town where we spent a night courtesy of the golf club because BHP were reworking the caravan park to accommodate more fellas (the tales we heard about cases of beer selling for $180 at nearby mining “towns” – one pub, ten dongas, that’s it - such as Agnew, were apparently true); Leonora, where we passed St Barbara gold mine owned by “neighbours” of ours who live on Mt Macedon. Then on to Laverton, a largely aboriginal town where we contacted the police to tell them of our imminent departure across the Great Victoria Desert. We really were on our best behaviour as we fuelled up, filled our water tanks to brimming, and headed north east out of Laverton towards the start of the Anne Beadell Highway. Within minutes we were blueing about which way to go, but all was made clear and we made our way along the first part of the route to White Cliffs, where we made camp amongst somewhat forbidding mulga scrub, ready for an early start on the job at hand.