Outback Trip - Day 3

Another 9:30am start.  We are behind schedule; although that isn't critical.  At least three people on this trip have previously been over this ground.  But that was 25 years ago and in the meantime some tracks have disappeared and new ones formed.  The latter mostly from mining exploration. 

Our direction of travel was into the sun which meant we were heading east.  However I knew Laverton was to the north?  There was some chatter on the 2-way radio about a long causeway across a salt lake.  That proved to be correct.

But not before we saw a rainbow.  A rather ominous sign out here as the roads can turn to mud very quickly.

Another new road junction had people restudying their maps.

Then we reached the causeway

That's not water in the distance.  It's a mirage!

After the causeway we started heading north where we skirted around Sunrise Dam airfield.  This is a sealed airfield that supports the adjacent Sunrise Goldmine.  Apparently Sunrise is located at the other end of the gold seam being worked at the Kalgoorlie Superpit.  It's approximately 100km between the two mines which suggests gold is going to be extracted for centuries. 

The road from the Sunrise Mine to Laverton is unsealed but well maintained.

This was my first visit to Laverton.  It's a small town that apparently has a crime problem.  The purpose of the stop was to refuel.  Whilst doing that I was approached by an Aboriginal woman who attempted to sell me a painted rock.  This is a well known tourist scam where some foreign tourist is offer a rock painted with dots as a piece of traditional aboriginal art.  I politely declined and pointed her in the direction of Don from Bournemouth

In addition to fuel, Laverton was our lunch stop.

Recently the town had a tourist information centre constructed which incorporated a gift shop and café.  The painted rocks in the gift shop looked nicer!

Information centre

The convoy backtracked several kilometres before turning left onto the Coglia-Merolia Road southeast.    Some 10 kilometres later we turned right onto a short branch track leading to an old cemetery maintained by the Outback Graves Organisation.  The graves date back to the beginning of the 20th Century

 

The majority of the deaths were either by suicide (dynamite) or mine accident. 

You would have to be very hardy to live out here scratching a living mining.  Transport would have been horse and cart with the nearest "civilization" at least a week away.  Perhaps the number of suicides isn't surprising!

There was an afternoon tea stop on the old Tropicana Mine airfield before we carried on finding a good campsite southwest of some 'breakaways' which I hope to explore tomorrow morning..

Dinner was my usual gourmet delight.