Lake Douglas

We departed on a Friday morning and at the time I hadn't realised this was to have unforeseen consequences.  The plan was for a relatively short journey of 600km east on Route 94, the Great Eastern Highway, finishing at Lake Douglas.

The Isuzu has a small 65 litre fuel tank and as fuel gets increasingly expensive the further from "civilization" I routinely carry an additional five jerry cans on the trailer.  Our first stop was at COSTCO, only a short distance from home, where well filled the vehicle and jerry cans with the cheapest fuel we would purchase on the trip.

I already knew the fuel range of the 4WD towing a trailer wouldn't enable us to reach our destination without refuelling.  Approximately two hours into the journey we stopped at the Tammin Road House to top up the tank.  Tammin sells Puma fuel and I have a 4 cent/litre discount card for Puma.  The initial 100kms out of Perth takes you up over the coastal ranges which raised our fuel consumption.  Once up on the inland plateau the ground is almost flat and fuel economy improves significantly.  Actually it's going to be mostly flat for the next 6000km.

   

Red arrow - Tammin 

Carlin may have enjoyed the scenery, but having now driven this road numerous times, I find it rather boring. 

Reader you will know I like "free" and rather than pay for campsites I'd done my research identifying a free campsite at Lake Douglas, just west of Kalgoorlie.  The campsite was described as having toilets, which at my age is starting to become an essential camping criteria.

The campsite is approximately one kilometre from the highway making it quiet.  It's obviously also popular with "grey nomads" as there were many caravans present when we arrived an hour before sunset.

Rather than setting up the site we used the last of the light to scavenge for firewood.  For some reason food tastes better when cooked over an open fire.  It was at this first meal Carlin realised I'm not a good cook.  Actually I'm a very lazy cook having no imagination when it comes to food.

My standard fare of grilled sausages with tinned mixed veg and tinned potatoes.

We had a good night sleep but woke to our first problem.  The lithium battery was flat!  We had driven for hours the previous day and the combined fridge and freezer load was only 5 amps.  Why was the battery flat?  By a process of elimination we identified two cheap Chinese circuit breakers had failed.  The one in the Isuzu engine bay had probably failed early in the trip and had prevented the alternator supply power to the DC-DC charger in the trailer.  The second circuit breaker was in the trailer.  These two problems were resolved by bypassing the circuit breakers.  This meant were had removed the wiring protection and we would need to carefully monitor the wiring for the remainder of the trip.  The lithium battery wouldn't start charging because the DC-DC Charger couldn't detect the battery (it was too flat).  This was overcome by tricking the charger into thinking there was a connected battery.  I did this by connecting a small 9V battery in parallel with the lithium battery terminals.

With everything now working we headed to the 'Super Pit' in Kalgoorlie.  I've visited it previously but it was a first for Carlin.

During the 1980's many of the smaller gold mines on the "Kalgoorlie Golden Mile" were purchased and consolidated into the Super Pit.   The area has some of the richest gold deposits in the world.  The Super Pit is so big it can be seen from the International Space Station.

Approximately 200km NE is the Sunrise Dam gold mine.  It's at the other end of the gold seam.  That being the case there is a huge amount of gold waiting to be extracted.

We topped up with diesel and the Kalgoorlie Puma service station before headed north on the Goldfields Highway stopping at 10AM to turn on the 12V oven in the trailer.  A second stop at 11AM to add two of Jan's frozen home made pies. 

We reached the town of Menzies at noon.  It's one of many former goldmining towns in the area.

 

A number of the towns are now abandoned with the majority of mines working on "Fly In - Fly Out" with employees based all over Australia.

Hot pies from the over for lunch.  Jan makes tasty pies!

The 460km from Kalgoorlie to Laverton was on bitumen.  The last sealed roads we will travel for several days.  The plan was to top up the 4WD with diesel at Laverton in anticipation of a significant price increase once we left "civilization". 

You might recall I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we left on a Friday.   The Laverton fuel outlet closes at 2PM on a Saturday and we arrived at 3PM.  Oh well…. I resigned myself to the thought we would be purchasing expensive diesel from one of the few Great Central Road outlets.

A hour later we started looking from a track on the side of the road that might lead to a suitable campsite for the night.  The Great Central Road isn't busy, but the few road trains rumbling though the night doesn't make for a restful sleep.

Eventually we found a good spot with plenty of firewood and settled in for the night