Merredin WA
Heading East, that must mean we are on our way home! Took an age to get free of the traffic and speed restrictions of the greater Perth area, and with a buffeting tail-wind, the journey was uncomfortable. Finally we started to get moving properly when we came across the back-end of another wide-load convoy, also heading east. Thank goodness for CB radios.This was the widest yet at 6.5 metres - wider than most roads. They were cruising along about 70kph but after half an hour we saw the Northam turnoff looming and the coffee bell was ringing. We relaxed a while at Maccas, it being the only thing open in WA on a Sunday, thinking that we would give them a chance to get further away.
Back on the road we had been going only 10 minutes when we came up behind them again - they must have stopped as well! Rats. You can either hang in there or pull over. We hung about for a good while until finally they pulled over to let the not insignificant tailback get around.
Perth to Kalgoorlie is some 600km, too far for one day, and so we had planned to stop somewhere in the middle, which turned out to be a place called Merredin.
Merredin was a staging post on the way to the goldfields, then a whistle and water stop for the Eastern Goldfield Railway (1880), and then the site for a pumping station of the water pipeline between Maundering (Perth) and Kalgoorlie (1890). Steam engines need lots of water and wood. Seeing as how they were running them through the dessert, both items were going to be a problem. The wood came from the forests near Perth, by rail of course, but the water was collected in dams along the line.
To gather water, they found an area where there were large granite outcrops and built little walls all around them, channelling any rain that fell, into a dam. The one here is 25 million litres and was in use until 1960. From the dam they pumped the water up to the water tank next to the railway line.
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| Water storage for steam trains. Merredin WA |
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| Water tank for steam engines. Merredin WA |
At least the pumps for the water pipeline had its own water supply! The pumping stations have undergone 3 generations: the first was steam driven, the second electricity and then the latest one is a more advanced electrical power station. All have required new buildings, the old ones being basically abandoned.
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| Pumping Station #4 (1890). Merredin WA |
Toward the end of WWII (1946), they built a 600 bed hospital here to take all the troops coming home in various states of disrepair. All that is left are some concrete slabs and foundations.
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| 1st Australian General Hospital, Merredin WA |
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| 1st Australian General Hospital, Merredin WA |
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| 1st Australian General Hospital, Merredin WA |
On our wanderings around we came across the Indian Pacific train stopped just out of town. We saw two trainspotters hanging about and so we stopped as well. Finally another huge freight train came rumbling by in the opposite direction and only then could the Indian Pacific restart its journey. No wonder it still takes 65 hours coast to coast. Last time we saw this train was at a Broken Hill railway crossing in 2002. Same carriages apparently, the engines change about a bit, but basically the same train set that has been running since 1970.
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| Indian Pacific train. Merredin WA |
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| Indian Pacific train. Merredin WA |
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