Judy & Brian Tour Oz

A lovely relaxing day awaits us. I started with a nice long walk along the beach and around the fishos marina before breakfast. After breakfast we both went and had a massage, Judy in the Brilliant Massage place and myself in the Geraldton Thai massage centre around the corner. After two weeks driving my shoulders were pretty well knotted up but the masseuse was onto it and got me sorted out really well. We have been having a conversation with a Centrelink assessor person from the Adelaide office regarding our pension claims, which was confusing at best, but his last comment was that he had what he needed and would send his findings to the process people to put up on the system. Surprise surprise, we both received a request this morning for more information, all of which we have handed in at least twice to date. Not to worry, you can't buck the system so we had to go find the local library and use their computers to access the web and some of my files and print it all out again....

Fairly short run of 340km today, leaving Mount Magnet and heading west, passed through Mullewa where we stopped for a cuppa, and on into Geraldton. We are camped-up in the Belair van park, which is just south of the town centre and right across the road from a beach, which I think is Point Moore beach. At least that's what the lighthouse is called so I'll go with that. All the beaches here are open to vehicles and this one started to fill up as families came out to play and fishos to fish. They are having a bit of an uphill battle trying to stop the ocean taking back the sand dunes, they may be fenced off to keep us out and let the vegetation re-grow, but nobody told the water it wasn't allowed to cut chunks of the dune away. Lighthouse. Point Moore. Geraldton WA Sand dune, Point Moore. Geraldton WA It being a nice day, sun almost out, decidedly warmer than the last two weeks. We ate lunch at a cafe on the beach in town. Very pleasant. After that we went and pai...

Another long-ish day of more-of-the-same: scrubby, mostly flat with low hills in the distance... no, wait, they are great heaps of tailings from the many mines that must be there out in the bush. All we can see of them are the mounds of dirt, the occasional road train full of ore, and a nice neat blue 'MINE SITE' sign pointing down each one's dirt access road. We are heading for a place called Leinster about 130km away. When we finally get there we miss it altogether as its a few km up the road to Wiluna, whereas we really want to turn west again and head toward Mt Magnet via Sandstone. Sandstone is only another 150km away and we haven't seen anything else, apart from a growing number of dead beasts on the side of the road: kangaroos and cows, each with its attendant eagle on the top and flock of ravens picking away at the edges. We stopped in Sandstone, intending to get fuel, have a rest and do lunch. The fuel was a single bowser with credit card facility - simply do...

Out and on our way just after 8am. No wind today, made for a pleasant enough drive up to Kalgoorlie, where we stopped for fuel and to restock the pantry. It was still a bit early, but we had lunch as well before jumping back on the road and heading toward Menzies. It's all in the timing as they say, and this time we hit the sweet spot, pulling out just in front of the 8 metre wide, wide load crawling along the highway going in our direction. We didn't stop at Menzies, but much to my surprise it's a very clean, very neat, very small, town. I had imagined that everything 'out here' would be rough and ready and dry and dirty, but no, they appear to be neat and tidy. On we went straight to Leonora, which is where we are pulling up for the night. Leonora is small, maybe one street bigger than Menzies, and then another surprise: the one caravan park is clean and green (real grass!) and appears to be almost full. The oddest thing though is that the office is only open fr...

Today was a rest day, and while Norseman may not be everyone'c choice, it has it's own intrinsic charm and is certainly relaxing. Yesterday we popped into the info place and the nice man launched into his spiel about all the wonderful things to do in and around his town, one of which was the self-drive Coach Road tour. It's part of the old coach road from Norseman to the now non-existant Dundas, which sprang up with the start of the Dundas Goldfields, 'Second in importance in WA to Kalgoorlie-Boulder'. The amounts of gold they extracted from these old mines is positively eye-watering in todays $1500 plus per ounce terms. We're talking about 100,000 ounces from this one goldfield. Even at the then rate of ￡3 an ounce it's more than the economy of some countries. It would be fascinating to track where that wealth ended up as it dissipated around Australia and the world. Certainly not much of it stayed here judging by the lack of grand civic buildings and commu...