Good Morning All West to East, Oz style excerpts from Journey Journal.... Day 3 continues We leave Southern Cross after filling up with petrol and as we travel I think of Kolynobbing, a small range of hills further to the North, this range when I first saw it was a lovely rich red, iron ore group of hills, now it is flattened level with the ground. Huge open cuts abound between Southern Cross and Kalgoolie, its 227km to Coolgardie with only a roadside service at Yellowdine, still 156 km to go.The ground is very red as are the trunks of the trees, the olive green and grey/green of the foliage, rich bright green of fir type trees and the pale green of QuongDong bushes, OuongDongs Jam is delicious. The road seems never ending and there is a sign saying we are entering The Great Western Woodlands, Big D suggests it should have been called The Great Western Scrublands. There are a few rocky outcrops around and the old peppercorn trees are displaying old home sites, the miners used to walk this road, carrying water and mining tools to reach the Goldfields, a definite example of the pioneering spirit. The most famous of Miners was Paddy Hannan who pushed his wheelbarrow to Kalgoolie and discovered The Welcome Stranger gold nugget, made and lost a fortune, google him, he is an interesting man. Men from around Australia and the world flooded to these gold fields, a dry and desolate area, especially after the goldfield of Ballarat and Bendigo and California. I wonder what happened to many of these starry eyed chappies who left loved ones to go off into the bush to make their fortunes. Saw exhausted pipes, wheels, tires from retreads and other junk on the edge of the road, its a bit like corrugated iron sheeting, the road that is... As we approach Coolgardie we say goodby to the pipeline that has been our companion since we left Mundaring. The pipeline is a magnificent engineering feat built by C.Y.OConnor who bought water to the goldfields and all the towns and farms on the way, still in operation over a hundred years later. We arrived at Coolgardie at 0945 am.....to be continued
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 19:19:12 +0000