Goldfields II

G'day mates,

Well?? Did you found out? Amazing isn't it? When you see the pictures of that vast country, it gives such a special feeling, being in the middle of nowhere and then somewhere in the ground you find this little speck of gold, three in a row.

Outback, red dust, don't try to fight it, a sky full of stars (at night of course), a lady (which I try to be) turns out being half a man, well you have seen me....

Gold digging can be dangerous too. I was swinging around also under trees as the experts say that's the place the nuggets hide, and without looking I sway my arm towards the trunk of the tree and suddenly I felt a pain saw that a branch, which was pointing firmly forwards was sticking into my arm. I pulled back but saw there were several splinters in my arm and it was not bleeding enough to clean the wound. I went to the car to get some first aid from Fred and he had to cut the splinters out of my arm with a Stanley knife. When we thought everything was clean, he nursed the wound with Betadine and just hoped it wouldn't get infected.

I can tell you, at the end of these 7 weeks I had much physical problems, my hands, my knees and back were pretty sore BUT I wouldn't have wanted to miss it!

Don't think we are rich now because I might have about $ 250.00 worth of gold and been digging for about 7 weeks. It's the excitement and I have the patience to keep on going where as a lot of other people quit when they don't find anything for days.


After the 2 weeks in Cue we went to Mount Magnet and stayed there for 10 days which is too much to prospect every day so we also did some sight seeing.

We went f.i. to the Lennonville Cemetery, which actually is nothing anymore except for a nice gate and one left grave...

Here we are at a natural Amphitheatre. It appears to be an ancient waterfall long long time ago;

Fred is waiting patiently till I finish taking pictures....

The Granites;

For at least 20.000 years local Aboriginals considered the Mount Magnet region as a seasonal home. Very ancient finger paintings were made here. The Granites are an escarpment about 15 meters high. 

Mother and Child Grave. The identity of this mother and child is unknown but they died in the "plague" (typhoid) in 1908. People passed away suddenly and were often buried where they died.

During this trip we passed so many gold mines, it's just incredible!
Of course I did some prospecting; This really was a hard time, it was so hot, I had to wear my hat and at the same time there was so much wind I couldn't hear my detector so I had to put the headset on, it simply didn't work ...

We also made some new lovely friends. They were our neighbours and most probably just felt they had to make it up to us as they nearly killed themselves and us because they had a gas leak haha. The leak wasn't to laugh about though.

We went detecting a few times together and had a lovely time...

We left Mount Magnet and headed off to Sandstone....

ready to go

Movie time;

The way to Sandstone was so beautiful and colourful with all the wild flowers.....

with the red soil it gives such a great contrast...

In Sandstone I didn't do any detecting at all, we only stayed for 2 nights and we did the Sandstone Heritage trail; a sign-posted tourist drive along a dusty track that you can do as a loop drive from town or as a one-way detour off the Agnew – Mount Magnet Road......

The Sandstone State Battery was a government-owned and run facility that crushed ore from the gold mines in the Sandstone area. It was in operation from 1904 right through to 1982. The workers live on site in little cottages not far from the battery building.

Old fridge on the veranda....

From the State Battery we continued our way to the London Bridge.....

but before we came there we passed this spot with old mines........

which was very dangerous!!

A few years ago a couple disappeared here near Sandstone and the man was found back in one of these shafts, the woman has never been found. There are hundreds of these shafts so you have to be very careful out there!

London Bridge, a scenic rock formation ;

Here I'm standing on the top but I didn't dare to walk to the other side....

BBQ

Nice picnic spot....

Lets go to the PUB......

Sandstone brewery; don’t expect to find an outback pub serving up craft beers! You will only find a pub with no beer. It’s been a long time since beer was brewed here, this is what’s left of it today:

View from in the cave up......

Looking into the cave......

Cheers!

If you want to see more of Sandstone itself;

http://torn-between-two-lovers.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/exciting-dangerous-must-read-story-gold.html

Till next time.....

The Goldfields, did I find it???

G'day mates,

Here I am with the Goldfields story and because there is so much to tell, I might have to divide it in two or even three stories.
I will start with the most important one as I can imagine you are dying to hear if I found some of that yellow stuff I'm chasing for years now. Well, if you really are that curious you have to watch the movie which come a bit later in this blog.

On the map you can see the tour we made, we didn't do all the marked towns you see but we did a few. We started in Cue and our trip from Perth to Cue went well.

We did three stops before we came to Cue; one of them was Dalwallinue;

Just a lovely little town with a nice caravan park...

Even on the road you are confronted with the Goldfields as the mines have to be provided with all sorts of gear....

These carriers are so big we really had to get off the road....

If you couldn't see that truck well, it's similar to one of these...

If you can't imagine how big they are, these are the tyres and weigh around 5 tonnes each when fully dressed, it takes 45 minutes to change a tyre.

OK, we have arrived in Cue....

You have seen Cue before in my previous blog about the Goldfields 2 years ago so I won't spend much time on the town itself now but if you didn't read it and want to know more of our adventure then (and it really was!), here it is;

http://torn-between-two-lovers.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/exciting-dangerous-must-read-story-gold.html

Back to the present;
The town was already nearly abandoned 2 years ago and now it even is worse.

 Nearly every shop is closed and so you can imagine that we had to store a lot of groceries to survive these weeks as we intent to take about 6 till 8 weeks on the goldfields and there is nothing in between from Geraldton till Kalgoorlie (approx. 1260 k's) except for these little towns!

 All these little towns have one "supermarket" with sky high prices and not much fresh stuff to choose from.

The Supermarket is in this service station

So, settled at the caravan park, enjoying the view and lovely sunset, I'm getting nervous for the days to come, will I finely find it......

Our daily routine is, get up a bit early, have our brekkie, hubby gathers stuff to make lunch and I put on my old clothes as you get really dirty digging in the red dirt. Make sure I've got my detector and an extra charged set of batteries.

But, before we go, I have to get the maps from the mining department because you are not allowed to go just were you want! Most parts, of course where gold was found, are under lease by either the mines, other companies or ordinary people....

This is not the Cue map but it's just to show you how it works. The red parts are town sites (of course it's prohibited to start digging in the middle of a town haha), all the green you are not allowed to prospect and you can see it's most of it. You can go on either the white or the blue parts.

To get there, you have to read the coordinates on the sides of the map, put them into the navigator and of you go....

Above map is just one section so you get more maps from around town and I always tape them together so I can get a better conspectus....

I'm ready to go, YOU TOO??

Find out now;

MOVIE TIME.......

Well?? Did you find out??

Till next episode...

Cheers.

A short update; Crikey, that's life!!

G'day mates,

Despite the fact that we had a real good time in WA, we've spent a whole year there, seen a lot of things, had some great adventures, lived for 8 month in a proper house so we could enjoy the visits of our kids, we enjoyed the company of our dear friends who we miss heaps as well as the doggies, but as you know us, we also are very happy travelling again.

We just spent 7 weeks in the goldfields, of which you will get the story later as that takes a lot of work and of course proper Internet which we don't have at the moment. We are on our way to our next house sitting which is in the Barossa Valley, YES wine region, so we are looking forward to that!

We left WA and the Nullarbor behind and are in SA now. The trip has been OK so far and when you see next pictures, you know why we love travelling so much.

A great ocean view.....

At a free camp on the Nullarbor....

Suddenly I noticed the main thing what life is all about, has been written on our caravan the whole time.....

Good night, sleep tight, see ya next time......