Unfortunately work has intervened in my life and it has taken me a few days to get back to finishing my Easter series of blogs. After our morning of walking around the house of dreams we took the good track, the one we couldn't find the night before, back out to the main road and took it north back up to Burtville. We could see signs of the recent rains all along the way in the form of dried up puddles in the road and deep ruts where vehicles had been bogged.
At Burtville we went to see the old cemetery on a hill distant from the original town site. It was so overgrown with weeds that you could barely see the remaining tombstones. Story has it that there was no one buried in that cemetery who died of natural causes. Mining in those days was a difficult and dangerous business. Around the town site just like outside of Coolgardie are countless holes where a man staked a claim and began digging hoping and dreaming of great wealth and good fortune. Many only found back breaking work and fatal mishaps. Below is a remaining poppet head over a pit near Merolia Station Homestead which is just south east of Burtville.
We crossed the main road and went to explore the long abandoned Station Homestead. I photographed this pressed tin wall on the side verandah.
I loved this verandah. If you look closely you can see man's answer to bush air conditioning. The verandah is covered with a jasmine vine and then stuffed behind it are sheoak needles. You can just make out the black poly pipe that is tacked along the eave above the sheoak needles. The water would drip slowly down the wall of sheoak needles to wet it and when the breeze blew you would get the evaporative air effect. Simply brilliant!
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| Bush Airconditioning |
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| Flowering Jasmine |
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| A large and intimidating haul pack storming down Crescent Gold's Haul Road. |
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| Remnants of a workshop |
After we left Merolia Station, we crossed the Haul Road quickly and safely to get to the public road on the other side which we took east to Bluey Well. Phil and I had surveyed this area a few years ago before the Haul Roads went in so we were feeling a bit lost with the changes. At Bluey Well there is a cross road where two haul roads criss cross and the parallel public road crosses the north south haul road only meters north of the haul road intersection. We held our breaths and looked both ways and crossed over to the old tank at the well. Our companions followed. We had a pow wow about where to pick up the fence line track that would take us out to the Shay Cart Ranges. While we were parked there we witnessed a scary scene of some tourists pulling a caravan driving past on the Haul road just in front of a big Haul Pack. Man, oh man, I wouldn't be driving on there. But really there are no signs to tell those unfamiliar with the area which roads are for public use and which roads are private mining company haul roads. It is crazy.
We found the fenceline track and left the activities of man behind to rejoin nature and the domain of spiders. This photo doesn't do the spider web justice but you can just make out the spider suspended about 8 feet above the track. They had the webs stretching clear across the road. I would love to see them make that jump across with all that spun silk streaming behind them. We had to drive through many of these webs............yuck.................I rolled up my window. Phil left his down and pretended to flick a spider across onto me!!!!
Spider webs across the track
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| A stop to brush the spinifex seed off the radiator grill so the engines wouldn't overheat. |
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| See the seed that has fallen down on the road |
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| Some people came prepared with shade cloth to cover the roo bar |
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| One staked tire on the trip |
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| Seed heads on the spinifex |
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| The offending bit of mulga wood |
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| Fixed with a plug. |
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| I thought the plug looked like those awful smoked sausages we used to buy for a snack when we were kids |
Finally we arrived at the Shay Carts. These are really just two small areas of breakaways which rise above the sand plain of the the Great Victoria Desert. They were named by Frank Hann who was the first explorer in the area. Supposedly he found an abandoned Shay Cart there. No one knows how it got there or who drove it out there. Obviously Frank wasn't really the first explorer to arrive there. We drove the length of the ranges and when we found ourselves again out in the sand we turned back and found this side track into a lovely little valley ringed by breakaway cliffs. Just in time as the sun sets we were ready to set up camp for the night.
We crossed a dry creek bed and camped under this rock outcrop.
Gee it is good to camp under the stars under a cloudless sky and cook dinner over a wood fire. It doesn't get any better than this!
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