WA Goldfields 4-12 July 2022
On my previous WA goldfields trip in 2014, having driven 166k from Mount Magnet to Sandstone where I expected to spend the night, I found all the accommodation reserved for contestants in a golfing tournament, the last place I would have expected to possess a golf course.
Then, when trying to book a room at the nearest town, Leinster, 150k further east, I discovered that the only phone service available in the WA outback is Telstra, and was obliged to borrow a golfer’s phone. I drove on into the dusk in my little hired Kia, with no means of communication, on a dirt road teeming with suicidal wallabies.
This time, I’ve exchanged my Amaysim for a Telstra one, and hired a Subaru Forrester with high clearance and good visual range.
In light rain I leave Perth Airport and head up the Great Northern Highway. At 3,195 kilometres, the GNH is the longest and most remote paved highway in the world. I cruise between gently rolling sheep and cattle pastures, young wheat and canola crops, forest plantations, and occasional flooded clay pans stitched across with old post and wire fences.
I’m travelling through the Yilgarn Craton that began to rise out of the sea about 2700 million years ago, forming part of the original landmass of Australia. It contains many of the locations which began to be ‘rushed’ by gold prospectors from the 1880’s, and it’s research into the lives of some of those prospectors that has brought me here again.
From Dalwallinu, where I buy supplies for the next few days, to Paynes Find, where I’ve booked a cabin for the night, there are 169ks of straight road with little traffic, making it easy and safe to pass road trains travelling under the 110kph speed limit. The landscape changes, from gentle slopes covered in grain crops and pastures, to flat reddish plains scattered with lumpy dun-green mulga and pink-white grasses, rough red rock prominences in the distance. It’s too early for wildflowers this far south.
Paynes Find comprises a roadhouse, tavern, caravan park and layby for road trains. Fibro cabins nestle among mullock heaps, the result of decades of ore-crushing through an old battery located a kilometre up a red-dust and gravel road. The Paynes Find website advertises a museum and the only working battery remaining in WA, and to see the battery in operation is my main reason for overnighting here.
But on arrival I discover that the battery no longer operates because parts to repair it are unavailable. I’m disappointed, but know from my previous visit that there’s an excellent gold mining museum at Mount Magnet, where I will be tomorrow.
Dinner in the tavern consists of chops, chips and a ‘salad’, comprising cold potato and mayonnaise on a lettuce leaf. Other diners include a couple of mine drillers, who keep up a loud and profane conversation about the exploits of a mate who clearly should be charged with rape.
6th. In the morning, back on the GNH, I expect to reach Mount Magnet, 140k away, by lunchtime and to spend the afternoon in the mining museum. But after about 70k the Forrester lurches and starts to wobble. Pulling onto the red gravel verge, I discover that the rear left tyre has blown out. I phone NRMA, who put me on hold while they phone their WA counterpart RAC, who put me on hold while they phone the hire company. RAC assures me that because my location is dangerous, they will give me top priority. Little do they or I know that an even higher priority has arisen, a house fire in Mount Magnet, where all the roadside assistance mechanics are also volunteer firefighters.
It’s a pleasant breezy morning. The spot where my vehicle and I have come to rest is almost indistinguishable to my untrained eye from anywhere else on the highway, but over the next five hours I become acquainted with the long straight decline behind me, the long straight incline ahead, the red verge, the flat red-brown earth on either side of the road scattered with grasses, thin mulga forest and sage-coloured flannel bush blooming with with yellow-stamened blue flowers. The silence is broken only by the sound of road trains approaching from either direction, first like a distant wind, becoming a low roar as the leviathan comes into view, increasing till it thunders past, agitating all the vegetation. As the morning wears on, the breeze drops, creating an opportunity for swarms of little flies to colonise my person. In the five hours I’m stranded there, only three vehicles stop, one containing a couple of power installation contractors, one with an indigenous family who offer me their spare muffins, while the third, at last, is the mechanic from Mount Magnet, who replaces the blown-out tyre with the spare.
I arrive in Mount Magnet around 3.30 to find that the only Mechanical Services in town don’t stock tyres for Subaru Forresters. The manager explains that in these parts, if it isn’t a Holden, a Ford or a Toyota, it’s weird. He tries phoning an auto shop in Meekatharra 196ks further up the GNH, but they aren’t answering the phone. Anyway, he assures me, they probably won’t have a custom tyre for a Subaru Forrester, either. The only solution is to leave the spare on the vehicle and sell me a similar tyre as a backup spare.
It’s now time to check into the Outback Gold Motel, near which is a dry red clay patch covered in everlasting daisies, glowing white in the sunset. The motel manager and her three-year-old daughter are still very excited by the house fire earlier in the day. So are the staff and patrons of the Commercial Hotel where I have dinner.
7th. In the morning, I take the Subaru back to the workshop and leave it there to have the spare tyre refitted while I visit the Mining Museum.
One of the reasons for this, my second visit to the WA goldfields, is to learn more about the lifestyles of prospectors in the first half of the 20th century, as background for the novel I’m writing. Part of the narrative is based loosely on the lives of my grandfather, three of his five brothers, and two of his four sisters, who, in the early years of the 20th century, migrated from their birthplace at Tumbarumba, NSW, to the Western Australian goldfields. Only my grandfather returned permanently to NSW.
Kevin Brand, of the Mount Magnet Historical Society, has spent a lifetime prospecting in the area. At the Mining Museum, he walks and talks me through the operation of the ten-stamp battery, which is housed in a huge galvanised iron shed.
Ore is loaded into tubs which feed into an anvil over which hammers are lifted and released by cams attached to a rotating wheel. Once the ore is crushed into fine particles, it is washed over trays covered with mercury. The fine gold that has been released through the crushing process amalgamates with the mercury, while the ore wash is diverted into a mullock heap, to be later stamped again and again to extract any remaining gold. The amalgam of gold and mercury is scraped off the trays and heated in a retort to separate out the gold.
It was in a battery like the one at Mount Magnet that one of my grandfather’s brothers, Eustace, crushed 1000oz of gold from 30 tons of ore. Apart from service in both World Wars, Eustace prospected for gold and worked on pastoral leases in WA from about 1906 till his lonely death at a remote outstation in 1949. When his body was found, it was taken to Cue, 200 miles away, where the Coroner found that he died by ‘arsenic poisoning, self-administered’. I tell Kevin that it has always been a mystery to me whether Eustace’s death was an accident or deliberate. Kevin comments that many old prospectors who made and lost fortunes were driven, by their war service experiences, and the loneliness of their lives, to commit suicide, but also that arsenic was used routinely as sheep and cattle dip, and in areas where arsenic has been used, soil, underground water and streams may contain potentially fatal concentrations to man and beast. So the mystery remains.
I spend half an hour exploring the outdoor part of the Museum with its fascinating array of historic gold mining equipment, such as dry-blowers, old Ford trucks, dolly pots, compressors. The exhibits help to illuminate what I’ve learned about the arduous lives of prospectors in this harsh country.
At the suggestion of Cecilia, the manager of the Visitor Centre, I go to the Mining Department office to ask for information about gold mining leases held by my grandfather and his brothers. At the Mines Office, staff members Darcy and Fiona spend a lot of time locating and printing large and small scale maps of Jillawarra, about 70k north-west of Meekatharra, where the long abandoned mines bearing the Cashman name are located.
I retrieve the car from the auto shop and drive on to Cue, stopping once by the roadside to clamber up a small mullock hill to take a photo of the southern edge of the great salt marsh, Lake Austin. Lake Austin is named after the leader of a gruelling, and for one member, fatal, exploring expedition which set out from Perth in July 1854 to discover new pastoral country. It failed to do so on that occasion, but Robert Austin found clear evidence of rich auriferous country on the southern fringe of what was later called the Murchison Goldfield. Governor Fitzgerald ordered him to keep this information under his hat, and it wasn’t until the 1890’s that prospectors began to ‘rush’ the Western Australian Goldfields.
From Lake Austin, the GNH ascends gradually to the township of Cue, named after one of the first prospectors to find gold in this region in the 1890’s. Although Cue is only 10k from Nallan Station, my destination for the night, I stop to revisit the Queen of the Murchison Hotel, where I stayed in 2014.
At that time the Queen of the Murchison was very run-down, dusty and grimy, and carpeted with mouse-droppings. Since then it has changed hands and is now transformed, clean and newly-painted, and some beautiful old features, such as the magnificent wooden staircase, have been renovated. When I tell Joyce, the owner, that I’m on my way to Nallan Station, she asks me to deliver several containers of disinfectant that have arrived for the property.
I am welcomed at Nallan Station by Karl and Marlene, who are managing the Station Stay business for the owners, Cath and Dave, and are grateful to have the disinfectant delivered, because it will save them a trip into Cue.
I’m booked into the Woolclasser’s Room in the shearers’ quarters for the next three nights. The shearers’ quarters comprises the Woolclasser’s, Cook’s, Overseer’s, and Roustabout’s Rooms in a long corrugated iron building, as well as a kitchen and dining annexe with a separate entry.
The quarters take up one side of a grassed area, on the other side of which is a covered barbecue and alfresco dining area. A third side is occupied by Karl and Marlene’s trailer and an amenities block, consisting of laundry, toilets and showers. Behind the trailer is a row of dongas, and opposite is a driveway and parking bays fenced off from a small wooded reserve inhabited by several bird species including a bower bird. Beyond the reserve are the main house and another cottage, surrounded by fenced garden and green lawn, on which a sprinkler plays.
There are open areas around the complex for caravans, and beyond are yards and pens for the ‘home’ sheep, pigs and goats. The wide sky and billowing clouds above are streaked red with the sunset, and below, followed by a troupe of kids from the caravans, Karl is driving a little farm vehicle around the pens and yards with feed for the ‘home’ animals.
After dinner, some of the adult guests, mostly couples in their thirties and forties, sit yarning around an open fire in the al fresco area, while the temperature of the night air plummets. They’ve come from all directions, the Pilbara, Kalgarrie National Park, Norseman, Newman. A Victorian couple, farmers, are on their way north to help a relative mustering. Someone sets up a telescope, trained on the moon, the craters so clear you feel you could touch them.
8th. I finish my shower, fortunately, before the bore water pump breaks down. Karl and a farm hand soon have it working again, and after most of the other guests have departed I make use of the washing machine before setting out for Meekatharra, an hour’s drive north.
I’m hoping, as on my last trip, to augment my sketchy knowledge of the haunts of my grandfather and his brothers in this vicinity, but am disappointed again, because both the shire office and museum are closed due to Covid-caused staff shortages. The woman running the museum shop, however, is very helpful and directs me to a number of relevant books and useful maps. There is also a large and very detailed road atlas of Western Australia, which gives me new ideas about the possible routes of the Cashmans from Coolgardie (where I know my grandfather was in 1904) to the northwest goldfields. I’d always imagined that they came to this area from the west coast, but can see from the atlas and from my reading, that they more probably took an inland route from Coolgardie, travelling between mining settlements.
Opposite the museum building is a busy mobile cafe where I buy a sandwich for lunch. Afterwards I walk the 3 kilometre heritage trail along the dry creek bed, on the way passing a small group of Indigenous people having a quiet singalong beside the creek. Many of the buildings listed on the heritage trail brochure no longer exist, or have lost their former function as the town and its services have dwindled.
Before leaving the area, I drive to The Granites, once a popular picnic spot for inhabitants of Meekatharra. It was renamed Peace Gorge after 1919 when Meekatharra’s many servicemen came home from World War 1 and the Road Board organised a gala picnic and sports day there.
On the way back through the town, I follow a sign to the lookout and take a road winding up a steep hill, actually a gigantic mullock heap overlooking the gigantic hole in the ground it came out of, and the town. Beyond the town, in every direction, spreads the vast mulga forest, with distant rock outcrops, hills and breakaways. The contrast between the townscape and the minescape recalls the loneliness and desolation many explorers and prospectors experienced, as well as how the countryside has been changed by mining and pastoral practices.
On my return to Nallan around 5pm I find the place teeming with travellers, mostly families who’ve arrived in caravans. The kids, after a long day strapped in the back seat, are very excited to be running along behind Karl’s vehicle as he does the rounds feeding the animals.
One of the guests, Iain, is travelling around Australia ticking off his bucket list all the heritage-listed sites in Australia. Today he has been to an ancient ochre mine of the Wajarri people of this region, and also to Walga Rock, where there is a cave containing aboriginal paintings. He plans to drive to Meekatharra tomorrow via a breakaway about 60k to the east of the homestead. As I also want to visit the breakaway, but am nervous about taking my vehicle so far off the highway, we agree to go in convoy.
9th. Iain and I set off after breakfast on the broad, straight red clay road connecting the GNH to the Sandstone-Meekatharra road, he leading and I keeping a good distance behind to avoid the dust. I’m assisted in this for most of the way by a cooperative northerly cross-breeze. On either side of the road is endless grey-green mulga, with some colours of early wildflowers, and patches of green groundcover on the red earth, indicating a soak, but no visible wildlife or livestock taking advantage of it. After about an hour Iain spots the sign we have been told to look out for, the detached blade of a windmill pointing to a track off the road. Here I park my vehicle and climb into the Range Rover, which is equipped with satellite communications, devices that record routes and distances travelled, and many other smart features.
We follow the track about 6k through 3 gates, at one of which is a well with a solar-driven pump, and an old windmill whirring uselessly away overhead. The track becomes rougher and eventually the breakaway, its granite and quartz in shades of dark and pale honey, comes into view on both sides of us, while the track divides into several smaller ones, or, at times, simply morphs into shallow gullies.
A breakaway is an ancient granite plateau which over millennia has been eroded below by ground water and wind, forming escarpments, rock-falls and interconnecting caves. Because the granite of these outcrops is very erosion-resistant, the erosion that does occur on them does so mainly when they are buried. Humic acid in the soil can eat at their sides and cause the undercut formations that only become visible when the soil level surrounding the rock has been lowered. The breakaway on Nallan Station is known to be a particularly striking example.
We tack cross-country to the outcrop on our left and park near a cave, which is lit by an opening in the plateau above. We climb up through this opening and walk around on the plateau, where red and white Eremophilas are already in bloom, and bright green Mulla Mulla, not yet in flower, stands out against the ochre rock. We are careful not to step into a few gnamma holes containing water from the recent rain.
Returning to the Range Rover, we bump along cross-country to the other outcrop, where there is a lot more rock-fall and fewer caves. When we get back in the vehicle to return to the main track, Iain is informed by one of the smart instruments that the left-hand front tyre is flat. The cause is a mulga twig, which is embedded in the side of the tyre as if it has been fired by a crack archer. Methodically and efficiently, Iain extracts from the back of the vehicle the components of a table, which he erects to support bedding and various other items of camping equipment which must be removed in order to get at the jack, compressor and one of his spare tyres. He quickly changes the tyre and stows the wounded one in the back of the vehicle, followed by all the other equipment, in reverse order.
On our way back to the road,we spot a small mob of Black Angus heifers and calves in the post-and-wire enclosure surrounding the well, but no sign of the human being who must have let them in. Reaching the road, where my vehicle is parked, Iain and I part ways, he turning east towards the Sandstone-Meekatharra road, and I west, back to the homestead. On my return trip, I see a couple more small mobs of cattle near some green road verges. Now that I’m not concentrating on following another vehicle, I also notice sweeps of wildflowers, different varieties of eremophilas and native daisies in the open woodland beside the road.
This evening, when Dave, the owner, comes over to the alfresco dining area, he tells me that it was he who let the cattle into the yard by the well, and that the cattle’s only diet, across the nearly 99,000 hectares of Nallan Station, is mulga, which he says doesn’t provide them much nutrition. Once a year, he loads cattle onto a truck and drives them, via Norseman, across the Nullarbor and on to another family property at Dubbo in NSW, to be fattened up before sale.
10th. Bidding farewell to Nallan, I head south in light rain. At Cue, I turn off onto a good clay road leading west through Mount Austin Station and, after about 40 kilometres, see a group of monolithic rock ranges in the distance. Soon I’m driving past the smooth flank of Walga Rock, which, at about 50 hectares and a circumference of 5 kilometres, is arguably the second largest monolith in Australia after Uluru. It is
approximately 2.6 billion years old. An information board tells me that it was one of the last to emerge from the Yilgarn Craton. In a shallow cave in the rock is an impressive gallery of more than 980 Aboriginal paintings, which include snakes, emus, kangaroo tracks and hands, and a square-rigged sailing ship, though the coast is more than 300 kilometres west of here.
On the way back to Cue from Walga Rock, I follow an impulse to visit the Big Bell ghost town, a relic of goldmining from the 1930’s. While the town no longer exists, there is a huge mine there and as it’s now raining steadily, the trucks plying the clay roads have kneaded them into soft slimy surfaces. I decide that pursuing a ghost town that isn’t of much interest to me isn’t worth risking the dangerous road conditions. I am relieved to get to Cue in one piece and back on the GNH.
I press on to Paynes Find, where I arrive at 3.30pm. Having made such good time, and knowing the limits of entertainment to be had here, I cancel my booking for that night at the Roadhouse and continue to the Wheatfield Motel at Dalwallinu.
11th. Breakfasting on coffee and a croissant at Jenny’s Bakery in downtown Dalwallinu, I contemplate the filthy state of my hired car which is lacquered with thick red-brown mud from yesterday’s excursion. By some stroke of fortune, I get into conversation with the owner of the hardware store up the street, who says he can provide a kid to clean the vehicle for $10, only it will take some time, because the kid’s mother will have to drive him in from Wubin 20k away. It means hanging around in Dalwallinu for longer than I intended, but also will save me the much higher cost of having it cleaned by the hire company.
While Joe, the kid from Wubin, gets to work on the Subaru, I visit the Dalwallinu Discovery Centre, stroll by the old railway station and the Pioneer and Past Residents Wall and the murals depicting World War I and the role of the Light Horse, and go for a walk in the Dalwallinu Woodlands and the quiet, clean streets of the village lined with enormous red river gums filled with birdsong. Joe does a good job, and I give him $20, a lot less than I would have had to pay the hire company.
My destination tonight is Toodyay, which involves 160-odd k of long straight undulating road through hills and vales of green wheat and yellow canola fields. Toodyay is an old mill town and a popular tourist destination, but by the time I get there, most of the day’s tourists have departed. I walk along the pretty River Avon, eat fish and chips at the pub and sleep at Toodyay Manor, an old pub full of attractive wood-and-plaster work, which the owner is gradually renovating.
12th. Having delivered the car to Budget at the airport and been assured there would be no charge for a new tyre, I find my flight has been overbooked and I’ve been placed on standby. When I protest, an officious Qantas attendant takes great pleasure in reciting the terms and conditions which include priority for passengers who would have, she says, paid more for their tickets than I have. I’m shocked by both Qantas’s policy and her attitude, because until now, everyone I’ve met on this trip has been friendly, polite, tolerant, patient, helpful and kind. Eventually I’m allocated a seat by a different attendant, who has persuaded some passengers to take a direct flight to Melbourne, their destination, instead of going via Canberra.