After a cool night at Mullewa we woke to an overcast day and a cool breeze. A few trains went past last night not to far away carrying iron ore from a mine nearby. They truck the ore to Mullewa then rail it to Geraldton for shipping. Seems strange having an iron ore mine all the way out here. There are also some other smaller mines in the area mining other ‘stuff’.

For some reason we dilly dallied around this morning and did not get away till after 9AM. We followed part of the local walk trail to a lookout over Mullewa with a lot of history boards about the place and the area. It was an interesting place even though it was very small and sprung up during the gold rush in the area. John Hawes was an architect who then became a high up Anglican minister and built about 21 different buildings in the area including his own church in Mullewa. He worked as a missionary in the slums of London, rebuilt churches after a cyclone in the Bahamas, later converted to Catholicism and was ordained in Rome. He left Australia in 1939 and lived his last 17 17 years as a hermit in the Bahamas.

Old water tank

Not bad for a owner builder

Another view

To keep the spirits away?

We drove 118Km to Yalgoo and stopped at a historic water tower used for the trains. There were a couple in Mullewa as well. We turned off and took a 10Km detour to the Joker’s Tunnel. The name is enough to generate interest. The tunnel was dug through a hill that had one of the earliest trig points in WA (D6) and appeared on maps in the 1870’s. The name comes from the name of the prospectors claim. All the claims in the area followed a similar naming convention after euchre card game with claims like Left-bower, right-bower, full-hand etc. Somebody must have started it and it caught on.

Best bit of Yalgoo

This claim yielded 3Kg of gold out of the first 50Kg of rock. That was it though as they got about the same out of the next 550Kg. The tunnel goes through the hill so off I went. I had read about small bats and strange crickets but all I found about half way through was a set of horns moving a short distance away in the dark. A goat was in the tunnel with me and he looked mean and had nasty looking horns so I did a hasty retreat with Sharon keeping an eye behind me as I exited. There are hundreds of feral goats everywhere along the roads. I did see the crickets though, hundreds of them with large antenna.

Goat house?

Crikey – crickets!

After all that excitement we drove another 133km to the Granites reserve about 10Km north of Mount Magnet for a spot of lunch. The Granites reserve was a significant place for aboriginal people with many caves, artifacts and paintings. There is a vague map with some red triangles on it so off we went in search of something interesting. Plenty of caves as they are easy to find but the paintings and etchings where a lot trickier. We found some of the paintings but it was a needle in a haystack kind of stuff. I don’t think they wanted you to find them but the area is getting trampled by everybody looking for them so which is worse? We gave up in the end after a LOT of looking around happy we did find something.

Cave and overhangs

Hand stencil

How you find them

Time was marching on as it was already 3PM when we left the Granites. We were unsure how much further to drive but in the end we got down the road to a roadside stop 77Km west of Sandstone. Tomorrow could be a big driving day to get to Lake Ballard but we have a couple of other options we can do. There is really bad weather coming about Sunday.

Ever since we left the coast we have been harassed by those little flies that are so persistent, up your nose, in your ears, mouth and all over you. They are really bad around this area!