Due to a big days driving we were up, fed and on the road before 7AM today. A good nights sleep except for when the road train pulled up with probably a blown tyre by the noise he made and he stayed the night and left really early. The temperature dipped to 7.1 degrees this morning.

We drove through to Sandstone and had a look at the old history display in the main centre and then ventured out to the rock feature called London Bridge. They used to drive carts over and under this feature but they do not even recommend walking over it these days due to the erosion of the rock. Just before London Bridge is the remains of an old brewery built into the side of the Breakaways. It was started by an Irishman and they used the hill to keep the grog cool all year around even during the hot days.

Old wool press at Sandstone

Local servo, got old waiting for fuel?

Brewery storage built into the hill

London Bridge

We continued on and stopped at the Peter Denny Lookout about 20Km down the road for a nice view. Another 125Km down the road we came to Leinster another mining town. We noticed a really interesting metal ‘thing’ on the way in. Apparently it was used for boring vertical ventilation shafts. It was a huge piece of engineering.

Boring machine for air shafts?

Next stop was Leonora that had a bigger population than Leinster and we thought we would get lunch here today. Wrong, it did not seem to have anything going for it so we went to the local IGA and had our usual wraps for lunch just on the edge of town at an information area with some seats and displays.

We continued on to Menzies where we turned off to head for Lake Ballard and the unusual ‘Inside Australia’ exhibit on the lake. There is a free camping area there as well so it would be our overnight stop after 540Km of driving today. Antony Gormley was commissioned to do the sculptures as part of a Perth arts festival in the 2004 and chose this remote salt lake. Most of them are local people in Menzies who were digitaly scanned for the project. The actual sculptures are a bit different to a living person but probably bear some resemblance to the original person. The old granny is easy to pick out for instance. There is a small hill on the edge of the lake that gives a good vantage point to all the 51 installations. We wandered around taking photos just before sunset and then the full moon came up to make a spectacular show across the lake.

Part of the view from the hill

Hmmmm

Hmmmm again

Boys

Girls

Kids

Granny cupping the moon!

We had a nice steak and salad tea under the moon and stars with only a few other campers nearby. It is almost like daylight here tonight with the full moon. Tomorrow we will probably head into Kalgoorlie the day before the big cup day so it may be a bit busy.