Fantastic full moon night at Lake Ballard. We poked around the last few places at Lake Ballard before driving back out the the main highway, 54Km of good gravel road to the town of Menzies. Menzies is typical of towns that have declined after the gold rush of years ago and it had a display of old equipment and a few historical places to offer as well as a major looking rail interchange.

Patterns in the lake bed

Early morning, Lake Ballard

Old truck at Menzies

Old tyre technology, small rope strands a far cry from todays tyres.

More machinery

The drive from Menzies to Kalgoorlie was easy with a strong tail wind giving us a fuel economy of 9L/100Km for this leg. The road was more bumpy than the gravel road from Lake Ballard and you had many sections with strange vibrations in the road. There were so many mines along this stretch it was probably from all the huge trucks and machinery.

We arrived at Kalgoorlie just when we said we wouldn’t, a large Jimmy Barns concert last night and the Kalgoorlie cup tomorrow meant things were booked up and busy. The caravan park we had picked out could only squeeze us in a little space between two other sites. We found a nice caravan park about 2Km walk from town so we don’t need the vehicle really and can leave it setup. We booked a KCGM Super Pit tour for tomorrow for our final tick on our must do list we had before we left. We may do the brothel tour as well but they don’t have tasting at the end of the tour I have been informed.

We walked up town and spent part of the afternoon wandering around the town centre and treated ourselves to lunch. We found a fantastic little wood shop called Chunky Timber Co. The big guy who ran it was from Ulverstone originally. He had some really interesting stuff that was very different from most wood shops. No turned bowls here, everything was raw and interesting looking with odd shapes and imperfections. He complained about how hard the wood around here was and how hard it was to work it and keep tools sharp. He was an interesting guy to talk to. He owned a fish and chip shop in town as well and he looked like he may partake in a bit as well. He must have had some deafness because he yelled all the time.

We saw more interesting culture here that we haven’t seen for a while! Emu Export country again. There is a TV in the camp kitchen and I know the campers either side of us want to watch the game so GO HAWKS!!!!!!!

PS: This will be the first TV we have watched in almost 10 weeks and we have not missed it one bit.