April 10 (Day 338) - Mount Magnet to Meekatharra

240km

As our morning is becoming, it started with checking the cyclone warning to make sure we were still heading in the right direction (or more to the point, that Cyclone Seroja hadn't decided to head in OUR direction!). All looks good so far.

While we are inland a fair way, you can see from the photo below the sky is still heavy with cloud. We haven't had a sunny day for a couple of days now and we've had spots of rain too although not a lot of it.

 

Grey skies. Thanks Seroja!

Morning coffee

We packed up the site fairly promptly, but once again were cursed by flies! Oh they were horrible - just like before, they get in your eyes, nose, mouth, ears, between your fingers! Yuk!

Lord of the flies

Look at them!

Yuk!

Anyway we left the flies behind soon enough (although a number tried to hitch a ride before getting either evacuated or squashed!).

Bek backed the van out and got it up to the road

Bek backing out the caravan

Bek driving the van out to the highway while us boys rode on the back

Once I took over the car we drove into Mount Magnet.

Mount Magnet

Arriving at Mount Magnet

Mount Magnet reminded us of Kalgoorlie, and a bit of Coober Pedy. It looks like it exists to service the various mining operations nearby. It's dry and dusty, lots of red dirt, not really pretty although there are some OK buildings in town, but lots of fairly run-down houses too.

Mount Magnet main street

One of the houses on the main street of Mount Magnet

The Mount Magnet fuel station

We started at the service station to get some supplies. Here, our Pajero found a friend in Mount Magnet - although I think the weight distribution on ours is a bit better!

Pajero and friend!

Road train at Mount Magnet

 While we were here we needed to get a new sink mixer tap for the caravan. It had been leaking for a while at a rarely used angle but it was getting worse so we figured we needed to get it replaced sooner rather than later. So after the service station we went to Murchison Hardware in Mount Magnet where we picked up a new sink mixer tap and spent the best part of an hour removing the old one and installing the new one. We can now swivel the tap anywhere and it doesn't leak! Luxury! :D The staff there were very friendly. I'm not sure if $75 for a Paramount swivel sink mixer tap is good or not but we thought it was OK for out this far. And we always like supporting country businesses when we can, it helps keep money in the regions.

The boys having a bit of fun out the front of Murchison Hardware, Mount Magnet

The fuel in Mount Magnet was a bit pricey so I poured a jerry can into the Pajero. We left Mount Magnet and carried on up the highway towards our next stop in the town of Cue.

 

There are plenty of long road trains along this road, either taking goods to or from the mines, or earlier on taking wheat along the previous highway we were on. Being overtaken by a three-trailer road train is fairly normal. Four trailers is less common but still not extraordinary. So different to around town where a single trailer is a long truck!

A triple

Another triple

A quad!

Cue

Welcome to Cue

We stopped to refuel the tank and refill the jerry can. We also stopped for lunch here. Cue is similar to Mount Magnet in its general mine service feel, but probably a bit bigger and a bit nicer. 

 

Cue main street

An old hotel in Cue

We drove around to a park and stopped for lunch.

There was a nice water park there too which Jude had fun with!

One interesting thing about Cue was that there were quite a lot of butterflies! This was unusual considering the wider area was fairly dry and dusty although parts of the town itself weren't too bad.

We drove on north from Cue, with much the same countryside. Red dirt and evidence of mining operations either side of the highway, but apart from that the land is reasonably flat, very dry and reasonably featureless. This is not a drive you would do for the sake of the drive itself - it is very much a route to a destination rather than the destination itself. If it hadn't been for the cyclone we would have taken the North West Coastal Highway up to Carnarvon. It's not super interesting but it's better than this road which really doesn't have a lot to distinguish itself.

The open road between Cue and Meekatharra. Not a lot going on here.

There seems to be a good amount of gold mining out this way, and we passed a number of gold mines between Cue and Meekatharra.

A gold mine pit just coming into Meekatharra

Meekatharra

Meekatharra

Meekatharra was a town we'd heard of, but seems to really just be another mining service town like Mount Magnet and Cue - red, dusty and reasonably run down. I think Cue was probably the pick of the three.

We drove through town and about 20km north we stopped at a caravan park connected to the Aboriginal school of Karalundi. We got an unpowered site for the night for $25, which was perfect as Mim needed to do some washing ($4 per wash) and the dryer was free!

Well the cyclone is certainly still coming! We're currently still in its path although as we go north we're getting further and further out of its projected path. We had sprinkling rain throughout the day; the wind really picked up this evening and the skies have been overcast as you can see from all the photos today, and that was across a 240km range. So you get the idea of how large an effect the cyclone's having on the region. We hope and pray for those who can't just pull their house out of harm's way!

-- Greg