April 9 (Day 337) - Mullewa to Mount Magnet

 

Cyclone Seroja

Last night I was trying to find more information about the cyclone. There were a few sites - Bureau of Meteorology, Emergency WA, Department of Fire and Emergency Services, but they all just seemed to refer to each other. I'd tried a couple of phone numbers but they just had pre-recorded voices reading the same information on the websites.

So after breakfast I rang the Bureau of Meteorology in Perth to get some advice - specifically, whether we would be safe going up to Karijini National Park, or better off down in Perth. To help you out, here's a map showing the current cyclone path map (as at 10 April), and Karijini so you can see what we're trying to do:

As you can see, Karijini is well out of the danger zone (600km east of the coast), however it's in the Pilbara region and all the forecasts listed the Pilbara as an at-risk area. The Bureau wasn't a lot of help but they said to ring the SES in Tom Price (which is the closest branch) who said the area should be quite safe so long as we got up there reasonably soon. 

 

The blue line on the map represents the new route we're planning on taking. The road from Geraldton to Mount Magnet is the road we're on at the moment, and once we get to Mount Magnet we join the Great Northern Highway and head north to Newman (the far eastern bump on the road) before coming back to Karijini.

So we packed up the site and headed towards Mullewa, which was about 25km further along the highway.

While I was doing this the kids got on with some school work.

Mullewa

Welcome to Mullewa!

There've been Christadelphian farms around Mullewa for years, and Mim came up here as a kid to stay on one of them. Because of this we'd considered staying with some people we knew last night, but in the end we were very tired and really just wanted to get to bed, so we regretfully let the opportunity pass.

Mullewa itself, as a town, wasn't much to speak of. It seemed pretty dead. Most of the shops in the main street appeared closed, with only a service station open on the main street and a cafe which wasn't open on Fridays. There was also a garage on the highway which doubled as a fuel station. We got some lunch at one of the service stations. Apparently the town comes to life a bit more in the wildflower season but its sleepy character is normal for this time of year. Such a difference to York (Jan 2021), which was bustling and full of life.

Getting lunch in Mullewa

Wheat stores in Mullewa

A pretty sight

After lunch we continued driving east along Geraldton-Mount Magnet Rd. As Mullewa is part of the Wheatbelt the scenery is more of the same - wheat farms either side of the main road. But as the day went on we discovered we'd left the Wheatbelt as the vegetation on the sides of the road returned to native scrub.

There were the odd picturesque shots like this one of a windmill by the highway.

 

Yalgoo / Joker's Tunnel

The only highlight along what was otherwise a reasonably uninteresting drive was Joker's Tunnel, near the locality of Yalgoo. We'd heard there were some emeralds to be found around this area so went to take a look, but instead of emeralds (of which we found none), we found a tunnel dug through the hillside as part of gold mining explorations in the 1800's.

An information board with over 20 English errors!

So we decided to make an assignment out of it for future visitors!

 

The kids at the entrance to Joker's Tunnel

One of many cute bats in Joker's Tunnel

The tunnel was about 100m long, reasonably clear but in most places I couldn't stand up at full stretch. It was open at both ends, so quite well ventilated. But there were loads of bats in the tunnel!

 

A cluster of baby bats

There were loads of huge crickets at each end of the tunnel

Once we left Joker's Tunnel it was another pretty uneventful drive to our camp spot for the night, off the side of the road about 10km west of Mount Magnet

-- Greg