Day 2 - North of Broadarrow to ‘The Pines’

Sat 15 Aug 2015

On the road by 7.40am after a quick breaky and pack up. One advantage of sleeping in the car is it’s quicker to pack up and hit the road, once you wake up – just throw it in the back. Well, you wouldn’t believe it, about 10 minutes down the road and we saw a nice rest area – Doh!! If only we drove another few kms, but then we may not have seen it at night. It’s always better to stop anywhere rather than drive on tired!

Just after Menzies we turned toward Kookynie – it’s been about 15 yrs since we’ve been to Kookynie so it’ll be good to see if it’s changed. Kookynie’s claim to fame is A Living Ghost Town. Back in its heyday with a population around 2000 the town boasted 11 hotels, a brewery, 2 soft drink manufacturers, 2 blacksmiths and was home to the first public swimming bath in the goldfields. Today, only one hotel still stands, The Grand Hotel, and the population is 10.

More recently the population of Kookynie increased from 10 to 11. Its newest member is Willie the Horse. The story goes he’s an ex pacer who was retired to a nearby station. Willie decided he didn’t like station life so left and ended up in Kookynie where everybody has embraced him.

Before we reached Kookyine we stopped off at Niagra Dam which was built to feed water to Kookynie. Niagra was a fledgling town and when water was found closer to Kookynie to service the railway the dam became redundant. We arrived at Niagra Dam around 9.30am Wow!! What a change, we first came here 20 odd yrs ago and then again about 15 yrs ago. To our surprise, the road is now bitumized, there are toilets, tables and chairs and BBQ’s along with some large camping areas. As the old saying goes “every man and his dog” was there. We had brunch overlooking the dam which had plenty of water in after recent rains.

Brunch over and with the weather warming up we changed into cooler clothes before heading to Kookynie – A Living Ghost Town. In addition to the pub and 11 residents ( including Willie the Horse) there are plenty of new sculptures and wait for it! A traffic roundabout of all things, we hope Willie knows the road rules for roundabouts 🙂

Leaving Kookynie for Laverton we hit our first stretch of gravel road leaving the black top behind us for the moment. After 48kms of gravel we hit bitumen again as we turned right onto the Leonora – Laverton Road and headed to Laverton for diesel and ice. Along the way we had a couple of missed photo opportunities, one a beautiful wedge tail eagle and the other a spread of Marlu Kuru Kuru (Sturt’s Desert Pea, South Australia’s floral emblem). We hadn’t seen Marlu Kuru Kuru in bloom in Western Australia on previous trips. There were other travellers taking photos so we decided not to encroach on their turf, there should be some more down the road.

Laverton had plenty of diesel but no ice. The garage and supermarket were both sold out. Turns out a mining crew passed through earlier and bought the lot, Grrrrr. We took the opportunity to send some texts to family & friends and grab some tourist photos before heading back out of town toward Warburton.

Several kms out from Laverton we turned right and hit gravel again; this gravel will last us for the next 1126 kms to Yulara. We stopped for a photo shoot and deflated our tyres to gravel road pressures (Cooper Tyres – Pressure Guide) . Now our adventure really begins!

This is where we first started to encounter bad corrugations. Astonishingly, people fly along this gravelly, sandy, rocky & corrugated road and some of the worst ones are those towing caravans & camper trailers. Four Weel Drive  spec or not these drivers think they’re invincible on gravel roads. They don’t seem to think or care that they might meet another vehicle, semi trailer or wildlife and therefore need to take avoidance action. Slow down guys it’s not the Finke Desert Race.

Funny how things change, we travelled this road in our Subaru Liberty back in June 1992 and only saw one car from Laverton to Yulara. My! how times have changed.

Where we can we stop around 4-5pm to try and avoid sharing the road at night with our wildlife. Realizing we wouldn’t make Tjukayirla Roadhouse by 5.00pm we started to looked for somewhere to camp. As luck would have it we came across a spot called “The Pines – Rest a While” what a diamond in the rough. Although it had no facilities it was nice and deep, well off the road, plenty of shade and clearings for camps – Perfect! Tomorrow our adventure continues as we head for Tjukayirla and Warburton.

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