Pages

Monday, 18 November 2024

Midwest, Goldfields, Wildflower Trundle - Part 5 - Leonora, and Gwalia, Western Australia

 Hi all, I hope you and yours are doing well. 

I hope you have been enjoying my little recap of our Midwest, goldfields and wildflowers trundle. Today I bring you Part 5 - Sandstone to Leonora and Gwalia, in the north-eastern Western Australian goldfields region. If you missed my last post you can see it here - Midwest, goldfields, wildflower trundle - Part 4

From Sandstone we travelled east via the Agnew-Sandstone Rd and then south on the Goldfields Highway. Distance from Sandstone to Leonora is around 278 kilometres. 

We made a quick stop at the Peter Denny lookout where there is a free camp with views over the breakaways. The Rest Area and lookout commemorate Peter John Denny, who was President of the Sandstone Shire Council from 1995 to 1997. Peter Denny lobbied hard for the road to be sealed from Mount Magnet to Leinster.

The lookout carpark is right next to the highway but there are plenty of places to set up camp. There are picnic tables and bins but no toilet. There are also plenty of flies! Bring a fly-net! 


Here are a few of the wildflowers we saw along the way - Below you can see one of the yellow grevillea's or it could be a hakea - sometimes difficult to tell the difference. The purple one next to and immediately below is a native hibiscus - very beautiful. And there were lots of the purple firebush flowering along the road. 



At Leinster we turned south onto the Goldfields Highway. Leinster is basically a mining town built to house mine workers in the area. We found a truck bay to pull over so we could stop for morning tea, arriving at Leonora around 1pm and booked into the caravan park for the next 2 nights. 

We hadn't stopped in Leonora before but we found the caravan park to be neat and quiet and we did a bit of washing, and went into town to buy some groceries - we were surprised at higher prices than we are used to, but in reality this is an isolated town. We also visited the Visitor Centre to pick up some tourist information. 

Leonora is the service centre for the mining, exploration and pastoral industry.

Indigenous people lived here for thousands of years before explorer John Forrest and party, in search of the lost Leichardt Expedition in 1869, made camp near a hill and named it Mount Leonora. Twenty five years on, prospectors moved through the area and by 1896 mining claims were pegged and gold discovered, leading to the establishment of the twin towns of Leonora and Gwalia, along with the smaller town of Malcolm. A railway link from Kalgoorlie opened in June 1902 and still operates today.

Leonora became the largest centre on the North Eastern Goldfields and by 1908 boasted 7 hotels, general stores, chemists, tailors and bakeries. Mining has continued to the present day with gold, and now nickel, being produced in large quantities. From Leonora-Visitors


We took a drive out to Malcolm Dam which evidently is popular for camping. There are picnic shelters with fire rings and rubbish bins and there were a few people camped out there. It was very windy when we visited, and the area is quite wide open and exposed, however there are plenty of areas to camp. We had our morning tea which the flies tried to carry away. 

We saw what my husband thought were Banded Plovers and stilts - but we couldn't get close enough to photograph. 

12kms from Leonora, Malcolm dam was built in 1902 to supply water for the railway. 


After lunch we went to old living ghost town of Gwalia, 3kms from Leonora. 

Gold was discovered near Mount Leonora by prospectors J Carlson, F White and A Glendinning in 1896. The Sons of Gwalia mine was at one time the second largest gold mine in Western Australia. It was managed during 1898 by Herbert Hoover, who became the thirty-first president of the USA in 1929.


Listed on the WA State Register of Heritage Places, and named after a Welsh investment syndicate, the Gwalia townsite is a unique heritage site which includes 27 partially renovated miners’ cottages. The one-stop Mazza’s general store which sold everything from soap to ammunition and also handled the mail for Gwalia, Major’s Boarding House, Patroni’s Guest House, the Shift Boss’s house, mechanics shop with its collection of number plates, and the lock-up all give you a snap-shot into the life of the miners and their families. 


 
The cottages were simply built from corrugated iron with white washed hessian and pressed tin interior walls, with dirt or wooden floors. Imagine the heat during the summer! Around 1000 people lived here in the 1890s including Italian, Austrian and Yugoslav immigrants. Evidently galah and polenta was a local speciality. 


The mine ran at a loss for some years before closing prematurely on New Year’s Eve 1963 when the headframe was damaged in an accident. The town’s residents virtually left overnight, seeking work in mines to the south, reducing the population from 1,200 to 40 within a few weeks.

27 of the cottages in Gwalia have been partially restored by volunteers through the Adopt-a-Cottage Project 1995-96, with further conservation work commencing in 2013.  



You can also explore the history of Gwalia in the
 fascinating museum precinct

The café in Hoover House is open from 10am to 3pm. Once the grand home of Sons of Gwalia Gold Mine managers, Hoover House is now a luxury Bed and Breakfast and function venue. The house was designed in 1898 by Herbert Hoover, however he had left Gwalia before it was completed. There are three bedrooms with ensuites. 


The mine was reopened in 1983 and visitors can view the pit from the lookout. Over 1,800 metres below the surface, it is the deepest trucking mine in the world. It takes approximately 80 minutes for mine trucks to travel to the surface. Today 550-650 people are employed at the mine, a combination of Leonora residents and fly-in-fly out workers.


Entry to Gwalia is free, but donations are appreciated.

I recommend at least 2-3 hours to explore Gwalia. Longer if you want to read all the fascinating information. 

There is camping at Gwalia adjacent to the mine precinct, but only for fully self-sufficient and self-contained RVs and caravans which have a grey water tank. 

For more information:

Gwalia - Relics of the past - a previous blog post of mine which includes the story of the Gwalia Hotel beer strike. 


Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 
I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!
   

Monday, 11 November 2024

11 November, Remembrance Day

Following the signing of the Armistice to end WW1, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month became Remembrance Day when we remember our fallen - those who fought for our freedom. But with conflicts still raging around the world, will we ever learn from the past?

From its association with poppies flowering on the First World War battlefields of Belgium, France and Gallipoli, the red poppy has become associated with remembering the loss of life and the destruction.

"In soldiers’ folklore, the vivid red of the poppy came from the blood of their fallen comrades which had soaked the ground. The poppy flower grew rapidly and in large numbers across the graves of thousands of soldiers, leading it to become a symbol of sacrifice and loss."


Also on my blog -



Sunday, 10 November 2024

Midwest Goldfields Wildflower Trundle - Part 4 - Yalgoo and Sandstone

 Hi all, I hope you and yours are doing well. Today we continue with Part 4 of our Midwest Goldfields Wildflower trundle. 

After our stay at Wooleen Station, we returned south to Mullewa and then turned east on the Geraldton Mt Magnet Road. I thought at this point I should show you the map again. The next part of our journey is Mullewa to Sandstone - 396km.


There were lots of mining trucks on the road going east. You really need to be careful on the road, especially if wanting to overtake. We reached Yalgoo around 10am


and visited another one of Monsignor Hawes' churches - the Dominican Chapel of St Hyacinth Holy Trinity Church built during 1920-22 for the Dominican Sisters who were brought to Yalgoo to run a school. The chapel was the smallest church designed by Hawes. It was restored by Shire of Yalgoo in 1980. Unfortunately you can only view the church from the outside. The chapel is a small and simple structure in Inter-War Romanesque style, with a terracotta roof and masonry and timber framed bell tower, and is all that remains of a larger complex of buildings. The chapel contains examples of Hawes’s handmade arts and crafts influenced artworks.

Local carpenter Hendry Jermy built the convent school. Most of the materials came from the old convent in the near-derelict town of Day Dawn near Cue. The school opened in February 1922 with 23 students and ran till 1950. Two stone chimneys which you can see in the foreground are all that remain of the school which was dismantled and used to construct a shearing shed on a nearby property. 


After having lunch and fuelling up in Mt Magnet, we continued east towards Sandstone. Along the way we stopped to take photos of the magnificent Royal Mulla Mulla - ptilotus rotundifolius which grows from 60cm to 2 metres and has huge fluffy flowers.  It occurs naturally in the drier regions of Carnarvon, Gascoyne, Little Sandy Desert, Murchison and the Pilbara in Western Australia.


There were still lots of mining trucks on the road. We arrived in Sandstone late afternoon and booked into the Alice Atkinson caravan park. We have stayed here before - it is very quiet and well presented. We were hoping the hotel would be open for dinner, but sadly it is closed down. The community wanted to buy it but the asking price was too much. However the café located in the old post office and telegraph building is open for breakfast and lunch. 


We had two nights in Sandstone - so we made the next day our exploring day. After pancakes for breakfast and doing the washing and a bit of cleaning in the van we explored the Heritage Drive, which only takes half a day. We had visited the Visitor Centre the day before and picked up maps and information. 

Prior to the arrival of Europeans the area was the home to the Wongi and Yamagee peoples. The first European into the area was John Forrest in 1869. The goldrushes of the 1880s led to the opening up of the Murchison area. In 1894 prospector Ernest Shillington discovered gold about 20km south of the present day Sandstone. The town was officially gazetted in 1906. Between 1906-1912 the town had a population of between 6000-8000, and the town had 4 hotels and 2 banks. The railway line reached town in 1910. The town's decline coincided with the outbreak of WW1 in Europe. Many miners left to serve overseas. Many never returned and others, seeing the declining fortune of mines, drifted away from the area. By 1919 the population was only 200. 

Today it is a small centre for the surrounding pastoral leases and stopover for tourists and gold prospectors.   (info with thanks from the Sandstone Visitor Centre) 

The heritage Trail includes locations around town, as well as a leisurely 18km marked self-guided Heritage Drive. Head out of town on the Paynes Find Road and then turn onto Menzies Road. 

First stop is Contradiction Well, built by the State Government during the gold rush years around 1900. Sunk by hand to 100 metres, and water brought to the surface by windlass and bucket, it produced good drinking water for many years. 


Next stop is the former State Battery which is listed on the State Register of Heritage Places. The battery operated between 1908 and 1982, providing an invaluable service to small mines and prospectors in the area. 


Next stop is London Bridge, a weathered basalt ridge thought to be 350 million years old. The bridge is the result of different rates of erosion in hard and soft rock. The underlying rocks of the Sandstone area are thought to be 2 billion years old. A popular picnic place for locals, the bridge is growing thinner and may eventually collapse, so people are asked not to climb the bridge. 

The wildflower you see in the foreground of the above collage is one of the mulla-mulla varieties - Silver Mulla Mulla Ptilotus obovatus



Overnight camping is not permitted, but they do have ingenious BBQs


Next stop is the Old Brewery, constructed by Irishman JV Kearney in 1907. The main building was on top of a breakaway about 1015 metres high. Water from a well was pumped to an elevated tank and from there gravitated to the coolers and down to the brew vats. The beer then flowed via pipes to the cellar built into a tunnel driven into the face of the breakaway. The underground cellar kept remarkedly cool even in the hottest weather by means of a winze - a hole bored through the ceiling of the rock. The brewery continued until 1910 when beer was brought to Sandstone by rail from Mt Magnet. 


From here the trail takes you back to Agnew Road and back into town. Our next stop was the old cemetery on Meekatharra Road. The first burial was in March 1908, a 10-month old baby named Horace Mahood. The last burial was Samuel Ure who died when the Oraya Mine collapsed on 25 April 1932. However his body was not recovered until the mine reopened in 1995, and he was laid to rest in the cemetery on 1 October 1995. 

There are 141 known grace sites in the cemetery. What we found very interesting was that volunteers from Outback Graves.org have put plaques with names and details onto many of the graves, making it very interesting, especially the cause of death. You can find a lot of very interesting information on their site. You can find out a lot visiting old cemeteries. 



Back in town we had lunch at the Sandstone Old Post Office Cafe (I recommend you stop by for a cuppa or a meal) and looked at their interesting historic displays, viewed a historic photo exhibition in the Town Hall, spoke to the ladies at the local craft group, visited the Heritage Museum in the Visitor Centre, got a key so we could go into the Black Range Chapel to see their stained glass windows depicting flora and fauna, visited the war memorial, looked at the old Police Station lockup, checked out the painted water tanks, and viewed from the street the National Hotel - sadly now closed - we had dinner here last time we were in Sandstone. 



If you are a golfer you can hire golf clubs from the Visitor Centre. You can also visit the Gold and Wool Interpretive Park and learn about mining and pastoral history. 

Sandstone has an Astrodome located in the old school grounds, and viewings are conducted between April and October at 7.30pm subject to the weather. Bookings essential from the Visitor Centre. 

I hope you have enjoyed this little tour of Yalgoo and Sandstone. It is a relaxed and interesting stop over for a day or two. Next time I will be back with the next part of our journey. Thankyou to the Shire of Sandstone for the information in this blog post. 

Sandstone is located 742 km north east of Perth via the Great Northern Highway and then the Geraldton Mt Magnet Road. The Shire of Sandstone covers an area of 32,605 square kilometres with a population of around 116. But it has a huge community spirit. 

More information at: sandstone.wa.gov.au  and Yalgoo 

and Monsignor Hawes churches

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 
I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!