Hello dear blogging friends. I hope you and yours are doing well. I thought before the year finishes I better finish off our Wildflower-Midwest-Goldfields Trundle. But I see now there is going to be two posts to finish this off. If you didn't see the last post you can revisit here - Part 5 - Leonora, and Gwalia, Western Australia
We are going to be free camping for the next few nights. Here is the map again - we have just left Leonora and are heading south through the goldfields area towards Niagra Dam and then passing through Kalgoorlie to Karalee Rock on the Great Eastern Highway before turning north to Beringbooding and Elachbutting Rock before returning home via Bruce Rock.
Niagara Dam is located about 83 kilometres south of our last stop, Leonora, and 191 kms north of Kalgoorlie via the Kookynie Road. It is a great place to stop for a picnic, or to free camp overnight or for a few days. We discovered this little oasis years ago and have camped here several times. There are plenty of places to set up camp and we have found it to be a quiet camp. As we didn't have a long way to go from Leonora, we had a lazy get up and arrived at Niagra before lunch-time.
The 30,000,000 gallon Dam was built in 1897 with
cement hauled on 400 camels from Coolgardie by the Afghan cameleer Abdul Waid.
The Dam was to provide water for the now abandoned goldmining town of Niagara,
the surrounding district, and for the steam locomotives using the railway
linking Kalgoorlie, Menzies and the northern goldfields.
Underground water was found at Kookynie soon after Niagara
Dam was completed, and the Dam proved unreliable due to intermittent rainfall. Named after a nearby waterfall which proved to
only flow after heavy rain, Niagara was a little different to its gigantic
namesake.
There are two walk trails – the Round the Dam Trail (1150 metres) and the Breakaway Trail (1600 metres). The walks are relatively easy and are well marked with steel marker posts approximately every 70 metres letting you explore and learn about the landscape through the interpretive panels. The path takes you across the dam wall - no jumping or diving.
These rocky outcrops are called breakaways - Breakaways are a notable feature of inland Western Australia. Softer soils have gradually eroded through the repeated action of wind and water. Only those areas with a hard laterite (ironstone/granite) top have resisted this reshaping erosion.
And some birds - we think the one on the left is the Grey-headed honeyeater and on the right is the Cockatiel weiro (often a household pet as it responds well to people).
We only stopped in the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie briefly before heading west to our next stop Karalee Rock - around 372km from Niagra Dam - arriving early afternoon.
Located not far off the Great Eastern Highway 177 km west of Kalgoorlie, we have camped at Karalee Rock several times over the years, and it is one of my favourite free camps. We decided to stay for two nights.
There is plenty of places to set up with lovely shady camp sites suitable for caravans, camper trailers and tents. The only disappointment was that the toilets weren't operating. It is a popular site to camp so I hope they fix them soon.
There are walk trails around and over the rock. And plenty of opportunity to take photos of wildflowers, including orchids in season. Orchids can particularly be found in the rock gardens were water collects on the rock. We enjoyed pointing some of these tiny orchids out to some other visitors to the rock.
Below you can see, clockwise from top left - Thelymitra antennifera - Lemon scented sun orchids (I love their little faces), we think is the blue Cyanicula amplexans – Dainty Blue Orchid, Prasophyllum gracile - Little Laughing Leek (so tiny), and the Caladenia roei - Clown orchids (I love their stripy trousers).
Karalee Rock is one of the stopping points along the Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail which follows the 560 kilometre Perth to Kalgoorlie pipeline, and is one of a number of rain water rock catchments built in the 1890s to service the steam trains on the Eastern Railway from Perth to the Goldfields. The rock's history goes back thousands of years to when Aboriginal people camped here and collected water from the rock’s gnamma holes and soaks.
When the railway between Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie was completed in 1896 a series of rock walls, an aqueduct and 48.3 million litre dam was constructed at Karalee to collect rain water off the two granite rocks and provide water for steam trains en route to Kalgoorlie.
