OLD RELICS

Every farm in W.A. seems to have all their old machinery just rusting away near their sheds or in their paddocks. When something dies, they just park it and there it stays forever and a day. On the property where we are staying, there are dozens of old trucks, cars, harvesters, ploughs and even a grader just rusting away. Here are a few pictures of them.

This truck is a Diamond Rio.

This is an old Sunshine harvester and you can still see the writing and the sun symbol.

Then you have the working relics like this old Chamberlain tractor that they use at harvest time for towing around bins and for the PTOs to auger the seed into the trucks.

There's also an old Mack truck and a couple of old White trucks they use for storage and seed cleaning, etc. The boss says “You’d be lucky to find a truck under 20 years old on their property”. Thank god the tractors and headers are new.

REAL ESTATE BARGAIN !!!!!!!!!

When we were at Horrocks Beach we saw this little yellow beauty right on the beach road for an amazing SLASHED PRICE of $399,000. Any takers???????

THE START OF HARVEST

THE CHASER BIN DRIVER

We have just spent the last few weeks harvesting all the Canola. They had a bumper crop this year. At last count it was approx 1,400 Tonne or more and at 600 bucks a tonne, it has been a fairly good money maker this year. Steve is now a fully fledged “Chaser Driver”. A Chaser Driver (for those who aren’t up with the farm lingo) is a person who drives a tractor towing a large 25 tonne bin and chases around the paddock emptying the Headers. This isn’t as easy as it sounds as you have to keep moving. The Headers don’t stop and when they are using the large comb, which is 36 ft wide, you’re getting to within a couple of feet from them . Once they are full, they call you on the radio and you drive up along side and have to drive at their pace, in the same line they are travelling, without losing any grain. It usually takes about three Header loads to fill the Chaser bin. Once the bin is full, Steve races back to the large paddock bins and empties out and then goes back to fill up again. The bins can sometimes be quite a distance from the headers. The largest paddock of Canola was 1700 acres. It was 5kms long. The paddock bins hold approx 50 tonne. The road trains then come in and fill up from the paddock bins. Steve’s on the night shift so he’s going from 3 or 4 in the arvo til any hour in the morning so far nothing earlier than 2 am.

While they were swathing the Canola, one of the Headers got bogged in a creek between two paddocks . Steve had fun helping the owners recover it mainly because the son, Peter, decided that seen as he was the only person to know where to hook the tow chains, he would have to be the one that got dirty. Steve stayed clean and dry and Pete got covered in mud (you see by the photo’s the chains had to go around the larger wheel axles deep in mud).

They had just started to harvest the Wheat and it started to rain wo we have had six days off to wait for everything to dry out. We had a couple of good lightning shows when the storms came.

The rain came at a good time really as everyone was gettting a bit tired. Steve’s longest shift so far was 18 hours and it’s hard to adjust your body clock to sleeping half the day. We have been out touring while things have been idle. We have been down to Dongara, Port Dennison and Mingenew to the South and up to Yuna, Northampton, Horrocks Beach and Coronation Beach to the North. Port Dennison is the nicest place we have found on the coast so far. It is well planned and designed.

It is a real coastal town that caters to the tourist and enhances its assets whereas most of the other towns are normal everyday working towns with a beach as their backyard, oh for a bit of good old hospitality. W.A. seems to be like Victoria was 30 years ago, no idea how to cater to anyone other than locals. When we went up to Northhampton we decided to have lunch at the pub. Well, that was a frustrating decision. Three pubs later and no meals (in one pub not a soul to be found anywhere behind the bar) - we decided to ask at the tourist info centre where to get something to eat. They pointed us in the direction of a Café up the street, I was nervous as soon as we walked in, no eye contact, no smile and barely a response when Dianne said G’day. Anyway, we ordered a Hamburger with chips and salad on the side. While we were waiting, a fella came back in and returned a pie which was mouldy (Shit you say) now I really was nervous. We got our Burgers if that’s what you could call them. They consisted of a cooked frozen pattie between a roll with 2 rings of onion and sauce. The salad on the side was a piece of lettuce, a slice of tomato and shredded purple cabbage (2 shreds) and a smidge of carrot. Sorry, I forgot to mention the 10 chips – at a BARGAIN price of $9.50. If anyone with a bit of nouse wanted to get into a takeaway or hospitality business, the opportunities are endless in nearly all country WA towns we’ve visited. They just have no idea.

LAVERTON TO MULLEWA

G’day all, well we started our trip from Laverton to Mullewa which was 850 odd kms (all part of the excitement, you know beautiful one day - piss off the next). We took 3 days to wander over, not a lot of different country until we got closer to the coast and the wildflowers started to appear along the roadside (Great sight after rocks, rubble and mulga).



On our first night we camped about 40kms east of Sandstone at Peter Denney Lookout (picture above). The next morning we headed into Sandstone. It’s a little town in the middle of nowhere but they have really set themselves apart from the rest. Not content with becoming a ghost town and falling to pieces, they are actually progressing by tidying up their town, planting trees, painting and straightening everything so it looks alive. It’s a huge task too keep trees alive long enough to take hold but they have poly pipe drippers everywhere and mostly out of site.
They highlight all their tourist points of interest such as London Bridge (above) and an old Brewery (below) built into the side of a hill, disused but it would make a good house out of the sun and keep the beer cool.

In contrast our next stop was Mt Magnet. A physically bigger town but one which has a large active mine in operation and I reckon 70% of the shops were closed and/or falling into disrepair. It’s the signs and symptoms of Fly In Fly Out and also a lack of forsight by the Shire. We heard on the radio after we had left that the Mt Magnet shire had just bought a whole stack of Dongers (small mine accomodation buildings) to set up as short term accomodation in competition with local businesses, well, you reckon the locals were happy.

While in Mt Magnet we bumped into a couple putting up a butcher sign on a butcher shop of all things (Ha Ha). They were also travelling in their bus doing vinyl signs as they went as a way of getting income, not a bad Idea. Funnily enough they were also heading for a job on the harvest but working for CBH (Co-operative Bulk Handling) who do all the grain storage and handling in Western Australia. Anyone can get work anywhere over here, there are vacancy signs everywhere.

We camped the second night approximately 10kms east of Mullewa. Mullewa is a different story again. Once the small town hub of a large grain area it is slowly being taken over by the areas Abbo’s and most is closed and boarded up. You can see the Shire is trying but I think they are fighting a loosing battle, the Abbo’s don’t have any respect for public property let alone their own.

After delaying the enevitable for long enough we headed for our property of choice and employment for the next couple of months (I really just want to go fishing). The people here have been very accomodating, run by a father & son Tim and Peter Freeman with one fulltime fella called Troy. The owners live in Geraldton and travel out daily whereas Troy lives on the property with his wife Leanne and Kelpie Rosey.

They couldn’t have been more accommodating - allowing us space in one of the big sheds to park the bus, supplying us with old carpets from a business in town to put outside over the sand which gives us an outdoor entertaining area and running the power and water across so all we have to do is walk over to the toilets - and they’re going to pay me LOL.

So far all the work has been preparing the headers and other bits and pieces for the work ahead. This I wasn’t expecting but it’s been very useful because now I understand the machinery a little bit better and it’s given me time to look around before the shit hits the fan.

PETE’S 21ST AND THE GRAND FINAL

We flew home on the 11th September as Peter turned 21 on the 14/9/08 and both the Alexandra Seniors and Reserves were playing in the Grand Final on the 13/9/08. Both Peter and Grant (Jaylene’s boyfriend) were playing in the reserves so we were in for a jam packed weekend. We drove down to Kalgoorlie and put the dogs in a Pet Motel and then flew out direct from there to Melbourne. We had a tail wind on the way over so we landed early – it only took 3 hours instead of 3hours 25minutes. The weather was beautiful the day we left so we had really great views flying over W.A. and the Bight.

The trip was well worth it as both teams won their Grand final games. We all went back to Alexandra to celebrate. The boys celebrated fairly hard as you would expect. We spent most of the night and Sunday catching up with friends. It was great to see them all again.

We dragged Peter and Grant away from the celebrations on Sunday afternoon and took them all out for tea at Hog’s Breath Café. We then had lunch with my mum and dad on Monday and flew back to Kalgoorlie Monday night. It was a full on weekend but it was worth every bit. Needless to say we were a bit exhausted when we finally got back to Laverton on Tuesday afternoon.

TIME TO MOVE

Well our time at Laverton has come to an end for now. The weather is getting hotter every week and it really starts to hit you when you’re out detecting. Some of the other prospectors have left and a few more are leaving in the next few weeks. We still didn’t find that elusive big chunk of gold. We haven’t given up – we are just going to have a break. Steve has got a job on a Wheat/Canola Station near Mullewa / Geraldton with the harvest so we are going to head towards the coast which is what we had planned to do for summer anyway.

Our last week in Laverton was fairly memorable as their was a sports week on and indigenous kids and their families came from everywhere. Luckily, the caravan park people had seen it all last year and would not let any book into the caravan park. Thank goodness. The rubbish, noise and drunks from the grown ups were enough to try anyones patience when living in close proximity. It is really sad that the kids have these as examples to look up to. Given the right guidance they might have a chance in life, unfortunately the system doesn’t allow it. There are a few families that will try but it’s those that don’t care and abuse the system that make it harder for the rest.

LAVERTON AREA

Thought we had better give you an update. We are still in Laverton. The weather has been great, usually between 18 to 24 degrees during the day. The caravan park can be nearly empty one day and then all of a sudden everyone comes in from the bush to have showers or do their washing and there are people everywhere. One old prospector does it hard. He just sleeps on a stretcher under the tree (photo below). All sorts come in from Ocka’s, caravans, campers (large and small), tents, swags and even some that just sleep in their cars.

We have been going out nearly everyday either prospecting or exploring. We are heading off the main tracks most of the time and it is amazing what you find out there. The ground is just quartz and iron stone with a few bushes and small trees and you think you are miles from anywhere until you come across an old well with a tank and yards or you can be detecting what you think is virgin ground and you’ll swing across a boot nail some old timer has lost on his way to a new mine. They scare the crap out of you because detecting on virgin ground is very quiet inside your little headphone world, then all of a sudden something screams in your ear, it’s bad enough thinking someone is watching you all the time anyway. How they ever farmed out here is unbelievable. There are plenty of creeks and lakes but not a drop of water anywhere. It is a shame that someone hasn’t kept the wells in good condition but I suppose if they are not farming out there anymore, there is no real use for them.

There are old mining camps everywhere and heaps of abandoned mines. They did it hard in those days. The amount of ground they moved and how they moved it is unbelievable. There are still 4 mines operating in the area today. The bigger one, Granny Smith’s has it’s own air strip and fly in/fly out their workers.

There are plenty of old town sites around as well. At every one you will find a few bottle dumps. Usually most of the bottles are broken but you can get an idea of how old they are. We have found the remnants of some really nice looking old bottles/jars, some are purple and hexaganol and others are old hand blown bottles. We found two bottles in one piece but they weren’t hand made. One had no writing and the other was an old Lea & Perrin Worcestershire sauce. There are also plenty of old tobacco tins, bike tube repair tins, sardine tins and plenty of horse shoes. It is just amazing to think that they actually lived in these remote places with such basic supplies and means of transport and how long they would have taken to get there.

There are a couple of grave sites out in the bush around this area. One is of a 16 year old New Zealand prospector who got struck by lightning in 1896 and at another site call “Red Flag” there are the graves of a couple who died when the roof of their dug out collapsed under heavy rain . There is a story written on the fence of their old dugout, explaining their plight and tells the story of how they can be seen walking hand in hand around the well on a moon-lit night. Strangely enough Billy the bitch (one of our dogs) was staring at the well, barking and going off and as it was a full moon that night approaching we decided to leave them in peace and head home to the bus.

We have found a total of 16 nuggets so far. The weights range from .35 gram to 1.1 grams. Hopefully we will keep finding them ‘cause at this size, we are going to have to find a few to make it worth while. It’s still fun trying. Some of the people we have got to know here have done pretty well for themselves, one couple left yesterday 21st Aug and we had drinks for them the night before and I asked Fay the wife how they had faired in 4 mths and she said they’d done very well, without letting on how well (they don’t work, so your guess).

LAVERTON - BASE CAMP

We are going to stay in Laverton for a while and use it as our base camp. It is central to Northern Goldfields district. There are many old townships and mining camps to explore as well as all the vast land to detect on.

Before leaving Victoria I purchased two books on Ebay written by DW Dehavilland. In his books he has meticulously written about all the gold mined areas and areas that could possibly contain gold deposits in Western Australia. Using this info, combined with Google Earth, I can read up about the areas of History and then fly over and into an area, suss it all out get the coordinates. I then punch it into the GPS and the next day we’re of on a new adventure, even if at the end of the day there is no gold we’ve still been and seen things nobody else is likely to get near.

Probably the second day we were at the Laverton C/van Park a little beat up old caravan pulled in beside us with a fairly unkemped looking fella about 55-60 (we think). Dianne looked at me and we both thought what have we got here. Well this bloke has a name and his name is Darcy. He hails from NSW somewhere and is now a full time prospector apart from doing the odd job around the park when he’s here. At the moment he’s waiting for his new Metal Detector to be returned after a recall on them 2 weeks ago and he’s chaffing at the bit to get back out there. In the meantime Darcy has been a wealth of knowledge and even helped us with repairs on the bus, (fibreglassing my hole in the roof) but the biggest surprise was he has leant Dianne his old Detector to use. Darcy also put us onto an area to look which had been worked fairly hard over the years but still gave up some gold and bingo, we had our first nuggets, only small but a really nice feeling to pull gold out of the ground instead of wire, buttons or other crap. One thing you learn pretty quick is to go out looking with the idea you might get lucky, but just enjoy being out there hiding from the Lease holders, dodging other prospectors and travelling this great land of ours.