*The map should show now the entire trip so far, but doesn't seem to save much location information as we thought while out of Telstra reception. As a result there are gaps missing from our route, but hopefully you'll get most of the key points.
Also, not many photos until I can get a better internet connection*
Something I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog post was all the cars. There were many, many cars by the side of the road! Burnt out, or rusted, or upside down, or all three of those. One traveller at Yarla Kutjarra said they had counted well in excess of 100 abandoned cars on their travels from west to east.
Some time this morning between Cosmo-Newbery and Laverton we got back onto sealed roads! I guess the last time we had a stretch of sealed roads was only back near Uluru, but it was still a relief.
We had a quick stop for fuel in Laverton before heading on to Leonora to stop for coffee (I had a hot chocolate) and some groceries. This is the first time in a few days we have had reception, so I used dad's phone to call mum so she could tell me happy birthday and so I could hear any news from the last two weeks or so. After we had all made use of the reception we headed on to Leinster.
Tony has an uncle who lives somewhere in this general region of WA, but hasn't met for a long time. The information dad has was that his uncle Bob might have most recently lived somewhere near Leinster, WA. We stopped for a quick lunch of cold bacon and snags with bread before ducking into the shops to get a few things and asked if they had heard of Bob Mckay, or where we should go to ask after him. We stopped at the police station, the community centre, and the office of the man who has lived around here the longest to see if anyone recognised the name. No one seemed to recognise the name or could point us in the right direction to find him, so in the end we moved on. (It wasn't until the 17th, when Tony was able to call his parents that he heard that possibly Bob might have lived in Leonora, the town we stopped for coffee, but didn't ask around at all.)
After we left Leinster, the going was mostly good going. Sealed roads and the occasional tailwind, what could stop us? Apparently, what could stop us was having to keep an eye on the cattle by the side of the road. There was a point where there was cattle on both sides of the road. So, like good, upstanding citizens who didn't want to total a motorbike or ute, we slowed right down in case one of them decided to try something funny. Frog got within 15 metres of them when about 5 of them decided they suddenly wanted to be on the opposite side of the road to where they already were. No person or cow was injured, but we had to wonder if cows might be closely related to emus with the amount of road sense and self-preservation they have...
Every other road or driveway out here seems to be for a mine site, and more than every other vehicle seems to be a mining vehicle. So we stopped by the road where we could see a mine and took a photo in view of Mt Keith Mine Site.
The mighty CBR125R by one of the many mine sites in the area
Photo opportunities and mad cows notwithstanding, we got to our goal for the day, Wiluna, WA. It was a bit less active than we thought. The pub was closed and didn't look like opening any time soon, there was a building that still looked like a service station but is now a cafe instead. When we found a functioning service station we fuelled up and got the phone number for a caravan park out of town.
To save time we started driving, then called the caravan park, only to find out that 4:45pm is too late there to be ordering food, so we turned around, went back to the no-longer-a-service-station to find some food there.
I would also like to mention that cafe and give a shoutout to the staff at the Wiluna Roadhouse, Lenny, Natalie, and Carolyne for their generous hospitality. Here's their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/wilunaroadhouse/
We then drove out to Travellers Rest caravan park because there was no accomodation to speak of in Wiluna. There was no bar in the dining room there, so there was no hope of a birthday beer for me. So we set up camp and we had rum and cokes instead. Frog did an oil change on the bike and then we turned in for the night.
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