The Fair Maid doesn't get out much at the moment. The poor thing just sits in the garage with a cold heart. I did sense that she was ready for an outing, so at my suggestion she jumped at the opportunity, and I knew she wouldn't let me down.
She took me from
Perth, past
Laverton, to
Nichols Knob and Mt. Feldtmann on a 6 night, 6 day outing. The pressure was on her to perform properly and flawlessly, as I had left no margin for error and I had to start back at work last Thursday. This is the story.
I left
Perth 24th September after work and headed east along the main highway, before having tea at
Tammin and stayed at a motel in Merredin. Good old 70 year old mother dear took the passenger
seat, she hadn't really been right out in the sticks before - she was about to find out all about it.
The next day had breaky at
Southern Cross before stopping at
Karalee Rock to have a look at the
dam and the
dam supply.
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It was quite impressive with walls on the rocks diverting the water to the
dam.
Stopped at Kalgoorlie briefly and went up to Mt. Charlotte the end of the Golfields Pipeline.
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We stopped at
Menzies for lunch. I notice that the Roadhouse is still for sale but has had a bit of a facelift.
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Kept going to
Leonora and bought a loaf of bread before continuing to
Laverton. Fueled up there and kept going for a few Kilometres until the Checkpoint. There was supposed to be a geocache there but I couldn't find it. We decided to set up
camp there and I set Mum's tent up whilst she cooked tea :)) .
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Now it was Saturday 26th September 2009 and we headed up the
Great Central Road. We pulled off shortly to have a look for Deeba
Rockhole but couldn't fnd it. Anyone else found it? Then looked around for
Bubbles Rockhole which we think we found covered by an old metal hinged door.
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Then we visited the nearby Giles Breakaway. The was a geocache there which we found easily. Nice
views from there and worthy of another look sometime when I and the Fair Maid had more time.
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Just up the road we had a look for
Bullrush Rockhole. We found a couple of small dry rockholes but were not convinced they were the one. We left up the road again but did notice a track leading in that could possibly lead to the
rockhole, but continued on.
At 9:25am turned up the
Lake Wells Road a gravel road in very good condition. We got in the vicinity of Point Pater
Rockhole and had a look around for it. We could find no water and this small rocky depression in a creek was the best we could come up with.
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Had some morning tea nearby before heading up the road again. We saw a Wild Dog and two older puppies running down the side of the road. We stopped for a look. The puppies ran away into the bush and the father dog stay nearby us, I guess to keep an eye on us whilst his kids got away.
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Now we kept going until we reached a suitable northing to go in a try and reach
Nichols Knob. I had been to
Nichols Knob in 2003 on the quad bike and in someways I wish I had it now as it was considerably more difficult to traverse the landscape in the 4WD. No harm in trying though :) The terrain was a mixture of Mulga belts along with Spinifex clearings and this type of travelling was about to kill the paint job.
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The were a number of animal tracks around and we followed 1 track until we came to a depression in the ground quite dry at 27 39 7.9S 122 56 8.0E.
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There was a significant point in the distance so we headed over (through the bush etc.etc.) for a look. In hindsite I think this may have been Gibson Hilll, though I wasn't to sure at the time.
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I climbed it and admired the view over the surrounding landscape. After lunch we keep going onto
Nichols Knob but headed first to have a look at the continuation of
the breakaways of which
Gibson Hill? is a part of. By following animal tracks we again came to a depression, also dry located at 27 35 54.25E 122 59 37.3E .
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We headed on towards
Nichols Knob now which we arrived at around 3:00pm. I had left a geocache here in 2003 which has for the last 3 and a half years been Australia's offically oldest unfound Geocache.
Nichols Knob Geocache Page
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We found the Geocache, in a slight state of disrepair and replaced the container and put a few items in it which may make the Geocache attractive for the more Adventerous geocacher.
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Nichols Knob is one of two small hills in there area and was named by Frank Hann after his camel Nichol who died there in 1908. David
Carnegie passed by the other
hill in 1896 on his Epic expedition. It was here, at the
Red Rock of Carnegies that we camped for the night.
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Walking around at night here with the torch make you realise just how many spiders there are around as their eyes reflect the torch light. After breakfast in the morning we checked the minimum overnight temperature 1.9 degrees, and left the area around 8:45am and headed to the east north east for a few kilometres.
Here we would try and find Carnegies
camp 11 of August 2 1896. There is a belt of Gum trees here that he would more than likely would have camped at and we search around the area with not much luck. I had predicted prior that the chances of finding anything here was about 2-3% and I was right.
We then started to head for Mt. Feldtmann. This was a
hill about 15 kilometres away. The terrain seemed just a little bit easier than the trip to
Nichols Knob from the west.
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Mt. Feldtmann was actually a poor excuse for a mount. It seems to be just a series of wide ridges sticking out of the ground. The kangaroos were numerous, and I wondered where they drank from.
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We parked the 4wd on the southern side and proceed to explore the area. It had about 3 or 4 peaks and we climbed them all. We found an old cairn on one of them that looked like it had been placed there quite some time ago. By whom I wonder?
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After we had explored the mount we had lunch where we had parked the Ute. We heard some birds chirping above us. We looked up and saw a small bird attacking a hawk. Upon closer inspection the hawk had a 2 foot snake hanging from its beak. The smaller bird was trying to grab it. The hawk flew so high that the smaller bird could not reach it and then flew off into the distance with the snake. I have never seen anything like this before; an amazing thing to witness.
We started to make our way to the
Uhr Soak area. It was difficult to get away from the Mt. Feldtmann area as there were low long lines of ridges in our path. A few kilometres away we came to a track. Excellent!!! The track was heading east / west so we could try either way at this time as we were heading south.
We headed east and the track was Ok and started to head in a northern direction into the middle of nowhere. I remember in 2003 on the quad bike coming across a track south of the Ernest Giles Range and I wonder if it is the same track?? This was certainly the wrong way at this time so we went the other way and soon we were heading in a direction that was almost spot on to where we wanted to go.
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Halfway on the track between Mt. Feldtmann and
Uhr Soak we came across a
bridge type formation carved out of
rock which was similar to
London Bridge near
Sandstone. We headed in for a closer look.
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Here I noticed that there where numerous dead Kangaroos in the shade of rocks. I had noticed this elsewhere as
well. I wonder whether they come to these shaded areas to die or whether they just die anywhere and as we are more likley to see them at these
places just see them here dead. Not sure on that one.
We kept heading down the track and passed Mt. Warren and Mt. Cornell before coming to the
Uhr Soak road, which is the track heading north from
Jutson Soak.
We arrived at
Uhr Soak at around 3:00pm and set up
camp. This place was most interesting. We found the tree blazed by D'arcy Uhr in 1901. It had fallen over but the blazed was still visible.
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The actual soak at the head of a small valley nearby appeared dry but would probably yield some water if one dug deep enough.
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There are some interesting
rock placements around the area. Here are some pictures:
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Uhr Soak was supposed to have been discovered by D'arcy Uhr in 1901. I am therefore a little confused by this inscription on a nearby
rock presumably put there by prospector Billy Frost:
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On Monday morning, 28 Septemebr 2009 I decided to do a more thorough walk around the area starting with a climb to the top of Mt. Cumming.
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After admiring the view I did a long walk around the southern base toward the valley that contains the soak. I saw a shadow cast by a small leaning
rock and it caught my eye. This is what I found there:
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I'm not sure what it means but it surely is of some significance. I then wandered back to our camped and then we departed to the south.
Our destination was
Jutson Soak for now which we reached (we think) after passing a dead camel on the track.
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After searching for a geocache near the soak and finding it we then headed back onto the
Great Central Road and then started to head for
Lang Rock to the south of the road. We then came across a family of Aboriginals who were out having a family kangaroo hunting day. We spoke for about 5 minutes then we headed in different directions. We arrive at
Lang Rock shortly after and had some lunch there. We admired the inscriptions at
the rock for a while, and there were many of them some pictured here:
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This one gave me a laugh - I can just imagine his rescuers waiting whilst he finishes his inscription.
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After
Lang Rock I headed west to have a look at a
waterhole marked on the map near Mt. Shenton. I heard Exploroz visitor Watery (Peter) on the radio directing some of his party toward Rutters Grave. I spoke to him and agreed to meet him there, a few kilometres from where I was.
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He was with a group of about 6 or 7 vehicles on a father son trip which would hopefully take them up the
Hunt Oil Road and back into
Wiluna. We chatted for a while and then headed off again, back down the
Great Central Road towards
Laverton.
When we passed the track that was near
Bullrush Rockhole we drove in a found the
rockhole at the end of the short track.
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After that we headed into
Laverton and checked into a motel there and had a decent dinner at the pub.
In the morning we decided to go and visit
Hanns camp but made a couple of incorrect assumptions. The first was that the
camp would be signposted. As the
camp was pictured in the brochures I would have thought it would be. It wasn't. Second assumption was that the coords that I got from the Exploroz site would be correct. They were not. We spent hours trying to get into a place that wasn't even there. There was a new haul road being put in the area and almost got ourselves into trouble using the road. What a waste of time I thought as we headed off to the tourist centre. They gave us the correct co-ords (I think). They are 28 34 21S 122 29 41E. They knew of the new haul road and said access would probably be now restricted and that a new road would probably have to be put into the site. I didn't spend any more time in the area and left town.
We headed out on the old road and stopped in at John Aspinall grave and had some lunch.
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After that we stopped in at
Kookynie for a quick beer, as the only customers. Then we had a look a Niagra
Dam before heading into Kalgoorlie for the night.
After leaving Kalgoorlie on Wednesday just before 7:00am in the morning we arrived back in
Perth a couple of hours after lunch where the Fair Maid was once again garaged, much to her dissapointment.
The Fair Maid's consumption was 6.95 km per litre or 14.39 litres per 100 km onroad. Offroad consumption was 4.01 km per litre or 24.91 litres per 100 km.
The Fair Maid managed to complete the entire six day trip without getting a single
puncture, arriving back in
Perth with the same air in the tyres that it left with.
A very enjoyable six day trip though I was pretty tired at the end of it.
Cheers
Alan
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Here is a video of the section of the trip from
Lake Wells Road to around Mt. Feldtmann. No Oscars available here but it will give an indication of the landscapes.