Ok now on our way back to Perth. We have camped tonight at Wubin Rocks, just north of the town, which is a very small camp, like we almost fill it by ourselves. There is room for another couple of vans but in this weather that is highly unlikely. When I say this weather I mean overcast raining most of the morning, in other words winter........bummer. The good thing is a great view over the surrounding farmlands and barely any road noise, in fact we can't see the road and have stand outside to hear the trucks. Talking of trucks we are quite staggered by the number of trucks, heading in both directions, on the road. In fact they almost outnumber the caravans.

Friday 3rd June

Offline again at Paynes Find which consists of a pub and a caravan park, a pretty primitive caravan park.

Today we took off from Meekatharra at our usual early start time of 10am. There is a special truck fuelling facility here which is usually chock a block full of queued up trucks and is 15c per litre cheaper than the servo. This morning it was empty so we went in to fuel up. It is a card only site and it would not accept our card so we moved on.

The next stop was Cue and the fuel there was the same as the truck facility, so guess what we did. We stopped for morning tea just before Cue and about 70km after Cue for lunch. I thought that this would be enough foe Elaine, but she wanted to proceed and proceed we did. After a bit of fiddling around we have stopped about 100km further on for the night. Judging by her pain probably a bit too far, so less tomorrow.

Well tomorrow we head for home, that says it all. We visited the local hospital and on their advice are going to consult with our doctors in Perth.

I took another walk around the town this morning and learnt a little bit more about Meekatharra. Including a walk along a creek, Meekatharra Creek to be precise, which was nice, but again nothing special.

That's about it see you all soon. It will probably take us up to 5 days as Elaine has difficulty sitting in the van and I won't drive with her lying down, not strapped in, on her bed.

Bad day today, she spent the morning trying to sleep in the passenger seat while I drove. Note I drove the whole way. Then when got here into bed with sleeping pills. But Elaine is feeling slightly better now.

We got here to Meekatharra booked into the very average caravan park so that we would have Telstra phone coverage and awaited calls from doctors. We are still waiting for that call hopefully tomorrow.

After lunch I went for a walk down town. There are a few historical buildings here and there has been some effort put into the history of the town. But it is nowhere near as good as Cue. There are 2 pubs, Farmer Jacks and a couple of smaller shops so the retail side is covered as far as a small town is concerned. There is also a swimming pool but that appeared to be closed.

I noticed, both today and yesterday, that there are still a fair number of operating gold mines, at least I think that they are all gold mines. They seem to be part of a perennial industry that survives despite the fluctuations in the gold price. There is a huge open cut mine not far south of Meekatharra and I would imagine there are more of them to see if one took a flight over the area.

Ok not a lot to report today. We left Mt Magnet with plans to carry on to Meekatharra, but finished up at Cue with Elaine resting her back!

That meant that I took a good long walk around the town. We passed through here last year and I walked the Main Street, but there was lots more to see. Firstly I walked down the main street to the visitor centre which was in a side street. Before going in I photographed the Masonic hall which is very old built of timber and corrugated iron. Then spoke to the lady and found out that the town is working towards RV friendly status, somewhere down the track. Followed by a longer walk around  this town which is putting a lot of effort into attracting tourists. There is lots to see and there are a couple of parks, lots of sheet metal tableaux, a caravan park and eventually there will be an RV park. I stopped at the shire office and had a look at their photographic collection, I don't know how many, maybe a thousand or more, certainly censory  overload and well worth the time. There was also a model of the Big Bell mine but it needed an explanatory diagram so that one could understand what it was all about, and it was a big operation and a very detailed model.

Then with the shires permission we camped for the night.

Ok today was a bit better, in fact a lot better, but night brings the pain back.

Anyway we actually left the rest area at 7.30am which was a massive shock to the system. We had morning tea at 10.10am which is our usual departure time! Anyway it was a good run into Mt Magnet which is a nice little town that we visited last year and had a good look round. So this year it is just somewhere to stop, which we had to do as we needed to make some phone calls.  So we have booked into the caravan park and will head off again early tomorrow.

Sunday May 29

Lots of pain today! She is not having a good run.

Not much to report today. My morning walk revealed a nicely set up town as is usual with the mining companies. It is normal for them to provide the infrastructure around mines in remote places, such as Paraburdoo, Tom Price, etc and this is another good example. There are well laid out villages for single staff, shops, sporting facilities (footy oval, tennis courts, basketball courts), school, day car centre, bmx track, medical centre and probably lots more that I didn't see.  There is also a number of residences surrounding all this, obviously part of the deal because they are pretty much identical. Having said this the town is supposedly in decline because the nickel mine was closed, but there seemed to be a reasonable number of people around so maybe something is happening.

Anyway after that we left town stopping 4 times before reaching our camp. We are camped at the Peter Denny lookout which had a great view, along with 2 other campers.