Menzies

Those clouds we saw yesterday turned into showers during the night but it wasn't quite as cold as I expected. We had breakfast and hit the road at 7:30. To our great surprise we pulled out just in front of the two 6.5mt wide loads we overtook yesterday. They stopped just up the road at Cue and got going at first light.

We pulled in at Mt Magnet to refuel and so did the wide loads. That's where we found out that they are going to Norseman where the haul packs are to be used in a new mine. We pulled out of the service station before the wide load and then turned East onto the Sandstone road.

Once we were on the Sandstone road all the trucks and other traffic was gone only a car or road train every now and then but we mostly had the road to ourselves.

We were driving under puffy clouts today and I never saw the temperature gauge go above 17 DegC. We've come long way South since leaving Broome three days ago, nearly 12 Deg of latitude has now taken us well and truly out of the tropics. We travelled from the Kimberley through the Pilbara and Gascoyne and are now in the Central Western Goldfields region.

We didn't stop in Sandstone as we've heard from another traveller that they got dirty diesel there and ended up with a blocked fuel filter. We did stop in Leinster for diesel and then turned South again, continued through Leonora and pulled up at 2pm in Menzies' brand new caravan park.

Menzies is a very small settlement and most people stop there to visit Lake Ballard where artist Antony Gormley placed 51 sculptures on 10sqkm of this salt lake. However, the lake is 51km's away from Menzies and with recent rains has turned into mud. We decided not to go and have an easy afternoon.

Our total travel distance today was around 550km.

Here is the link to today's travel map.