Lake Ballard, WA to Laverton, WA - 273km (5,591km)
Day 14's blog is a little delayed due to an incident on Day 15, leaving me to type with just a left hand, and anyone who knows me knows that's not a pretty sight. More of that later.
The day started perfectly, up before dawn to watch the sunrise magnificently over the Lake Ballard sculptures. The fire from the night before had kept going fending off some of the dawn chill.
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| Dawn at Lake Ballard |
As the black of night slowly gave way to the warm oranges and reds as the sun rose the brilliance of the Australian desert became apparent. I sat on my own taking it all in, animals foraging for food, birds calling to each other from the undergrowth. It was a truly magical moment.
With the sun breaking above the horizon the still beings on the lake seemed to take on life as their shadows stretched then moved across the salt flat. I sat in awe watching it all take place.
As the others clambered from their tents it looked as though it would be a great day, our last day of bitumen for a while.
We started breakfast and laughed about what a great ride it had been so far, one of our group strolled off on to the lake to enjoy the beauty as those remaining packed up our gear.
Upon return, the rider who went walking, came back with a new attitude and tore into all of us for no apparent reason. It was shocking and embarrassing, the tension that boiled up left a nasty stain on the morning.
We continued packing and returned to the road that would lead us back to Menzies. It was a comfortable ride however, the tension was still present.
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| The remoteness of Lake Ballard keeps the tourist hoards away ... for now! |
Early in the morning, the small town of Menzies was amazing. We refuelled at a former roadhouse which, was now just a self serve station, fully automated. The external walls were adorned with registration plates from all over the world. In its own way it was quite spectacular. Once the bikes were full we went down the road to a cafe that would look more at home in a Melbourne laneway. The coffee was as good as any in Melbourne, a great surprise when you consider we were almost 1,500km from the nearest major city.
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| Menzies' unique self serve servo |
Over the coffee we decided we would leave the main road on the way to Laverton and head towards Kookynie, a former mining town now billed as a living ghost town.
The road in was quite good, obviously constructed to cater for the slightly more adventurous tourists. The gravel laid in places was a little thick and caused the bikes to squirm but was nothing too bad.
Kookynie once boasted a population of over 3,500 but now has less than 10. In its hey day the town had 11 hotels and ts own
brewery, and 4 trains per day from Kalgoorlie. Although a ghost town many of the original buildings are still intact, a greater reminder of the past.
A highlight of the town is the only operating pub left, the Grand Hotel. From the front it doesn't look any different from outback pubs, on the inside it's pretty much a museum, with a great collection from the past.
It was a great way to take a refreshing drink before heading back off into the desert, the
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| The ghost town of Kookynie, well worth visiting |
day was starting to get quite hot, probably the hottest experienced so far and perhaps a prelude of what was to come. The Grand Hotel truly was grand, in its own way, an oasis in the desert.
We continued on and soon hit dirt. The road was good but obviously a trucking route, it was badly corrugated in places and quite rough. A comfortable pace was around 70kph, a little slow but it felt safe. It took us just under an hour to reach the bitumen and while it was good to be back on the black stuff (although its very rarely black out here),
the dirt felt right.
We soon pulled over and took over final break of the day before the last 100km to Laverton. I trudged off into the scrub to go to the toilet, two things struck me, how green and wet it was and the size of the bullants. They seemed harmless enough, perhaps having enough to feed on after the recent rains. In recent weeks Laverton had received over 100mm of rain, almost half of the annual amount.
We continued on to Laverton, with a population of around 400 (around 1/3 are aboriginal) it marks the western end of 'civilisation' before taking on the deserts of central Australia.
It was amazing too see such a dry arid landscape with so many full creeks and rivers, the green of the plants was astounding.
We'd been warned about Laverton and how rough it could be, what we actually found was a hard working community where the locals took a great pride in 'their' community.
The local information centre has a fantastic interpretive museum that's well worth visiting. Staff at the local supermarket were extremely helpful as were those at the local pub, our accommodation for the night. Day 15 would give some indication to just how great this town and its people really are.
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