We spend the night, Monday night, at Kirkalocka station stay. The room is spacious, comfortable, not flash. The only problem is that the kitchen is on the other side of the house and the toilet is on the other side of the verandah.
There are electric lights but... It's lucky I brought in a torch, for the dark crossing of the verandah. The night is pitch black.
Deb says that she had trouble getting to sleep because of the noise of trucks on the highway. So she counted trucks. And reached ten before falling asleep. Mind you, each truck could have been worth 500 sheep.
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Breakfast is our cheese and crackers in our room. Plus some fruit cake which Deb baked especially for this trip. We eat, pack and leave by 7:30.
It's a simple drive to Mt Magnet. There's steel emus and a geocache at the town entry. The cache sets our standard for the town...
We don't find the cache. In town, we look but don't find another cache. The town is an uninspiring dump. That's our impression.
We circle the town, getting very uninterested in any of the town caches. We visit the information centre. It's good but tells us nothing we want to know.
We continue to circle the town, looking for fuel. We finally find a roadhouse on the far side of town. We fill the tank and stop for brunch.
It's good, simple, truck stop food. We buy sandwiches for lunch, they are white bread -- of course -- thick sliced with plenty of filling.
The roadhouse is the highlight of our visit. We're glad to drive out of town.
Just clear of town -- a geocache. Well placed, easy to find. We shake off the bad vibes from town. Ready to drive to the next point of interest, 88km down the road.
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The next point of interest is a meteorite crater. It has a name, I forget it.
It's not as big as Wolfe Creek... this crater is 21m across and a few metres deep. A good size to appreciate what it is, to see the complete picture all at once :-)
As we arrive, a couple of people are setting up to scan the crater with a drone. We leave them to it -- then realise that there is a cache at the crater. Oh well.
We passed a cache on the way in, we drive back, it's less than a km.
What a beautiful spot! A few rock surfaces, standard sparse scrub, red soil. Just off the road and so peaceful. The weather is perfect: mostly sunny, cool. A chill breeze, we shelter beside the truck. Time, we decide, for a cup of tea.
The new gas cooker works well though slowly. We relax... then decide to stay till lunch time, that's just another half hour.
Just half a roadhouse sandwich each is enough for lunch. Plus a bit of kitkat and an iced coffee. We're 50m from the road, only one car passes while we relax. This is why we drive in the bush :-)
I think, a little caravan would be nice, just enough to shelter in. Oh, plus lights to read by at night. The CoolBeans vans we saw at the show would suit us, absolute minimum features with no set-up. Almost seems like a good idea...
Finally, we leave.
Back to the crater, where we find the cache. Then on to Melangata, where we stay the night. It's not far, just a dozen km or so.
It takes us a while to figure out where to go. The camp grounds are well signposted. The homestead seems obvious. Where we check in is less obvious. We go into the house and start calling Hello. That works.
We settle in. Drink tea, eat sausage roll (part of the service:-). Go for a walk... past "the old rubbish tip". Certainly a lot of old rubbish. Past a scrappy lot of pet sheep and a few buildings. Good to stretch our legs.
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Now it's time to go to dinner. Chat with host & guests first, so we are not rushing. Still, food is part of the package... time to go.
Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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When all else fails, have someone else read the instructions" … per Ginger Meggs
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