Sat, 21st Sept, 2024 Bush camp on pending leases, 80km north of Meekatharra to Bush camp on Killara Station, north of Meekatharra, WA

Light shower of rain at 2am.

21 degrees min, cloudy and no wind. Tom’s birthday so sent him a message. We will catch up with him and Sandy in Perth later in the year.

Packed up and headed back to the highway and turned south.

Lots of bright pink wildflowers covering the flat red soil.

The sky looking darker in the south.

We turned off onto the dirt Mooloogool Road to try and get to another pending area that has old mines on it. Found a track off it that ran down past a water point and there were lots of cattle about and two emus who bolted when we got closer.

Unfortunately the track we needed hasn’t been used and is overgrown so we turned around, the cattle were still standing around and I spotted the emus had come back to the water again too.

Back to the highway where we stopped for a cuppa then continued south. Passed the Andy Well Gold Mine which is right beside the highway. Lots of infrastructure here but doesn’t seem to be operational.

We turned at the Sponge Bob big mail box which had a sign beside it ‘Keep the Sheep’ - don’t think there are any sheep up this way.

We saw some mining equipment then the homestead of Munarra so went up to say hello. A lady came out and introduced herself - Penny, her and her husband own Killara Station. She was very friendly and we chatted about the costs, council rates, lease and vermin payment for one station. The letterbox was made when her 4 children were young and her nieces and nephews were visiting and they came up with the idea. Stands out. The sheep sign is because the government will be banning live sheep export next year and they were worried that cattle will be next. Things have improved a lot from the original horror stories and it is all regulated to the hilt now. She said that Andy Well got operational again two months ago and they are going to do another pit at Turnberry further to the south-east. She gave us directions to get to the pending area and wished us luck in finding some gold. It was very interesting chatting with her.

We thanked her and headed off following her directions. Found the old mine area and parked up nearby.

After lunch we went wandering but only found bits of metal. Steve checked out another mine shaft further away. It had a boiler and winding mechanism to bring ore up etc as the shaft was very deep - he didn’t get too close and took a couple of photos.

Still overcast but no rain. Only got to 31 degrees with a nice breeze.

Got a fire going once the flies went to bed!