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Published: September 25th 2017
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Datjoin RockThey call this area the wheat belt, and we drove past hundreds of kilometres of crop (wheat/canola), but there are also a lot of large rocks around this area - enough that you could spend a week driving around to see them all... We stopped at just a few of them. Some of them, like Datjoin Rock, were a bit underwhelming - it's claim to fame was a well believed to have been dug by sandalwood cutters in the early 1900's and that it was the campsite of a criminal hiding out with his wife and twelve (yes 12) kids in the late 1960's. One, Bonnie Rock, turned out to be a town not a rock. But some were pretty impressive. Beringbooding Rock has the largest rock water catchment in Australia. It feeds a two million gallon water tank and was built in 1937 at a cost of 10,000 pounds.
We camped overnight at Elachbutting Rock, which has a wave formation similar to Wave Rock, a cool walk through cavern (called Monty's Pass), and a cave like amphitheatre. And you can drive onto the top of the rock (4wd). On top of the
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Datjoin Rock rock there are a few gnamma holes (permanent springs with icy cold water) and patches of vegetation - more wildflowers, and of course there is a stunning view of the surrounding countryside.
The next day we headed to Kalgoorlie, with a quick stop at Coolgardie to stretch the legs and search for ice-cream. After checking into the caravan park at Kalgoorlie we headed out to the visitor info centre and took a look at the Super pit. The mining company provides a public access lookout where you can watch the open pit mining operating. Those huge haul trucks look tiny from this perspective. The next day we were able to watch a blasting in the pit - even though it was extremely windy, it was very interesting. We also did the tourist thing and visited Hannon North Tourist Mine - I think it was pretty good value for money. The bad weather seems to be chasing us and we decided to go north for a day before doubling back to go to Esperance.
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Cat
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Got to ask why is the water icy cold? It is at the top a rock exposed to sunlight. Is it purely the ambient air temperature?