Marble Bar to near Newman, Pilbara Region, Western Australia
In the morning, we took a wonderful mine tour of the old Comet gold mine just south of Marble Bar, then we head down the road to Newman. Along the way, we get our first taste for the mass wildflower scenes we expect later in the month, with huge fields of mulla mulla and other flowers stretching off to the distant hills. We break for the day at a bush campsite about 90km north of Newman.
After waking up, we head on out to see Marble Bar, which is a low ridge of rocks that a river cuts through. Early settlers thought it was marble, but it's really jasper, a type of quartz.
Then we take the Comet Gold Mine tour, walking into the mine itself. Vic took us, Viv runs the shop. Last gold mined was in 1955. Gold stopped production here in 1995. Lots of old scary stuff around, like cyanide and arsenic and nitric acid containers. Also learned more than one way to get the gold out of the ore! Their gold ore was a sulphide. Bought a Tiger Iron gemstone, banded jasper and iron and, heh heh, asbestos. It's pretty. That mine tour was excellent; Vic's an old gold miner and knows exactly what each of the things are that happen around the site.
Also walked to the jasper deposit and picked up a few rocks as well. The local council says it's OK, and specifically provides a place to do just that!
Then down the road. We'd like to go to Skull Creek, another 100km east of Marble Bar, it sounds neat, another couple on the mine tour showed us how to get there on a new sealed road and gave us a couple of GPS waypoints for the turnoff and their previous night's campsite. We can't do it; early in the morning we booked in to the open pit mine tour in Newman, which I want to see. South of Noorlangie, mesas start showing up. Pretty. Then the vegetation changes rather dramatically in ten or twenty km, suddenly mulga appears (haven't seen mulga woodlands since central Queensland). Still, only a few flowers here and there; cattle are run quite a bit. Then, fairly rapidly, mulla mulla appears everywhere, along with lots of other flowers and such, generally yellow. Every so often there's a new flower: a deep magenta pea flower caught my eye, a whitish green mulla mulla caught Chris's eye. We stopped a few times for pictures.
Then, about 4:50, we spot a rest area, and pull over for a bush camp. We're all to ourselves, until 6:45, a good hour after sunset, when someone else nearly runs into our truck in the dark lookign for a campsite! They were in a hurry, it seems! They end up camping 200 meters away. We go to bed, listening to the bush cattle mill about in the distance and moo now and then.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Two emus. Haven't seen emus in quite a few weeks!