Mooka - Phase III

We head off for Mooka on a Monday afternoon. Glenn is up front with the truck carrying the backhoe and I follow in the Land Cruiser with trailer loaded with, amongst other things, the fridge! We'd prefer to leave earlier but Glenn had to deliver rock to the shipping company in the morning. We get as far as Dongara by tea time and have a roast beef dinner at the roadhouse.
Another couple of hours' driving and we pull off to sleep. The spot Glenn chooses (in the dark) happens to be an old Main Roads camping area where the concrete slabs from site offices still remain. Nice and flat to sleep on! (And no ants!) It rains during the night and in the morning there are puddles on our swags. Inside our swags, however, was cosy and warm and where I have my best sleeps.

Travelling in the north of Western Australia on these long, mostly straight, flat roads can be monotonous. The scenery can rich and colourful at times but other times it can get a bit 'samey'. We can go for what seems like ages, hardly having to turn the wheel or use the brake, just watching the signs counting down the kilometres to the next roadhouse. Trips up here should be organised around the distances between roadhouses as these can be hundreds of kilometres apart. This is not just to be able to refuel the vehicles but to refuel us too.

You can always tell a good roadhouse by the number of trucks parked outside. A truckie likes a good feed, a shower and 'truckie talk' so you quite often find them frequenting the same roadhouses.

There's a roadhouse called "Billabong" and I noticed some wag had changed the sign to "Fillabong". Nice one.

But you never feel lonely on these roads. As we fly along, nine out of ten oncoming vehicles will wave to you as you pass so you always keep a hand at two o'clock on the steering wheel to return the salute. I consider this to be part of the "driving in the north west" culture. You may not have seen another vehicle for an hour or so, so when you pass someone, of course you wave - "Hello!" It's like walking past someone in the street of a small town. How could you pass by without some sort of acknowledgement? Tourists think it's great and wave with fervour. They've never come across such friendliness! Most miners do, they're used to it, and times we've stopped for Glenn to fix something, it's always a white ute with the yellow light on top that slows down to check we're ok. City people towing boats, don't. I passed one vehicle with a cardboard cutout of a hand fixed to the windscreen on a spring so it continually waved! Won't be stopping for him, then.

The trucking fraternity not only wave to eachother but may also have a chat on the CB radio. Where they've been, where they're going to, what they're carting, etc etc. Rivetting stuff.

What I like the most is that if someone was in trouble on the side of the road there is no doubt the next vehicle would stop if they could. All recognize the vastness of this state, the distances between towns and hence the dangers of being stranded.

My saviour on these long drives is the radio and most of the time you can find a station to listen to, but not all the time.

When we stop along the way poor Woody has to tolerate wearing a muzzle. There is quite a problem with wild dogs up here and aerial baiting is carried out from time to time so there is no way of knowing where a bait might be. I don't want to take any risks as I've heard of many domestic dogs taking a bait by accident and it's a horrible death. Try telling Woody that! He's sitting there, indignant, looking at me as if to say, "What d'you call this?"

It's always nice to get back to Mooka. Such a peaceful place. It's warm and there's a gentle breeze. Mooka Creek trickling by. We soon have our camp all set up; the boudoir set up, fridge in place, pantry stocked. We've even got the shower cubicle this time! Great when it's windy.
The wildlife moves in. We had lots of amazing stick insects this time. They join us in the evening around the campfire, attracted by the spotlights. Last time it was thousands of moths. They were in my hair, my wine, my dinner, etc.
I'm not sure who won this 'stare out' competition. (There's a lizard sitting on the rock.)

The mining is soon on the way and the Mookaite comes out fast.

And Woody gets busy too.
Mookaite is the pavement of a creek bed so much of it is covered in mud when it comes out and needs to be washed (see hosing fiasco above). It then gets packed into bulka bags (by yours truly and Glenn) and loaded onto the 6WD truck ready for the 13km trip to Winnamia.

When I first met Glenn he told me he drove a Mercedes...

And here she is. Mm.. mmmm... I named her Our Rock Goddess.

Here she is (below) powering her way across the Gascoyne River. This time of year there is very little water running. There is, however, water below the surface so in places it's very soft. In the three years I've been working with Glenn we haven't really had any problems when crossing the river but previous years he has had some real 'sticky' situations. One year he had the truck, tractor and Land Cruiser all bogged in a line. They got them all out eventually. (Glad I wasn't there!)

At Winnamia we either transfer them to the road truck (below) or leave them on the ground ready for the road train from Carnarvon.
During these twelve days at Mooka we did five of these trips (50 bags) and that's a lot of digging and a lot of rock so during the day I take short breaks with Woody. It was very hot so we walk a little way down the creek where there are deep pools and he can enjoy a swim.

There's so much colour in the Northwest of Western Australia this time of year.

An eagle flies overhead and appears to have a battered wing. We see many eagles when driving - they thrive on roadkill and along with crows and foxes do a great cleanup job!

I came across this dead tree trunk with a vine of some sort growing up it just as if it was in someone's garden. (click on images to enlarge)
Not far from the creek can be found hundreds of aboriginal artifacts just laying on the surface. Strange to think they've been laying there for thousands of years. Mookaite is perfect for knapping and you can see how the aborigines have knapped the edges of these shards chipped from larger rocks to make perfect cutting tools.
Some might wonder why the government departments allow such devastation to these beautiful places but there are many limitations put on lease holders. These come in the form of permits, native title restrictions, rehabilitation regulations, etc etc.

As you can see, the area mined previous years (below) is coming back.

On the way to returning the 6WD truck to where it is stored we get a puncture. I've lost count of how many punctures we've had.

It's our last morning and the road train is due at Winnamia to collect 40bags of rock. It's early and on our way there I am able to get photos of the wildlife we see all the time.
Look closely at the photo below (or click on it to enlarge) to see Bustards. I've never seen so many at once. They tend to stay in flocks like this.
The roadtrain is loaded and we're off home!

Noreena Jasper

Next on the “digging list” for this year is Noreena Jasper. This is a stunning rock Glenn found and named himself.

When we reach the lease we find a bushfire has gone through since we were here last year and the area looks quite bleak. Only the eucalyptus trees have regrowth and there are very few of those. Even the Spinifex is only just sprouting again. However, there’s lots of colour here. All sorts of flowers are in bloom and where we make our camp it seemed as if we had a garden (much to my delight!) as we were surrounded by colourful plants.

Glenn gets the backhoe into operation and soon the bags are filling up.

Every piece we throw into the bag must be knapped first as the seams can be fickle. Just about every good piece of rock is geometric in shape and just a small tap on one corner will show the potential colours inside. It was very satisfying to give a plain red rock a little tap and see pretty colours just peeking out.

Here (below) Glenn is sitting against the seam and has sprayed the broken rock with water to show how it will polish.

(click on image to enlarge)

Crazy Lace Agate Mine

We had an interruption to our digging - Glenn injured his wrist badly enough to have to rest it for a few days so we made a flying visit home. This proved beneficial, however, as we had mail to deal with and more importantly it meant we could pick up the dog from the kennels. We missed him more than we thought. The intention was to save him the discomfort he would suffer from the dreadful grass seeds. Last year each evening we would sit after dinner and pick them out of his skin and ears. I decided this time I would keep him away from the grassy areas one way or another.

As you can see, he was glad to be home.

We’d been home a few days when we heard rain was forecast for the Pilbara Region so we left in time to get there before the roads were closed. They are unsealed roads and with the Almighty Dust of the Pilbara it doesn’t take much to turn a road into a quagmire. We arrived late at night and it was nice to get into our cosy tent.

In the morning it was pouring with rain so Glenn strung up the tarp for shelter and that was where Woody and I sat waiting for the rain to stop while Glenn unloaded the truck.

It eased off by the afternoon, just as the weatherman said it would and work could begin again.

It’s not long before we have a truckload to take into town and this time His Lordship gets to ride in the sleeper cab!

Most of the road we use is the railway access road and it’s not surprising that we pass the Ore Train because it is going back and forth constantly, transporting iron ore to Port Hedland for shipping to China. It’s over a kilometre long and has two engines; one at the front and one in the middle, so I took three photos as we gradually overtook it. The train driver waves and gives us a blast on the train horn too!

A couple of days later we saw another ore train that was 2kms long and had two engines at the front, three in the middle and two at the rear.

Our black and grey dog is soon black and red.

Is he looking lovingly at Glenn?

No...

Anyone would think from reading this blog that our life revolves around the dog!!! Absolutely not!!!

Apart from punctures... (we woke up to this one)

(There's a man under that truck!)

...and mechanical problems, other small setbacks occur (see below). Fortunately there is another bucket Glenn can use but it’s half the size of this one.

The digging here is complete but before we leave the area we take a drive to a lease not too far away for Munjina Stone. It’s a beautiful place and yet another beautiful rock.

We pack up our camp at the Crazy Lace Agate mine and head off for Roy Hill.