The weather was fine for our 8:30am departure from Chequers in Bullsbrook, lunch at Paynes Find and first night camp site at Youanmi townsite.
Pushing on we had morning tea at Sandstone in the incredible garden of a cafe in the main street. The garden is full of fruit trees and vegetables and quirky sculptures. We had intended to top up in Wiluna with fuel and a few supplies but nothing was open on Sunday although fuel was available at 24/7 card only servos. We reached Lorna Glen late Sunday and set up in the camping area not far from the homestead.
Lorna Glen was taken over by DPAW and an electric fence built around the whole property and an electrified en- closure to safeguard threatened animals was built within the property. Whilst all this was going on, Native Land Title was granted to the Martu people and I understand the area will be jointly managed by DPAW in the future. During our time there, there was an aerial, feral cat baiting programme with the baits coming in a re- frigerated truck from Perth. Special areas at Matuwa (Lorna Glen) are Turtle Pool and Gorge, the old homestead and shearing sheds. We also looked at a tunnel to access water using a railway line, the open air church under some trees and a natural waterhole in the granite.
Lunch was at an amazing lookout over the property, where a lake still had fresh water in it with grass growing. We then travelled along the Onus-Algar Highway, north to Bore No 7 camped a night, and proceeded further north be-
fore driving through Sydney Heads Pass which was spectacular, and then south to Carnegie to refuel and camp.
We couldn’t use the station track from Carnegie to Prenti Downs station so we did a long detour and drove through the “Jump Up”, spoke to some camel shooters and rejoined the Central Highway a little to the west of Cosmo Newbury and on to Laverton, taking the Mt Weld Road to Mt Celia and Pinjin Road to the abandoned ruins of Yarri, Gindalbie, plus we explored several in- teresting breakaways, and then onto Kalgoorlie and Norseman.
We camped at the old town site of Dundas, enduring a noisy night as there is now a working mine site on the other side of the salt lake. Then on to Orleans Bay where the camping ground was perfect because there was only one other person there.
After two nights we moved to Hopetoun for two nights, where we watched the sunset from a viewing seating area, saw a whale splashing and a seal frolicking. We had a great meal at the Port
Hotel, fish and chips the next night and then home.
