Today’s route took us further west along the Great Eastern Highway from Kalgoorlie and towards the town of Souther Cross, where we turned north west. WE drove along back roads through many kilometres of wheat fields to the little town of Bencubbin.
Half an hour away from Kalgoorlie, we came to another old gold mining town, Coolgardie. Once upon a time 15,000 people – mostly gold prospectors – lived in and around this town. It was then a wild mining boom town with a main street wide enough to turn a camel train and solid buildings that might have been expected to last for many decades Today it calls itself the ‘Mother of the Goldfields’ but is just a remnant of a time when it was an exciting, bustling, prosperous town.
On most days, you could fire a cannon along the main street without any fear of hitting anything. When we arrived, the road (highway) was blocked off for an event. It turned out to be ‘Coolgardie Day’ and most of the locals were in town to celebrate. There were markets, stalls everything from T-shirts to crystals and even a mining display with large equipment outside one of the pubs. Therer was even going to be a parade.
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The advantage of the highway being blocked off was that I had to walk to see the buildings that we might have otherwise driven past. I read the signs describing the ones that used to be on various blocks of land. Nearly all of them were hotels!
We drove on passing large wheatfields towards the town of Southern Cross. Along the road, we came to our first wildflowers for which WA is famous for, especially in spring.
Southern Cross has something of a double identity. It sits right on the edge of both the goldfields and the wheat belt. In 1887 the first major gold discovery in the Eastern Goldfields occured there and this led to later discoveries resulting in the growth of Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie.
Today it is a quiet town notable more for its wide street, its large pub on the Great Eastern Highway, an interesting museum that wasn’t open on a Sunday. One of the town’s interesting facts is that most of the streets are named after constellations – Sirius Street, Altair Street, Centaur Street, Orion Street, Taurus Street, Polaris Street, Spica Street and Phoenix Street.
Leaving Southern Cross on the road to Bullfinch, we crossed Lake Koorkoordine and drove through scrubby country until we reached the town.
Again, like many rural towns, Bullfinch looks like it is nearly dead and gasping for breath. The old post office is symptomatic of its decline.
Our continuing drive through the flat wheat fields was easy and we made good time, passing through another town of Mukinbudin. This was a more prosperous town but somewhat remote. In this region of WA, the distance between good sized towns can be 80 kilometres, or more.
Before reaching our destination of Bencubbin, we detoured about 10 kilometers to see an interesting sight. Down a dirt road and through closed gate, we came to the Pergandes Sheep Yards.
These are the remains of an original and prominent homestead and sheep yards that were constructed almost entirely from local granite by a pioneering family at the turn of the 20th Century. The sheep yards are made from large granite slabs that were drawn into position by horse sled from the nearby Wiacubbing Hill. These slabs were then placed upright out of the ground to make the fences of the sheep yards. The homestead was constructed using smaller round rocks held together by mortar.
Because off the wild flowers (Billy Buttons) these slabs of granite were not as prominent as in other photos the I have seen but to see them surrounded by these bright flowers that cover the landscape was very special.
Finally, we drove into Bencubbin. We found the hotel which is closed and called in to the Shire Office to pick up the key to our cabin in the caravan park where we will stay for the night We found the key easily in the locked box at the main entrance to the offices.
Because it’s Sunday, nothing in the town is open but we came prepared with supplies for food that we bought at the supermarket in Kalgoorlie.
There is a little area of bushland behind our cabin and I was able to get a few more photos of some of the wildflowers.
