Our winters are warm

Our summer is hot
And water is precious

These words are written on the town water tank on the top of a hill overlooking Marble Bar. Marble Bar has a reputation for being hot and is surrounded by low hills in the middle of the Pilbara, I suppose it is not surprising. All that heat absorbed by the bare rocky ground and then trapped in the hills. They have a record of 160 consecutive days over 38.7C (the old 100F) from the summer of 1923-24. However we had cold nights and warm days whose maximum didn't go over 30C.

Early morning shadows on the water tank

I climbed the Water Tank Hill a couple of times. At dawn I was fascinated by the rich blue shadows on the tank cast by the early golden sunlight. The distant hills glowed orange red with deep purple shadows.

Overlooking Marble Bar town

Speaking to a Queenslander enjoying the warmth, who had plans to stay a while hunting for gold, she said the locals told her "You'll be gone by the end of August - it'll be too hot for you!" She thought she might last a bit longer than that. I know I'd certainly be hightailing it out of there before the heat set in.

Government buildings Marble Bar

Gold was found here in 1891 and the town was established in 1893. The Government building, still being used for government services was completed using local stone in 1895. It is undergoing some renovations at the moment. If you look closely at the photo the scaffolding is just visible.

Banded jasper or 'marble'

Marble Bar is named for the banded jasper which crosses the Coongan River just out of town. The reds, blacks and creamy white stripes reminded the pioneers of marble. It is quite startling where it is visible, although most of the bar was covered in a layer of dried mud when er were there. A few hardy bodies splashed in the pool of water there, but it looked a little unappealing to me, muddy and greenish.

Pippunyah solar diesel power plant - solar arrays

There is a state of the art solar diesel power station just out of town. It supplies power for both Marble Bar and Nullagine. A few stats: it saves about 223,000 litres of diesel and avoids 600 tonnes of CO2 emissions by supplying 1150mwh of  solar energy per year. Quite impressive.

Grevillea flowers

Every now and again we would come across these grevilleas in flower. The birds just love them for their nectar and there are always a variety of honeyeaters to be seen and heard near by. In the water courses the eucalypts were heavily in bud. From the top of the hill you could track the water courses by the lines of trees snaking their way through the hills.

View from Tank Hill in early morning and walker in blue

Swans at midnight

The road in to the campsite

Yes, I did really get up after midnight to sit on the bank of Carrawine Gorge to listen to the swans feeding and bugling. It was cold but I was well rugged up complete with quilt wrapped around me. Scorpio hung in the sky above the gorge wall opposite me and the moon was not yet up. From the darkness came the sounds of water lapping on the shore, gentle liquid sounds as the swans pulled up water weeds and their calls in duplicate, echoing back and forth across the pool. Occasionally a grebe dashed dashed across the water or the more strident duck's 'warrk, warrk, warrk' interrupted the tranquility of the night.

Swans feeding 

Carrawine Gorge at sunrise

Carrawine Gorge on the Oakover River  is more or less on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, just off the Woodie Woodie Rd. One side of the gorge is a tall rocky cliff and the other has a little grass beneath trees, a wide expanse of deep stones surrounded by an arid stony landscape. The best way to get through the expanse of stones was to let your tyre pressure down - a bit like going through deep sand. Obviously the deposition of a few decent floods.

Carrawine Gorge at dawn

The pool is huge, wide and long, and supports a wide variety of wildlife. Camped on the edge it simply invites relaxation: one can sit for hours just looking and listening. The colours of the gorge and waters changed dramatically through the day. Hopefully the photos will give you a taste for the colours!

Reflections 

The most surprising sighting was a white bellied sea eagle flying along the gorge as we were about 200km inland. There were a number of reed warblers feeding in the reeds beside our campsite - I hadn't seen or heard them before at such close range. We were of course visited by cattle feeding on the grasses beside the water. They were red, just like the dust, with the conformation typical of tropical breeding.

Camp visitor

Running Waters

View towards Running Waters

Amid all the aridity in the region of the Skull Springs Rd there are a couple of surprising green and moist oases. The most notable is Running Waters where the creek forms a big pool across the road. And the water there is running, I even recorded it's babbling and gurgling - just because I could.

Skull Springs Road

We camped the night there in the middle of the braided 'creek' high up on a berm of coarse sand, pebbles and rocks. Creamy trunks of tall trees surrounded us, both eucalypts and paperbarks.

Our campsite 

There were pools up and down the watercourse, some clear and running, others still and dusty. There were plenty of birds to be seen and heard and downstream there were ducks and grebes and a whistling kite nesting high in a tree beside the biggest pool. After dark we heard the unmistakable call of the blue winged kookaburra competing with the lowing of the cattle and hum of the crickets for airtime. In the morning as the sun's rays lit the tops of the trees, I watched a family of white-browed babblers peel off one at a time out of their big communal nest above our camp site, churring and chattering as they do.

Downstream pool

In late afternoon there was the loud thumping of blasting some distance away. Throughout the night we heard the sounds of mining vehicles and planes on the move, not surprising as there are a few mines in the vicinity, Woodie Woodie being the largest. What was surprising was the relative quietness during the day - or perhaps our other senses were more occupied in the day, thereby masking the mining sounds?

Looking up

Recently ( in the last few years) there had been a good flood, as the banks of the lower watercourse were eroded down to a spongy mat of tree roots. Flood detritus forming large mats hung high in the branches and draped around tree trunks. The lower couple of metres of paper bark had been torn from the trunks of the trees by the force of rushing water and detritus. Seeing it in the dry season, peaceful and calm, it is hard to imagine the quantity and force of water in flood times.

Miske with flood detritus above her head

There's gold in them thar hills

(and iron ore and manganese and ... )

From Punda we headed for Nullagine further inland and in the heart of gold country. Part of the road to Nullagine was being upgraded and it was very dusty, staining the roadside vegetation a rusty red. Visibility was often reduced to no more than a car's length when passing the ever present trucks servicing the mining and exploration boom. Bulldozed mining tracks criss-crossed the hills as we passed Cloud Break Mine (iron ore) and Hancock Prospecting Roy Hill project.

Dust on the Marble Bar Road to Nullagine

It is beautiful country. The ancient hills have been eroded down to stubs of orange and pinky brown, studded with creamy white. The vegetation is sparse lime grey spinifex dotted with straggly blue leaved acacia and gnarly white trunked eucalypts in the gullies that drain the hills. As we moved into the gold country the termite mounds changed from dark chocolate red to soft grey brown. 

Nullagine is a pretty spot, surrounded by low hills with big trees lining the 'river' running through town. The river sported a small pool of water lined with bulrushes on the edge of town. In the late afternoon a group of children played in the sand heaps beside the caravan park, sliding down the slopes on scraps of wood and tin. I remember doing the same when I was a child.

Contorted tree on the Skull Springs Road

We met a prospector there who had been out with his metal detector on the hunt for gold. Him - "you out looking for gold?" Us - "no, we've got a detector here 'cause someone said it'd be a good idea, but we haven't taken it out of its box." Him - "Oh, so you're here for the scenics? ... do you want to see what I found?"

Prospector on the Skull Creek Road

He reached into the deep recesses in his 4wd and pulled out an old 35mm plastic film container, tipping out some minute flakes of gold  - "That's about two hundred dollars worth there ... just a day's work. I've been checking out some spots. I'm taking a party of prospectors out in a couple of weeks and they need to find something - to keep them happy - otherwise I'll be out of work."

Low hills with acacia on the Skull Springs Road

I couldn't imagine trolling up and down over the ground for hours listening for the golden beeps from a metal detector. But there is always the lure of that 'big find' that gets people excited. Later on in Marble Bar we met a couple who had spent the last ten days "wandering aimlessly up and down" for five hours a day each. They showed us a nugget of just over one ounce that they had found. A bit more impressive I must admit - but it took about a hundred hours of trolling to find it. I think I'll stick to the 'scenics'.

Rocky outcrops

Travelling along the Skull Springs Rd out of Nullagine the road negotiated a series of steep gullies draining the low hills. The road was closed to vehicles over four tonnes, I expect due to the sharpness of the dips. Further east we took a detour down to the Woodie Woodie manganese mine. Here were huge stockpiles of mine spoil with giant trucks traversing the top of the spoil heaps, dwarfed by their surroundings. As a reminder that this is station country, there were cattle grazing at the foot of the heaps.

Cattle feeding below one of the Woodie Woodie spoil heaps

Along sections of the road where the traffic rate is high, and especially on unfenced sections, there is an ever present parade of cattle carcasses in various states of decomposition. Once we came across the poignant scene of a cow standing beside her now dead calf, not yet ready to leave. The only good to come from these deaths is the feast it provides for the crows and wedge tailed eagles. It is a common sight for them to be sharing the repast.

Australian bustards

Just out of  Woodie Woodie we came across this pair of bustards crossing the road. Mark took this photo as they headed into the spinifex. Australian bustards grow up to 1.2m high and can weigh in at 14kg with a wingspan of up to two metres. I must admit I have never seen them fly. Their habitat of choice is tussock grassland adjoining some denser vegetation to provide some protection for the single egg they lay on the ground. It is always a thrill to see them. They are not as common as they used to be and their range has reduced as well.

Punda Pool

After being thrilled to see the Punda Aboriginal art site we drove a few kilometres further to Punda Pool on the Coondiner River. The track is a bit rocky and has some steep dips on which our trailer hitch bottomed out. However it was worth it as this was a fantastic place to camp.

Campsite in early morning at Punda Pool

 There is a long pool of fairly shallow water in a rocky pebbly riverbed. Surrounding this are richly coloured rocky hills covered in spinifex and gnarly white trunked gums ans flowering grevilleas and acacia's golden blooms just beginning to open.

Miske beside Punda Pool 

In the mornings and the evenings the hills glow with amazingly rich colours. To fully appreciate the morning colours you need to brave the extreme cold - I had to resort to wearing woolly gloves when up and about in the early dawn light. The nights were crystal clear, no cloud cover to keep the warm air in.

Home sweet home beside Punda Pool

However by mid afternoon it was warm enough to shower out in the open. We set up our shower under this big old tree - it is still there - we forgot about it and left it there. Oh well, ready for the next happy camper.

Looking from river bed to the hills

This image shows the amazing contrasts in this area, colour and texture. Rounded riverstones and rugged hillside rocks, smooth tree trunks and spiky spinifex. And I haven't even mentioned the birds - they were amazing. Flocks of crested pigeons, spinifex pigeons, diamond doves, zebra finches, budgerigars (by the hundred) and corellas. We saw the more secretive painted finches which the bird book describes as having the red of the hills, the black of the shadows and the white of quartz rocks - they are beautiful. Then there were the honeyeaters and mudlarks and black faced cuckoo shrikes and then the birds of prey here to hunt the plenitude of smaller birds.

Budgies waiting to drink

Budgies in flight above Punda Pool

 I was up early recording the dawn chorus and later the sound of hundreds of budgies wheeling and settling and wheeling again as they were harried by the whistling kites. Mark took some photos of them with his better lens. It is quite a different sight seeing them in the wild compared to the commonly seen cage birds.

Scar tree at Punda 

Finally, in addition to the nearby rock art site there is other evidence of the Aborigines who once lived and roamed in this area. In certain seasons it must have been a rich place to live. I have come across a few of these scar trees where shields and coolamons etc were cut from the trunks of trees.

Pilbara rivers and watercourses

One of the things one does when travelling up here is skip from watercourse to watercourse, and pool to pool. The rivers rarely run except after rains, and consist of a collection of waterholes between lengths of dry riverbed. The surrounding countryside is fairly arid in comparison to the lush greenery around the water.

Just before Newman we had lunch at the south branch of the Gascoyne River. It is a pretty spot, a small still pool of water, slim paperbark trees with silky foliage and shady white trunked eucalypts following the winding course of the river. While Mark tried to photograph a whistling kite stalking the flocks of birds coming in to drink, Miske and I walked downstream to see what we would see. I came across this wonderful twisted tree branch.

Gascoyne River view, south branch

After Newman we drove out to Kalgan Pool, for which we had to get a permit from the tourist bureau in Newman to use a short section of the BHP road. Kalgan Pool is a popular spot with the locals, being so close to town. The road in is normal 4wd. There were a couple of other campers there while we were there. The main pool is at the base of a large red rockface, lined and contorted, and there are a series of other pools within easy walking distance along the watercourse. I explored a few gullies and clambered up part of the side of the gorge overlooking the pool and campsite. It was beautifully warm in the early morning sunshine, while the camp was still in deep shade and very chilly. Softer grasses grew in the gullies - lemon grass and wallaby grass while spiky spinifex grows higher up. Miske soon learnt to tread carefully once we left the gullies. The flowers of Wickham's grevillea and eucalpyts were busy with little honeyeaters.

View from side of gorge, our camp is down there

Miske beside Kalgan Pool in the morning

There were some lovely acacia's with minni ritchie bark growing in the first gully I walked up. I love it with the sun shining behind it, highlighting the curls.

Minni ritchie bark

We passed the galahs on our way in, feeding beside the railway line. The background is typical of the country surrounding the watercourses.

Pink and grey galahs

Punda art

Since leaving Newman one special place we visited was Punda Aboriginal rock art site near the Coondiner River. I was blown away by the beauty of the site and of the art itself. The art is found on large rocks on a hillside beside a small spring and overlooks a gap in the surrounding hills down to the plains beyond. The hill itself has a marvellous conical peak, the perfect marker for a special site.

We had to get a permit to use a section of the BHP rail road to get there but no permit to visit the site itself. As it is open to the public I am working under the assumption it is ok to publish photos of the site and the art itself. The track in is typical 4wd although rocky with dips and hollows towards the end. Here is just a taste of the drawings chipped into the rockfaces.

Bits and pieces near Newman

In travelling up north one spends a lot of time driving. The landscape is largely viewed from one's vehicle with the regular stops for fuel and camping at selected points of interest.

Refuelling at Meekatharra

Newman is largely a mining town. Accommodation units abound. We stayed at Kalgan's Rest which has a small section in the middle for travellers like us. The periphery is devoted to mine workers with one and two story dongas. Around sunrise and sunset one hears the 'crunch ... crunch ... crunch' of the workers footsteps on gravel as they head off for work and a little later the 'crunch ... crunch ... crunch' as the alternate shift workers return. On the streets the mine buses can be seen picking up and ferrying the workers. The dress of choice is fluoro orange and yellow vests, and four wheel drive vehicles sporting a legion of mine insignia, and safety features.

Corellas at Newman

The other thing that caught my eye were the muddy brown little corellas. They were busy feeding in the mown grass, drinking from puddles and playing high on the street lighting.

Just out of Newman near the Opthalmia Dam turnoff we came across another of the hills being eaten away by mines. This time we stopped to photograph it. It is a weird sight - half hill, half mine. 

Mine just of Newman

Lakes, mines and trucks

We spent a bit of time looking around Lakes Austin and Nannine, found either side of Cue. Behind the ridge above Lake Austin is a tumble of mine workings. There are diggings, shafts, heaps of rubble and an assortment of rusted bits and pieces. From the road you would never guess. I knew there ruins of old timers' stone buildings there and we found them nestled in the rocky ridges.

Old stone ruins and my travelling companions

 The rocks are a deep black red banded ironstone. Very beautiful. The lake is of course dry but has a lovely range of colours from the red dirt and samphires.

Rusting and rocky relics overlooking Lake Austin

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View to Lake Austin through quartz studded walls

Lake Nannine likewise has a rocky ridge from which you can overlook the lake but the rocks look like limestone.Creamy white with soft fluffy pale sand between, a salty crunchy layer on the surface. The landscape is natural - obviously the geology here keeps the lakeside safe from mines.

Samphire

Dewy petals 

 Beautiful samphires grow on the flat lake margins. Tiny fragile white shells are 'washed up' in layers on the 'shore'. Equally fragile flowers can be found were in the margins. The eucalypts have richly coloured young stems of red and gold. We watched black faced cuckoo shrikes swooping after flying insects in the afternoon light.

Eucalyptus stems

View across Lake Nannine

We camped here overnight amongst the black stockinged eucalypts. Their young stems were richly coloured in reds and golds. In the middle of the night a red half moon hung over the horizon before sinking out of sight.  Overnight the number of trucks passing reduced to a trickle, starting up again at first light. They are first visible as tiny points of light on the far side of the lake heading down from Meekatharra.

On the road again at first light, Lake Nannine