Alan & Lyn's Huge Adventure: 9/7/16 Wide loads , gorges and gold mines

After some rain last night , we wake to a sunny day . Today we are going up , down , across and back - because we can !!

Dooleena Gorge is the first destination , so off we go back out onto Marble Bar Rd and head northwest , back toward Port Hedland . It was only 35 klms from town , so would be easy . As we got out of town , we came toward the road to Telfor & Newman - just as we approached , 2 wide load semi trailers came out of the road and headed toward Port Hedland - we were never going to beat them to the corner , so let them go . The first one was 6.5m wide !!! and took up nearly all of the bitumen , the second wasn’t as wide . They called us up on the radio and said we could overtake - at this stage Lyn wasn’t exactly happy , but we pulled out and started to overtake , the driver then told us to wait just a bit till he got past a sign , then he would move over a bit more , doing 85 past a wide load with one set of wheels on the edge of the bitumen nd the other set in the gravel wasn’t the best feeling , but we got past with no problems . I got a photo of it in the rear view mirror .

The scenery is still great as we make our way to Coongan Gap - a section of road all trucks have to do 40 klm/hr through , cars can go 60 klm/hr . As we approached a road train was coming toward us , boy was he in for a surprise !! the wide load wasn’t that far behind us , and everything had been pulling off the road to let it past - road trains included !!

Through the gap and over the Coongan River , we pulled off the road onto a dirt track into Dooleena Gorge . Orange sandy track with white gum trees took us further in off the road to the camping area where the area opened up . It is quite a popular free camp spot .

We parked under a shady gum tree and went for a walk up the river bed . There is a reasonable sized pool of water , but it was over 100m from where we parked and the rest of the river bed gets up to 200 - 300 m wide !!

The river is lined by white barked gum trees - probably still coolabah trees - that stand out against all the red rock and orange sand .

On the river bed are many small plants starting to flower after recent rains .

Back to the ute , we drove back out for a bit , till we got to a track off to the left that led into a small gorge - we had to take that turn - it was calling our name !!

The walk up the very rocky creek bed was challenging , but led to a small pool - very deep mind you - it was only about 4m round , and it had fish swimming in it !!! this is about 500m from the river and hasn’t had any water connecting the 2 for many months !! We climbed up and around the first pool to the second pool to find a clear water pool only about 2m deep at the most . There was another above this one , but it was dry , and above it there was a valley with a dry creek bed . The view back down was pretty good !!

Back to the ute and we headed back to town and had lunch in the park , before going out to Comet Gold Mine . The mine had stopped production in 1955 , with much of the workings still there rusting away , as is most of their 44 gallon drums , old cars , engines , you name it, it’s probably there !!! The smoke stack is higher than the surrounding hills so that the arsenic that comes out of the rocks in the process of extracting the gold , gets blown away , rather than getting trapped in the valley and exterminating the workers !!!

After having a look around at the rock / gemstone collection & other old equipment that is also rusting away , we headed further south for a look at the countryside . The clouds making the mountains in the distance look good .

Back into town , we went back up to the water tank lookout to look at the clouds - they were lining up for a long long way - cloud streets - something we looked forward to when I was hang gliding - it meant there was plenty of lift available to fly some distance .