Leaving Mt Magnet we travel on new roads ( ones that are new to us anyway ) , which is always exciting .
Not far down the road was the ghost town of Paynesville , nothing to be seen except for the cemetery with one lonely grave fenced off and some signs for a few others . Ironically the tree behind the grave has also died . The colours are the real treat here , orange sand & dirt , grey & green of the shrubbery , white flowers and the beautiful blue skies .
Just when we thought we'd left the wildflowers behind , along comes a long stretch of Mulla Mulla and others beside the road , making a wonderful display .
We arrived at Sandstone before lunch , got our spot , set up & had some lunch before going for a drive to Peter Denny Lookout . It looks out over another breakaway - we seem to be getting breakaways now instead of gorges or rocks or other attractions - seems WA has a large amount of things to look at and they come in waves , some of them tidal waves haha . Now is the time of " The Breakaways ".
And it wouldn't be complete without an aerial view .
This is Agnew Sandstone road , we'll be heading this way in a few days time .
Back in Sandstone there are several old buildings , this is the Post and Telegraph Office .
Next day we headed out on the Heritage Trail - about 18 klm loop . First stop was at one of the government funded wells - this one was called the Contradiction Well . It was dug by hand to a depth of 100 metres around 1900 to encourage people to explore and settle further inland - at least they had some water to wash the dust down .
Next stop was the former State Battery , one of 6 still substantially intact . It operated from 1908 till 1982 doing a lot of the hard work for small mines and prospectors , it crushed the larger ore and extracted the gold . Would have been extremely noisy as each one of the 5 steel rods was raised and then dropped crushing the rock .
Next stop was London Bridge , a section of Laterite Rock that has been eroded away to form a bridge . There's enough room to drive our ute through easily , but glad they've closed it off to vehicles as some clown would try to drive over the top .
And from above .
Next stop was the Brewery , now you've had a look at the photo and you can see a cave , not just any old cave . On top of this rocky outcrop was a few buildings one of which was the Brewery , very cleverly they dug out the cave , which is above 8m deep , then turns left for another 5m . They dug a hole into the roof of the cave and had a pulley system to bring the cold beer up from what became the cellar . It would have been extremely hard to keep anything cool out here in summer when the temperature goes upwards to 45 degrees , you get a feeling for what these intrepid prospectors & miners went through - but you can only imagine - it was only 33 degrees today !!
This is a restored settlers house in town .
As you can see on the right hand corner of the previous photo , there's a Jade plant - we'd never seen one in flower , but this one was going berserk with flowers .
This is the still functioning National Hotel , it's also the general store as well .
Whilst driving around we found the airport / airstrip , but we had to drive through the golf course to get to it . As you can see there's not a blade of grass to be seen , and I missed the annual tournament which was on a few weeks ago and had 52 men and 12 women playing in it !!
Later that afternoon , I heard some noise so went outside for a look , this is what I saw .
In amongst that smoke is a caravan and the amenities building - not looking good . Nothing to worry about though , it was just the local council doing the weekly mosquito fogging .
Finishing off our stay here we had a good sunset .
Here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Dywiat7H15K-jCkF6VCdZVSq9mKHQjYS&usp=sharing
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