Before getting underway today I did a short tour of the town of Southern Cross and sought to capture some of the effort by the locals to make their town charming. Once fueled up it was time to hit the road. And some road it was going to be. As I would discover the 180 km to Coolgardie that I saw on a sign as I left the town completely overlooked the fact that there was nothing else in the way of civilization before Coolgardie.

Not far out of town I came across a tall smoke stack and brick building, both obviously abandoned. I stopped to take a look and from the information panels and some stuff I read last night on wikipedia I finally understood. This was an early, and now obsolete pumping staion for the Goldfields Water Pipeline.

The Goldfield Water Pipeline was initially completed in 1903 and at that time the stations that pumped the water through the pipeline were powered by steam from coal. The site I was looking at was pump station 6.

The final photo in the group is a weigh bridge. Local wood from native tress proved to be cheaper than coal and hence the operators of the pump stations purchased wood by weight from local timber-cutters.

Along the way today I stopped at a number of rest areas that permitted overnight camping. They were usually appointed with concrete picnic seating and pit toilets.

Early in the days ride the vegetation often included gums trees with attractive red/pink trunks.

The road had many many long straight sections.

I took a break in the town of Coolgardie. This town was once at the center of the gold rush into this area but was eclipsed by Kalgoorlie where there is today a huge open cut gold mine.

I did not want to stay in Kalgoorlie overnight, too expensive, and too large a town. So I chose a primitive camping spot from an app called WikiCamps. It turned out to be just a patch of low bush.

The first thing I noticed was no table. So far my camping spots have had picnic tables. Not tonight. So I improvised by using the rear carrier of the bike as my table.

Once dinner was over; tomatoe soup and bread, I watched the moon and stars take over as the sun set.