I spent some time this morning before departure looking at, and photographing, the town and its attractions. It really is a cute little place and a considerable effort has been made to make it attractive. I was particularly taken by the old postoffice building that has been turned into a cafe decorated with old postoffice memorabilia.

The London Bridge rock formation was more impressive than I had expected; particularly the view of an infinity of flat olive green land through the bridge portal.

Somewhere I read that the Sandstone area was first explored in 1854 by a party from the Surveyor Generals Dept. of WA. This fact really impressed me. I find the country sometimes tedious to travel through at 100km/h as the roads are straight and the land is relatively featureless. What must it have been like to travel here at 6 km/h ?

The first town of the day was Mount Magnet, named after a local hill which has a high iron ore content.

It is apparently the longest surviving gold mining settlement in the state of WA.

The main street had a nice old hotel building and a very modern and well presented park even including a skate park that was covered to protect skaters from the sun/weather.

Again today I tried to capture the (subtle) changes in the country side through a series of landscape photos. Today there is additional evidence of recent rains. Note the slight green patches on the sides of the road and in the bush near the road, as well as the groves beside the road from running water.

I camped for the night next to Lake Nallan. Unlike most lakes in central Australia which turn out to be dry salt pans this lake had some water in it.

The moon was spectacular once it rose as tonight it was a Strawberry Moon that would be the highest in the sky for 19 years.