Dau 117, Leonora, WA

It is around 300km from Sandstone to Leonora in the Northern Goldfields of Western Australia, and that is where we are staying overnight.  It was cold this morning (for us) and the temperature only varied a few degrees throughout the day.  I heard rain on the roof of the caravan at some stage through the night that lulled me into a deep sleep.  We skipped breakfast with a plan for brunch somewhere between Sandstone and Leinster.  This seems to work for us on a travel day.

The scenery doesn't change very much on our eastern journey to Leinster.  We have run out of wildflowers and will start seeing them tomorrow as we travel further south towards Kalgoorlie.  

Leinster is around 150km from Sandstone and even though it is off the highway we drive the short distance into the town.  Leinster Mine is a BHP Underground Nickel Mine and the township of Leinster is a closed town meaning that no-one except mine workers can live in the town.  It is home to around 500 Miners who are given free housing and free access to the local swimming pool and gym as well as a supermarket and cafe.  There is no crime in this town.  BHP have strict rules for this kind of behaviour and you are immediately sacked if you don't follow those rules.  It is a leafy treed town and I can understand why it is not a hardship to live here.

The scenery starts to change as we head further south with lots of wattle on both sides of the road.  

On our right hand side we see the massive Thunderbox Gold Mine.  The Thunderbox deposit was discovered in 1999 and is considered to be one of the significant gold deposits discovered within the last 20 years in Australia. It is an open cut mine with the potential for underground operations.

It is not very much further along the road that we pass the turnoff to King of Hills Mine, another gold mine.  I look up Wikipedia and see that it is an underground mine although the satellite image that I have is very similar to Thunderbox Mine so I presume it started as open cut and moved to underground production.  Plenty of gold in this area!

We are now ensconced at Leonora.  You instantly know that this is a mining town by the number of mine vehicles lining the street.  It is a larger town than I imagined with most services available.  There is only one caravan park to service the town and even now as I write this blog I can see that it is almost full.  I booked the site in advance but haven't paid for it yet and wonder how I'm going to do that as it is a contactless check-in.  I'm presuming someone will collect our money at some stage.  Perhaps it's free 😂