Day 114 Mount Magnet, (Tourist Trail), WA

 Mount Magnet has put a great amount of effort into securing its position as a tourist stopover with a modern information centre with very helpful and knowledgeable staff.  When we visited the centre yesterday we were given a lot of useful information about where we should go today and what we should give a miss.  The Tourist Trail is a must do but the Dalgaranga Crater is a miss.  The crater is over 80km outside of Mount Magnet and our helpful lady said that when she visited the crater she asked her husband where it was and he replied, "You're standing in it!"

Anyway, back to the Tourist Trail.  There are seventeen points of interest along the 35 kilometre trail.  Some are inaccessible at the moment due to mining but we managed to see most of them.  Our first stop was Poverty Fats where a few months after the first (reef )gold was found near the Mount Magnet in July 1891, 250 ounces of alluvial gold was "dug up like potatoes" in a few hours.  The largest nugget weighed 100.03 ounces.  There is not much here now except an old mine shaft seen in the distance.

Next stop is the Miners Cottage that you also can't access and can only see from afar.  It is the last stone miner's cottage that is near the old Boogardie Townsite which has succumbed to mining operations.

The Warramboo Hill was originally named West Mount Magnet by explorer Robert Austin in 1854.  This is not the magnetic hill which he climbed and named Mount Magnet which rises to the east.  In 1886 surveyor HS King returned the hill to its Aboriginal place name Warramboo.  The lookout here is great with views for many kilometres.  To our right we see the giant open cut gold mine and directly in front of us lies the Mount Magnet township.

At Checker Mill we once again have no access but I can tell you that it was named after Hill 50 Gold Mine manager Lou Checker.  Ore is treated here and gold extracted and poured.  Only the gold leaves Mount Magnet.  The treated ore is returned to the landscape forming man made "dumps" which are revegetated.

Mother and Child Grave is so sad to see.  There is a poignant ballad of the unidentified mother and child who died during the typhoid plague of 1908.  I picked a tiny posy of little wildflowers and laid them on the grave.

The Amphitheatre of weathered laterite, was awesome and Philip and I took turns at Coo-ee-ing to hear the echo.  The amphitheatre is thought to be the site of an ancient waterfall from an earlier land level time. It is a great place to explore the nearby caverns.

We didn't stop at the Cave that is a result of erosion over eons of time.  Geologically this area has not undergone any major upheaval since the Pre Cambrian period.  Archaean rocks form the basis of the whole plain.

Some people like to visit cemetery's.  I am not not one of those people.  I get too emotional and today was an example when we stopped at Lennonville Cemetery.  There were so many difficulties living in this remote area in the early 1900's with little or no medical assistance.  The fact that the majority of the graves are for children disturbed me greatly.

Lennonvile townsite lies abandoned.  In fact whatever was left after the miners departed was burnt to the ground.  In its heyday when gold was booming there were 3000 people living at this site.  The gold boom lasted from 1897 to 1905.  The old railway platform is still standing and I read that it was the pastoralists who lobbied for a railway line to carry their wool to the port at Geraldton but it was the later discovery of gold which brought its construction in record time!

So that brings us to our last site of interest - The Granites.  It is a spectacular 15 metre escarpment fantastically sculptured by erosion.  It is a special place for the local indigenous and holds many sacred sites.

The Tourist Trail took us around three hours and it was certainly well worth our time. Each site is well signposted with information boards at each place.  We give it a four and half stars out of five!