Waggin' Trail: Afghan Rock

Today's Gazza Tour took us about 120 km south of Meekatharra to Cue, where we turned on to a dirt track heading east into mining territory. Cue is surrounded by dozens of abandoned little mining towns; most of them are hardly noticeable - if you keep your eyes peeled you might see an old bit of railway siding, a pile of stone rubble from a building or a rusting tank. The entire countryside for miles and miles and miles has been dug up by miners since the 1800's; it's amazing.

First we drove to Afghan Rock, a small granite outcrop covered with eroded hollows and gullies; in the rain it would become a fantastic, complex series of waterfalls. Next to it is a little windmill, bore and trough. In the olden days the Afghan camel teams would stop there to drink. We climbed to the top and as usual looked out over the astonishing endless expanse of the outback thinking "Jesus god how did anyone survive out here", then got back into the air conditioning with our lovely ice chilled drinks, iPod, bug spray and sunglasses. "Right, tick, done, what's next?"

From there we backtracked and took the turn off to Big Bell, the old townsite with the ghost pub, then on to Walga Rock.

With more modern equipment and deep-earth imaging technology available now, many of the old mine sites are being re-explored and re-opened. The contrast between the painstaking, handbuilt old town & mine sites we saw and the ferocious curent day mining boom was highlighted when we had to pull right off the highway to let some mega-oversize loads come through - eight metres across, the trucks were carrying monster haul packs (dump trucks) northbound. They had pilot vehicles in front of them for kilometres to make sure everyone got off the road - not an inch to spare!