April 10/11 (234 km)                  KALGOORLIE CP ($A14)

A long empty section of the Gt Eastern Highway, still following the 1890's route to the Goldfields. The derelict site of the No 7 Pump Station community is marked by the pipeline, railway and telegraph. Recognised the place we put our tent up in the bush 5 years ago, between Yellowdine and Bullabulling – a memorable night – and the solitary Rock Tavern roadhouse at BULLABULLING where we enjoyed a late breakfast by the wood-burning stove.

COOLGARDIE, the 'Mother of the Goldfields', with its wide streets and grand heritage buildings, offers a caravan park, museums and historic Moran's Store for supplies.

On to KALGOORLIE-BOULDER, the centre of the Goldfields and the biggest city on our route since Perth. Here are 5 caravan parks, fast food outlets and restaurants, Coles and Woolworths supermarkets and fuel, parks and museums. Chose the simplest caravan park, mostly statics housing mine-workers, with a small area for touring visitors.

Birthday meal for Margaret: a roast chicken (or 'chook') and a fresh jam and cream sponge cake (known as a 'Lamington'). Australian food is familiar, fresh and delicious – all home-grown, from lamb to bananas.

Visited the WA Museum (entry free, donations welcome) and took the lift up its tall headframe for a panoramic view of the city. The massive working Super Pit, Australia's largest open-cut gold mine, is another awesome sight, yawning below the free viewing platform. Mt Charlotte Reservoir, reached by O'Connor's water pipeline in 1903, is another significant viewpoint.

Email facilities were disappointing – none at the Library and only one expensive internet place which we had to use.

April 12/13 (245 & 286 km)       LEONORA CP ($A20)

North from Kalgoorlie on the Goldfields Highway, following the railway line to Leonora. Mining ghost towns line the route –a single hotel at Broad Arrow built in 1896; abandoned railway cottages. MENZIES has a historic town hall and a caravan park. A red kangaroo with a youngster at foot bounded past as we visited the fascinating pioneer cemetery there. Eucalyptus trees gave way to mulga scrub as we continued north, the highway very quiet except for road trains serving those mines still working.

LEONORA has another caravan park, roadhouse and post office. Camped here, with a variety of neighbours: a young man hoping to find work; outfits preparing to drive the Outback Highway track from Laverton to Ayers Rock (1,000 miles of gravel road); and a friendly retired 'digger' on a fossicking trip, his Polish accent still thick after 40 years working in West Australia's many mines. He had a campervan, a metal detector and a wife who preferred to stay home in Perth! The woman running the caravan park told of her health problems, having contracted the mosquito-borne Ross River virus, for which there is no treatment or cure. As the sun set, the sky blackened and sheet lightning flashed, heralding a short heavy rainstorm. The first, we are told, for a year.

Next day, drove east to LAVERTON, an extremely quiet outback road – in almost 100 miles we saw only one car going our way and 8 coming towards us! Lost count, though, of the number of dead kangaroos lining the road, attracting murders of crows and a pair of wedgetail eagles which we kept disturbing. Saw our first string of emu running through the bush. Past the working Murrin Murrin mine (cobalt and nickel), to WINDARRA. Here is a more modern ghost mine – the worked-out Poseidon nickel mine, which operated from 1982-1994. In nearby LAVERTON, nickel and goldmines are still operative.

Back at Leonora, visited the GWALIA goldmine – another big hole in the ground, due to re-open next year. Its first manager in 1898 was Herbert Hoover, later President of the USA, and his grand house is restored next to the museum. The whole settlement of little miners' huts, abandoned when the mine closed in 1963, is freely open to visit. Many of the corrugated iron shacks have been roughly refurbished and peopled with scarecrow figures, an eerie experience!

April 14 (246 km)                       KALGOORLIE CP ($A14)

Retraced our track to Kalgoorlie along the 'Golden Quest Discovery Trail'. Lake Goongarrie, on the left of the highway south of Menzies, appeared to have water, though it may have been the mirage of the sun shining on the salt lake. The larger Lake Ballard, north of Menzies, only has water about once every 30 years.

Stocked up with food and fuel (courtesy of Woolworths) for the onward journey.

April 15 (213 km)                       NORSEMAN, Gateway CP ($A22)

Returned to COOLGARDIE, in order to continue following our cross-Australia cycle route, which had not deviated to the northern goldfields. The impressive Warden's Court Building on the main street houses a good Goldrush Museum, price $A3 (half-price for seniors), which included a viewing of an excellent video about Prospectors old and new, along with coffee and biscuits! Ben Prior's park, opposite, had plenty of rusty old ironwork.

The railway, water pipeline branch and our road now turned south, through empty eucalyptus woods, past the huge Lefroy salt lake, until the roadhouse at WIDGIEMOOLTHA marked another stage on our ride. We found the simple Widgiemooltha Cabins, where we'd spent a freezing night huddled by a bonfire 5 years ago. The Wilderness Survival Centre appeared locked and deserted – as it had been then (we had got the key from the only neighbours).

Racing a freight train of ore, which just beat us to the level crossing; pausing to lunch by Lake Cowan (another salt lake, crossed by both road and railway on low causeways); we finally reached NORSEMAN, the Gateway to the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor – a 9-day cycle-ride from Perth, and 2 weeks by motorhome this time, albeit with more side-trips!

First stop was Dollykissangel, a second-hand book shop cum doll and toy museum, run by a motherly Geordie. We'd bought books from her on 2 previous visits and were sad to find the store closed due to her illness. Her husband, an Austrian goldminer (6 ft 6 ins tall - a height matched by their 3 sons), told us the local news.

The new Shire Hall and Library offered the only internet in town and we had an hour ($A5) before it closed at 5 pm for the weekend. The Shire of Dundas reaches the WA/SA state border, covering 92,725 (mostly empty) sq km!

The caravan park asked us to use water sparingly, while a sign on the highway reminded us to fill up in Norseman as there was little water until Ceduna, about 850 miles away! The area is classed as semi-arid with about 10 inches of rain per year.

A stroll round the starlit town in the early evening was strangely quiet, just the 2 roadhouses doing business. If the goldmine closes, it will be another ghost settlement.

April 16/17 (106 km)                  FRASER RANGE Sheep Station ($A20)

Water and diesel tanks filled, we headed east along the Eyre Highway, surprisingly hilly and green with gum trees reflecting the sunshine. Our altitude has been over 1,000 feet since Northam; Fraser Range is at 1,400 ft, surrounded by granite hills and eucalyptus forest. Passed 2 large rest areas off the highway, each with tables, fireplace, outback 'dunny' (dry toilet) and a sign permitting 24 hrs stay - a common feature in the bush.

After 100 km, about half way to the Balladonia Roadhouse, we turned right along a 2 km track to the FRASER RANGE Station, On our long cycle ride, we'd been welcomed here for the night by Heather Campbell and have fond memories of staying in the shearers' quarters, simple candle-lit outbuildings, cooking on the wood-fired stove in the kitchen. The Fraser Range Station was settled in 1872, the first on the Nullarbor Plain.

Now a new caravan park, with electricity generator and full facilities, has developed and the 'quarters' have become 'historic accommodation with false ceilings and queensize beds'! Water is still scarce though and not potable: showers are coin-operated, the washing machine takes $A5 and bottled drinking water is on sale. Very sad to learn that the station changed hands 3 years ago because Heather's husband was killed when his microlight plane crashed into the hills behind the sheep station. Heather and teenage son, Alastair, have moved away and incomers have taken over.

An afternoon walk, 2½ miles climbing 400 ft up to the cairn on the top of the range, gave a wonderful view of the Nullarbor and a meeting with a pair of bounding kangaroos, as well as a few of the damara sheep which are now run here (for meat rather than Heather's merinos for wool). Lamb chops for supper, too!

Listening to ABC Radio's 'Australia All Over' (a Sunday morning national favourite from 7-10 am), we heard Macca (Ian McNamara) hosting the programme from Tumby Bay on the Eyre Peninsula. He interviewed one Jonathan, who sang his own song about Tumby Bay (where his father and grandfather had both been GP doctors). He'd been a touring singer-songwriter but said he'd now settled on 'a sheep station between Norseman and Balladonia': he turned out to be the manager of Fraser Range, away for a few days! Tumby Bay was celebrating the centenary of its school and recovering from bush-fires which claimed 9 lives early this year.

We took a longer walk on Sunday afternoon, about 4 miles in the hills, photographing more kangaroos. Sparsely scattered sheep shared the barely existent grazing. Very warm in the daytime (laundry dried in minutes), clear and cold at night.

In between times, we sorted photographs and text for our upcoming website: www.magbaztravels.com, set up for us by Rebecca in Cairns and now ready and waiting for data.