Sunday, July 11, 2021

Day 82: Sun 11 Jul - Free Camp to Meekatharra, 148 km; total towed: 8 398 km

6 (felt like 3) - 22 degC, fine and sunny, but very chill early on

After a little sleep-in this morning while the gas heater did its thing, walks and breakfast, we were on the road a tad before 9 am.  The landscape was similar to yesterday, desolate, well we are near the Little Sandy Desert.  Of course, we had the obligatory mornos stop on the 26th Parallel, and arrived at Meekatharra at 11 am. We were initially going to stay at the free camp at Peace Gorge, but changed our mind as there weren't any loos out there and Meeka (as it's known locally) seemed an interesting little place.   So, we got a powered site at the Meeka Accommodation Centre, which is mainly a FIFO camp with about 10 van sites. Going by the reviews, it was a dirty place with the ablutions not often cleaned, however, we found the ablutions to be spotless, and whilst the park is dusty, it is certainly not dirty.

After lunch and an LLD (has become the norm), we hit the roads on the bikes. Out to Peace Gorge first.  The free camp was massive and although there were plenty of vans there it was not crowded by any means.  It was then onto the Meeka Lookout, after which we stumbled on the heritage trail so rode that for a while before coming to the start of it and realised we had completed it. Back to the van for an afternoon cuppa and some blogging before dinner.

As we did not go out for dinner last night, and as it is Mark's birthday (fellow cyclist and caravanner), we went to the local Chinese restaurant located in the Meeka Pub. We were the only ones there and still had to wait a while, but when the meals did come, they were huge and very delicious. They were so big, we each had to take half our meals home, so we got four meals for the price of two, with a bottle of wine included - bargain!!


Sunrise

Sign at our rest stop - someone has a sense of humour or needs to go back to spelling school

Mornos stop

Scenery

Another wide load we had to pull over for

Peace Gorge pano

Road into Peace Gorge


Quite a recent split, you wouldn't want to be standing under that!

Leaning rocks of Peace Gorge

Very barren in places


An old mine at Meeka

No signs to say whether it was still working

Something to do with the gold mining days

Meeha Battery

Kangaroo cutouts in Meeka Park

Meeks Park

Galahs enjoying the green grass in town












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