A very fresh start to the morning, well, fresher than what we are used to anyway. We rugged up for our walks.
Fairly late departure for us today at 9:15 am, and yes, on another perfect highway. The scenery was not quite as speccy today, but very pleasant just the same. Plenty of wild flowers and flowering native to enhance the hills and valleys. As we'd had a brew before we left, there was no reason to stop before arriving at the Newman Caravan Park at 10:40. It's one of those automated self-serve parks, book online, use a PIN at the gate and park yourself at the site you've booked. The park only opened early this month so there's a couple of teething issues but it is very well laid out and all the sites are drive-through. There are grassed and gravel sites for both powered and non-powered. We booked a grass powered site, #3A. We had an issue with no water, so rang the Shire and they had someone come and have a look at it and found it was a kinked pipe. Fortunately, our water tanks were almost full so Wendy was able to do a couple of loads of washing while we were waiting for the repairman.
Whilst Wendy did some real work, Greg went exploring Newman on his bike. He checked out the pub for dinner tonight, and visited a few of the sights in Newman. It's basically a BHP miners' town and they haven't spent much time nor effort catering for us tourists. Although there's a great system of bike paths so nothing much else matters really. He took a ride up to a couple of lookouts which built up an appetite for dinner.
The Pub tonight was at the Red Sands Tavern, an easy 15 minute walk up the road. The meals were twice the price they are at Howard, but just as nice. The not-so-nice bit was that it was very loud with music and a lot of mine workers, all talking LOUD because that's the only volume level they know. The walk home settled the tummies. It was starting to freshen up again, so we didn't linger long outside. At the time of writing (7:40 pm) the temperature is 14 degC so Greg has put the fan heater on.
Pretty wild flowers on our morning walks
Mt Robinson Rest Area from above
#3A Yurlu Caravan Park, Newman, grassed sites
gravel sites
One of the old "smaller' dump trucks
The Recreational building
Stan & Ella Hilditch Statues, discovered iron ore at Newman
View from town lookout
Street art
Granite rings carved out of one block of stone
Newman Cenotaph
