Hardest day yet.
Lots of corrugations.
Lots of loose sand.
Mostly reasonable road from Victoria Rocks north to Coolgardie but hard work getting to that stage.
As I said to the concerned tourist going past I was ‘shaken but happy’ on a particularly long stretch of corrugations and sand.

/OI000062-300×225.jpg” alt=”Junction of Victoria Rocks Road andthe old gold miner’s trail The Holland Track.” width=”300″ height=”225″ class=”size-medium wp-image-144″ /> Junction of Victoria Rocks Road andthe old gold miner’s trail The Holland Track.[/caption].

Reached Victoria Rocks at 13:30 but decided to press on rather than risk arriving late into Coolgardie.
Why is the last 30 km always harder than the first 60, no matter how stuffed the first bit was?
Crawled into Coolgardie and headed to the tourist centre which sent me backwards to the caravan park. Set up the tent and off to the Denver City pub for a VB and mixed grill.

Bruce – I don’t think the fridges have worked for a while so beers were served tepid from a Volkswagen-sized Esky.

Coolgardie may have been the first gold and first to get the railway but it has lost it spot to Kalgoorlie since then. Re-routing the rail line away from the town seems to have about done it in.
Kalgoorlie can’t get too cocky. When the Hyden-Norseman Road is bitumened Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie will lose a lot of the heavy truck traffic from over east that keeps them going now.

Got back to camp to find my privacy had been ruined by a pair of youngsters driving a 25 year old Corolla over to Melbourne. Nice people but just a bit close.

Am I going feral already?