Leinster, the home of the Wedge Tail Eagle, is a BHP mining town supporting the nickel mine. Stopped here for fuel, the town has a lot of donga's for the miners' accommodation but also provide for families, with schools, health facilities etc. You can dine at the Miners Mess for $20 a head but as we arrived at lunchtime, we decided to press on. From Leinster we head west towards Mt Magnet.

We camped the night at Peter Denny Lookout, 30km east of Sandstone, and caught up with Carol & Tommy again and enjoyed happy hour around a campfire along with another couple from Perth. At Mt Magnet, again we head further north, this time up the Great Northern Highway, heading towards Meekatharra. We stopped just south of Cue for the night, nice clear sky, cooked up whiting, flathead & calamari (from home) for dinner.

As we pulled into Cue the following morning we met up again with the couple from Perth and we all decided to do the town walk together. Our first stop was at the Shire Office, which houses heaps of the towns' pictorial history. We were given access to all rooms including the Council Chambers, except a couple of working offices. A sensational view of the towns history, it's a credit to the town. After exploring the rest of the town we decided to try out a new café that a couple had opened up in one of the town pubs. After filling our stomachs we hit the road and found a camp west of Meekatharra, Peace Gorge. Peace Gorge is only 3.5km from town and has stunning granite boulders, which look stunning on dusk.

Heaps of road trains are on the roads, hauling mining equipment, some up to 8 metres wide. When you come across these massive loads, the podcast or book that we are listening to goes off and the UHF is turned up to hear the size of load coming towards us. When the 8metre loads are coming towards us we are well and truly off the road. It's so impressive seeing these massive haulage.

Driving into Meekatharra the shops look like they are all closed up, as all doors and windows are all secured up, but it's normal business. Driving north our we camped beside Bilyuin Pool, which is on private property, 14km of dirt road off the Great Northern Highway. Heaps of birdlife, cattle and very relaxing chilling out beside this stunning waterhole. Talking to other campers there who were travelling south they suggested the middle section of Gascoyne River.

As we came across the Southern Section of the Gascoyne River, the landscape changed dramatically, all of a sudden we were driving through grassy fields. No sooner had we both made comment on the change in this landscape, it changed back to open baron plains. We stopped and enjoyed two days beside the Middle Branch of the Gascoyne River, which only had water in about a 200metres stretch. Here we enjoyed walking the dry part of the riverbed and catching up with other fellow travellers.

Alan has a problem…….supplies on Pepsi have run extremely low, after finding an emergency bottle of Pepsi under the bed, it was decided time to move on and get to Newman and Woolworths. After a quick Sunday morning breaky, we packed up and drove 230km's to stock up on food and Pepsi. The strategic analyst has now worked out which towns have Woolworths and they are hundreds of klms apart, so hopefully enough stock is purchased between shops.

About 10 klms up the road from our last camp, we finally spot our first lot of camels, there was about 8 of them. Unfortunately we couldn't get too close to them for a great photo. The big camera is going to travel with us next year.

Just prior to arriving in Newman, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and are now entering the Pilbara. Leaving Newman about 3.30pm, our destination is still 100km northeast, this is late for us to be travelling on the roads, but all other roadside stops were right on the highway. The scenery from Newman changed from open plains to the beautiful Ophthalmia Ranges, we drove past Mount Newman on our right and arrived at 5pm at the Mt Robinson Rest Area. The camp area is pretty full when we arrived; we enjoyed the night watching the sun setting on the ranges opposite our camp and enjoyed dinner watching the bush telly. It was a mass exodus in the morning with only one other caravan staying for another day. We spent the morning, rock hopping, exploring the unnamed gorge out the back of the campground. Beautiful scenery.