We covered a lot of new ground today. We left Niagara Dam camp and headed back to the Goldfields Highway to up to Leonora from where we moved North East to Laverton approximately 190 kms toward the Warburton and The Great Central Road which stretches to Alice Springs. It’s a very active mining area with one of the biggest Nickel Cobalt mines processing ore in the middle of nowhere. The town itself is mainly an aboriginal settlement with some mining support services. It has variety of dwellings, many older types and a lot of boarded up houses. The town has a particularly sad history as there was a massacre of aborigines in the area in 1910 but all those implicated were acquitted by the white court system. It seems unfathomable that such a thing could occur a little over a hundred years ago.
We made our way back to the highway and went and visited the ghost town of Gwahlia, situated next to the vast Gwalia gold mine. We had an interesting tour through the museum and Hoover House (yes it was once occupied by a 24 year old Herbert Hoover who went on to become president of the USA) before heading North again and setting up camp on the side the road.