Our drive today took us cross-country from Mt Magnet to Leinster along the Mt Magnet-Sandstone Road… after some careful maneuvering out of the Mt Magnet Caravan Park…

As we pulled into Sandstone we were impressed with the neat and tidy townscape…

and we stopped for morning tea at the café in the old post office…

The café had a great collection of memorabilia from the early days of the town including an old postie bike…

We had a great coffee and scones then walked across to the small museum and visitor centre for a look.

Sandstone was a booming gold rush town 100 years ago with a population of up to 6000 people. They had some interesting relics and displays in the museum…

the Womaton in particular caught our eye… we wondered what the ingredients were for such an amazing potion for “weak women”… after a bit of a Google search we discovered it had vegetable extracts and OPIUM!!

There was a short heritage trail we decided to do as there were some interesting sights to see… along the trail was the former State Battery where the gold was extracted and refined…

The natural stone formation “the London Bridge” is a “breakaway” – a unique structure formed from weathered basalt.. It was an area where the townspeople used to come for picnics and celebrations – they even drove horse and carts over the bridge (hard to imagine today!)…

It was a great place for another group shot!!

Klaus had a quick sweep with his metal detector as there were mullock heaps and quartz all over the place… unfortunately again to no avail…

Further along the trail was “the Brewery cave ” – a cave where beer barrels were stored. A brewery had been built on top of the small hill where the cave was by an Irishman Mr Kearney in 1907 to provide beer for the miners of Sandstone… The cave kept the beer really cool in the hot climate…

Back on to the main road to Leister and we passed through an RFDS landing strip – they do a great and necessary role in such a remote location with all the heavy industry around…

The Agnew Mine site was visible – as were the windfarm windmills which stood starkly in the distance – we had not seen any for ages it seems!

We arrived at the Goldfields Highway intersection and turned into Leinster – a BHP town run for the mining community here…

We entered the Caravan Park and picked a spot – then went across to the local supermarket to pay for the 2 night stay…

That night we sat around the fire… the temperature had dropped to single figures and the only way we could sit outside was to have a roaring fire!!