Day 70 - Sandstone to Menzies (16 Nov)

Had our first puncture today on the car.  Luckily we had stopped to try and photograph a couple of wedge tailed eagles (got one photo) and as we were pulling off heard air been released from the back type, bummer.  We had somehow split the side of the tyre so not fixable.  Will have to replace it in Kalgoorlie.  Went through Leinster (another BHP Billiton project - nickel this time) and Leonora.  Leinster partiularly caters for the worker and is well setup, Leonora not so well setup but a pretty town.  Menzies, well another story.  We have only stopped here to visit Lake Ballard where the stick men statues are set amongst a salt lake (known as the Inside Australia exhbition 2003).  The town of Menzies has absolutely nothing except a tourist bureau, a Caltex service station and a pub of course.  The caravan park would only just qualify as a caravan park in that it provides power and water, the ablutions are demountables with no doors on the shower cubicles just a curtain, however they are clean (at least the ladies - one good thing about being a female in mining areas is that there are very few women around so generally the ablutions are clean and empty most of the time).  I'm sure the same can't be said about the mens.  We quickly setup the van and took off to Lake Ballard to take some shots at sunset.  After 51kms on dirt road we found the stick figures in the lake.  There are 51 of them (total of the town's inhabitants back in 2003).  The artist depicted each person by their own statue to capture their soul (if you are into that arty type stuff).  Anyway a little disappointing as what you see on TV is not what you get.  Yes 51 figures are there alright spread out across the whole lake which is very muddy due to recent rain and it takes two hours to walk to each one (on a good dry surface day).  I thought they would be closer together in groups.  We are the only ones here by the way.  So we set off with an impending thunderstom and lightning (3rd day in a row) on the horizon, with the thunder getting louder by the minute, we trudged to the closest statutes, took the photos, watched the lightning get closer and closer and decided the other 48 statues could wait and John justified it by saying how different can they be, they will all have tits or dicks.  He is probably right, being on a open lake with lightning strikes probaly not the smartest thing to do.  By this time also the wind was picking up and we could smell the rain in the air (yes you can smell it).  Got back to the car, cleaned our shoes and Coco's paws as best we could, had a coffee and waited for a sunset which never eventuated as no sooner had we done this then the heavens opened and it has been raining ever since.  Lovely big drops of rain, it is great as it is still warm!  We had driven to the lake on a very dusty road and the drive home was a very sodden sticky and muddy road.  Easy to see how quickly floods can develop.  Here are the photos of the stick people.  Unless you have Lake Ballard on your 'bucket list' I personally wouldn't bother, interesting to see but a long way to travel.  Some of the surrounding landscape however is very very pretty.  We've ticked that box.