We reached Leonora late morning, stopped to fuel-up and grab some lunch. As I was munching my pie, I looked down. Hmmm… - that tyre looks a bit flat. Sure enough, it’s down and I see a nail embedded in the tread.
Dang! This could delay us, as we were going to check out Gwalia, just on the outskirts of Leonora before beelining to Lake Ballard.
Gwalia (
Gwalia, Western Australia - Wikipedia,
Leonora and Gwalia Ghost Town along Golden Quest Discovery Trail | Australia's Golden Outback) is very interesting, but I have been before. So I suggested to my brother and SIL, who hadn’t, to go out there while I had the tyre repaired and I’d catch up with them.
“OK mate, just run that thing in here and I’ll jack ‘er up and get that wheel off…”
Out comes the forklift, and he pokes one fork under the towbar; the other fork perilously close to the body. Up she goes - quickly.
“Errr, err…, OK mate.” And he jams a lump of wood in to hold the forklift’s footbrake…
I surreptitiously jam a brick under a front wheel of my vehicle...
He gets the tyre off the rim. Hmmm… that nail hasn’t penetrated the tyre.
“B-b-but it was definitely down.” - as he looks at me suspiciously as though I’m a city slicker like
@Daver6 or some geo that’s gone as soft as Philly cheese like
@RooFlyer.
“Ah-ha, mate – see, I told you never to assume anything out here.”
“Err, err, but I didn’t – really, truly.”
A small hard stick had gone through on the other side. Patched and on my way after quite a lot of Goldfields philosophising with a mountain of stuffed tyres forming the backdrop. Another tyre experience to add to my list from, particularly, Argentina.
Phew, ignominy in Leonora narrowly averted. I think.
I meet up with the others at the Gwalia museum.
Through the first museum building and past the mine lookout to the winder house, headframe, mine manager’s residence, and offices. Gwalia is famous for Herbert Hoover being the mine manager (for a brief, but eventful, period) late in the 19th century.