January 08 – Merredin, a Water Pipeline and the Railway Museum

We took a few photos of our lovely little hotel in Northam.  It was a lovely little hotel/bed and breakfast on a hill with wonderful views of the town and the surrounding hills. 

Then we head out for our drive to Merredin, a small town in the middle of the Central Wheat Belt and about midway from Perth to Kalgoorlie. The drive seems to be through the middle of nowhere with vast stretches of golden wheat fields (harvested).

We have been seeing a large pipeline along most of our route, so we stopped for a couple of pictures.  Turns out this is a waterpipe that brings water from a reservoir in Mandaring (near Perth) to Kalgoorlie.  Construction was started in 1894 and completed in 1903.  It is 330 miles long and was originally designed to about 23,000,000 liters a day (a little over 6,000,000 gallons a day).  It takes 5 to 11 days for a drop of water to get from Manwaring to Kalgoorlie.  There are now 20 pumping stations along the pipeline, up from the original 8.  It supplies water to the goldfields, towns and wheat belt farmlands of Western Australia.

We got to Merredin there well before we could check in so we had lunch and then hit the tourist information center.  We then headed out of town a short way to see one of the painted silos.  Apparently there others around this section of the country so we will be on the lookout for more.

Then we visited the railway museum.  Merredin was a major rail station during the gold rush days.  During the height of the gold rush there were over 100 trains a day running through Merredin. 

The train museum was actually very interesting with well preserved buildings, many artifacts, and a few rail cars.

By the time we finished the museum it was time to find our hotel.