Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

Kalgoorlie from
Charlotte Hill Lookout

The Super Pit.

Kalgoorlie, home to the gold rush that started in 1894, and is still going strong, 120 years on. It is just mind boggling, the amount of gold that has come out of the ground around here. It is a commodity priced by the ounce, but produced by the tonne. Thousands of tonnes each year. Today, it is huge scale mining. You only have to visit the huge hole in the ground, The Super Pit, to understand the scale of today's operations, but it wasn't always that way. The history of Kalgoorlie is amazing. Hardship on a scale that is unimaginable, fortunes made and lost, disease, and an endless search for precious water, are all part of that history.

Kalgoorlie Town Hall.

Boulder Town Hall.

Today, Kalgoorlie-Boulder as it is officially known, is a thriving country town of 32,000 people, 600 kilometres east of Perth. What had originally been two separate towns, became one in the early 1990's. It is a bit funny really, as there are two town centres, both with their own Town Hall. Both with a fantastic array of historic buildings, and most have been retained and restored. In fact, Boulder's main street, Burt Street, is currently undergoing a complete face lift, restoring the

Restored Boulder shops.

Restored Pub.

street scape to its original form. What has been completed is wonderful. Many of the restored buildings are pubs. In its heyday, this place boasted 93 hotels, and as you drive around the town and suburbs, you find that many are still operating. You may recall, that Boulder suffered a pretty big earthquake just back in 2010. A lot of the historic buildings were damaged. Insurance money, now followed by a boost from the Heritage Fund, will see the main street of Boulder restored to its original glory.

Old Post Office & Court House.

The York Hotel.

We called in at the Visitor Centre, which is in the Town Hall, and inquired about various activities and tours. They are very proud of all the history and heritage of the town, and offer a number of free walking tours, some escorted and some not. For those not escorted, there are excellent brochures to help you find the way and explain the many points of interest. It is a busy time in Kalgoorlie Boulder, with the annual "Race Round" happening. This is one of the biggest country horse

Paddy Hannan found the first Gold.

The Exchange Hotel.

racing carnivals in Australia. It is a real carnival week. It starts with the Boulder Cup meeting on the first Sunday, followed by Ladies Day and the Hannan Handicap on Wednesday, and finishes with the Kalgoorlie Cup on the Saturday. All feature races carry prize money between $120,000 and $160,000, so it is pretty serious. We are going to the Kalgoorlie Cup meeting, but more on that later. We took our time doing the

Inside the Palace Hotel.

An Institution in Kalgoorlie!

walking tour around Kalgoorlie, checking out the the 35 listed historic buildings. The Town Hall is a treasure, the old Post Office and Court House is very grand with its gold turret, and some of the hotels are real gems. The Palace, The York and The Exchange, have hosted some big name guests and events, and some of the timber work and mirrors inside these grand old buildings are magnificent. Monty's is an institution in Kalgoorlie. We had to call in for a coffee. It is a grand old building, but the coffee was just OK. Everywhere you walk, there are historical old buildings. It just shows how much money has been in this town.

We drove up and stood at the Super Pit Lookout, just staring down into this huge hole. All of the original mining was underground tunneling, and on separate leases. It wasn't until Alan Bond started to buy up all the leases in the 1970's, that open cut mining commenced. He never got to finish the job, but others did, and now the great hole in the ground is visible from space!! And there is a lot more to go!! A drive up to Charlotte Hill Lookout gives a good view out over town and much of the mining activity. It is

The water pipeline from Perth.

Nickel Mine on the edge of town.

also home to the water tank that supplies the towns water. There is no natural water supply nearby, and back when gold was discovered and 200,000 people arrived, water was more precious than gold!! It was claimed, that in 1896, 90 percent of WA's population lived within a 100 mile radius of Kalgoorlie! Water was a major problem. In 1905, the amazing plan to pipe water from Perth was hatched and the pipeline was built. It was, and remains, one of the world's greatest ever pipeline projects, and along with the Snowy Mountains Scheme and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is only the third Heritage Listed Engineering project in Australia.

Oldest brothel in Australia!

Madam explains the Bondage Room!

Wherever there are lots of working men, there are "working" women. Kalgoorlie is home to Australia's longest running Brothel, and would you believe you can do a tour. Sorry fellas, no free samples, but it was a scream!! We joined 15 other people on a tour. The madam, who runs the brothel with her mum, gave us a real hands on experience. She didn't hold much back, and I think some of the older folks on the tour needed extra heart medication when they got back to their caravan park!! There would be some interesting stories tonight at Happy Hour!!

Happy Hour with Sue & Alan.

On about our third day at the caravan park, someone new arrived opposite us. The bloke stared at me with that "I know you look", and it dawned on us at the same time, that we had shared dinner and many drinks when we had been on the Horizontal Waterfalls overnight tour, when Jill was holidaying with us. That was a night to remember. We all went to bed with sore ribs from laughing! Alan & Sue are great company, so we renewed our

Desert style layout.

On the tee at Kalgoorlie GC

acquaintance over happy hour, with many more laughs as we compared travels since we parted company in Derby. They live at Engadine in Sydney, and we have found some new friends to keep in touch with. It was sad when we waved them good bye, but I'm sure we'll catch up again soon. To cheer ourselves up, we headed out to the golf course. Kalgoorlie now has a magnificent Graham Marsh designed golf course, rated among the world's best desert courses. It is a public course, with reasonable rates, and we

Oiled sand greens at Kambalda.

The gallery at Kalgoorlie GC.

 enjoyed a round on a beautiful sunny day. The Kalgoorlie Golf Club, is also the start (or end) of the Nullabor Links Golf Course, the longest golf course in the world, at 1350 kilometres. Yes that's right, kilometres! The final hole is at Ceduna, in South Australia. The course plays either way, and you buy a card, and get if officially stamped at each hole along the way. When you complete the course you present the stamped card, and head to the Ceduna or Kalgoorlie Visitor Centre, and get presented with your certificate. I have now completed 3 holes. The first two holes are the 1st and 2nd at Kalgoorlie, the 3rd is at Kambalda Country Club, about 60kms south of Kalgoorlie. This is going to be one hell of a game of golf!!!

Welcome to Coolgardie.

Old Coolgardie Court House.

We enjoyed a drive out to nearby Coolgardie, another of the gold mining towns. It is only 26 kms west of Kalgoorlie. There was another big gold find here in the 1890's, and mining continues around the region. It is a small town now, but there are some impressive buildings along the main street, which is the highway to Perth. We wandered into a second hand shop, and got lost for a while checking out the amazing array of collectibles and other prized junk!

Happy Hour with friends.

Off to the races.

Friday, we were all excited, as our Perth friends, Moira & Geoff and Di & Graham, were arriving from Perth for a holiday with us, before we leave the west. It is amazing how quickly our friendship has developed, and Carolyn & I thought it was wonderful when Moira & Geoff announced when we were up in Broome, that we couldn't leave WA without another catch up. So we agreed on the destination, Kalgoorlie for the Kalgoorlie Cup race weekend, followed by a few days in Esperance. Di & Graham were bringing their brand new Lotus Trooper caravan on its maiden voyage. A really nice rig, designed for serious off

Di, Moira & Carolyn.

A day at the races.

road, with a touch of luxury. Once set up, Happy Hour was huge, followed by a delicious dinner of Chili Beef that Carolyn had cooked up for their arrival. The weather was great, warm and balmy, and when Carolyn bought out the Millionaire's Pie for dessert, I thought Geoff was going to pass out from joy! The race weekend was a lot of fun. Everyone could get dressed up. The weather was hot, and the event was very well done. We headed out to the course early, collecting another couple

Orechiette Restaurant.

A huge crowd at the Cup.

of Moira's friends, Denise & Clive, who had come up from Perth for the Cup. As is usual, our betting was wide of the mark, though a few winners were backed, and a few champagnes were downed. Geoff and I as the drivers, were very glad of our decision to be cautious, as the police had half the exit street blocked and were breath testing every car that left the course!! My second breath test in 3 days!! For dinner that night, we had booked a night out at a lovely Italian Restaurant in Kalgoorlie. We had also booked taxis! Orechiette Restaurant, was lovely. Great food and friendly service. We were the last to leave, and when we asked them to book us a taxi for the trip home, were shocked to be told there would be a 45 to 60 minute wait!! The young lady maitre'd, solved the problem, when she told us she would drive us back to the caravan park in two lots! Talk about service!! We tipped her the taxi fare!!

Carolyn at the Mining Museum.

Bye Bye Kalgoorlie Boulder.

Sunday morning it was blowing a gale as we walked up to Boulder to do the markets. There was hardly anyone around. We thought it was the wind, but they told us that everyone was at Coolgardie for their markets and carnival day. So instead, we headed back to the caravan park, got the cars and went into Kalgoorlie for coffee. Good choice! That afternoon, Denise & Clive came around for Happy Hour. It was still windy but warm. We had packed most of the gear away, and when the park manager came by and invited us to a sausage sizzle they were putting on, we all decided dinner was solved! That night around midnight, the cold change hit! More wind and rain, and a huge drop in temperature. Sunday had been a record hot day at 35 degrees. Monday was forecast at 16 degrees and wet!! A good day for a drive to Esperance!! We had noticed a loose bit hanging from under Graham's Landcruiser, so took it up to Toyota to get it looked at. The diagnosis was slow, so we changed plans, and only us, plus Moira & Geoff headed for Esperance, while Di & Graham stayed an extra night at Kalgoorlie.

Esperance, here we come. Please get warm!!!

Northern Goldfields of WA.

Flying Doctor uses the Highway!

From Mt. Magnet we headed east towards the Northern Goldfields of WA. This region has so much history, and we know none of it! There are dozens and dozens of small towns, ghost towns, and towns that have simply been lost, as a result of gold rushes that raged through this region from the mid 1890's. Today, large scale gold mining still goes on, meaning that gold mining has operated continuously in this region for 120 years! The volumes of gold removed from the region astounded us. Tens of millions of ounces, and still counting!

Sandstone here we come.

Alice Atkinson Caravan Park.

The road we are travelling along, is lined with purple and pink bushes. It is such a delight to drive though, softening the otherwise arid landscape. We pass mountains of earth that have been mined and discarded. There are roads heading off in all directions, some to current mines and others have the gates closed. Just 150 kms along the road, we reach our stop for the night, Sandstone. What a lovely little town with some lovely old buildings and loads of flowers to brighten it all up. Our caravan park is the Alice Atkinson Caravan Park, which has a

Visitor Centre Sandstone.

Inside Sandstone PO.

beautiful grassy front area around the camp kitchen, and plenty of large sites. We chose a site, and savour neighbours from the last couple of nights in Mt. Magnet. We seem to be stalking each other, and share a good old laugh about it. Sandstone has no current mining, so it is quiet, and the Shire has put a lot of effort into tourism to help the handful of locals who call Sandstone home. We wandered down town to check out the scene. The Post Office was about to close. It is only open from 8.00am to 1.00pm! The lady let us in to her shop which is

Old corrugated iron house.

Lots of memories from the past.

a Post Office, Cafe, Gift Shop and Art Gallery complete with working artist! We had a lovely chat to the lady who was also the artist, and very protective of her "Bottle Top" art. No Photographs please!! Across the road was the Visitor Centre and small Museum, which gave us an insight into the history of the region through some wonderful old photographs. We collected a map of the heritage trail, a 37 kilometre drive around town and the surrounding districts, that takes in the natural and mining history. First stop was the Old Brewery, built

Old Brewery site.

London Bridge.

into a cave in the side of a hill! No refrigeration in those days, so they used the coolness of the rock to keep the beer cold! From there it was on to London Bridge, the famous natural bridge that has been a favourite picnic spot since the first prospectors arrived. The remaining sites we visited were abandoned mines and homes, and even an old well built by the Government to support the miners and their animals.

National Hotel in Sandstone.

The Travelling Artist's Caravan!

That night, we decided to have dinner at the pub. The lady at the caravan park said the meals were good. The pub is also the general store, with the front room acting as the shop, which had a surprisingly good range of goods. We bought some fruit and veggies at the pub! We grabbed a couple of drinks, and plonked ourselves  down on the end of a long table. At the other end was an old Black Fella in a big black hat, and another guy all spotted in paint! Turns out the paint splattered guy is a travelling artist, in town to do some new murals in the pub, which is being

Old garage at Gwalia.

renovated. Another guy,

One of the Pub's residents.

who looked like a tin of paint had landed on him, also joined us. He was the publican! Helping with the painting! The old Black Fella was Clarrie, a local identity who paints, tells yarns and writes books. He spoke with a slow drawl in a very deep voice. He was so slow, that many times we thought he hadn't heard our question, and then an answer would come. He told us how he loved living in the bush, and all about the best bush tucker, which part of the goanna or kangaroo was best. He told us that goanna tail tastes like crayfish, a claim I'm unlikely to test any day soon! He described working up the Canning Stock Route in the '50's, and about all the changes he had seen. It was just fascinating. To top it off, we had a lovely meal of Chicken Parma and Chicken Hollandaise, prepared by the new chef, who thankfully was paint free!

Main Street Leonora.

Neighbours XXXX Commercial set.

Next morning we were back on the road headed for Leinster. We spent a whole 8 minutes in Leinster! It is a BHP gold mining town, not intended for tourists. So we continued on our way, now heading for Leonora, where we planned to stay a couple of nights. All of these old gold mining towns are the same, but Leonora promises some unique history. We found the caravan park, and the stalkers from Mt. Magnet and Sandstone! It is a dumpy caravan park full of miners who have built some unique humpies around their old caravan parks. In fact I am convinced that our

The dining room at Hoover House.

Hoover House.

neighbour's site was the set from the XXXX Beer Commercial! As we were setting up, a friendly young fella, badly in need of a dentist, wandered over and inquired how long we were staying. He told us if we were around the next day, we were invited to the "pig on the spit" BBQ he was putting on for his 40 miner mates! I told you it was the XXXX commercial!! The blood was draining from Carolyn's face, as I thanked him for the offer! We ran around like crazy that afternoon, to see all the sights Leonora had to offer, and were up bright and early the next

Original wooden Head at Gwalia Mine.

The Pit beside Hoover House.

morning and back on the road. Our "stalker" friends, who luckily were on the other side of the caravan park, later told us that the party started about 10.00am and was still in full swing at 4.00am the next morning, when a young lady a few caravans down the row, snapped, and gave them a barrage of language and threats, that brought the party to an end! Anyway, back to that unique history I eluded to. About 4 kilometres away, is the Ghost Town of Gwalia. There had been a gold mine here since the 1890's. The Sons of Gwalia Mine,

The old shops at Gwalia.

The old Gwalia Hotel.

closed on 21st December 1963, and everyone left town within days! The old mine had a very famous manager from 1898 until 1913, a Yank by the name of Herbert Hoover, who later went on to become the 31st President of the USA! He built a grand home, which stands proudly today, operating as a B&B, thanks to a young lady who managed to preserve the old house and much of the equipment and old photos and records from the mine. She established an excellent museum which is a must see. In the 1980's, spurred on by high gold prices and new technology, the mine site was reopened, this time as open cut, so now Hoover House and museum, sits on the edge of a huge pit! We had a lovely afternoon exploring the museum. That my friends, was the highlight of Leonora!

Menzies Caravan Park.

The restored Menzies Town Hall.

Our final stop in the Northern Goldfields was at Menzies. This little town no longer has an active mine, and has undergone a tourist transformation with restored buildings, a new caravan park, and some wonderful steel sculptures depicting life in years gone by. We checked in at the caravan park, which is clean and open, not a tree in sight! There is even a new coffee shop in town! Yay! And the coffee isn't bad, but then we have been coffee shop deprived for some time! Thank God for our coffee machine! The tourist information tells us there are a couple

First Motor bike in town.

Some things never change!

of things to do around Menzies, apart from walk the Heritage Trail in town, which is excellent, with all the rusty steel sculptures, telling of life in the old, bustling town of around 10,000 people. At the coffee shop we bumped into our stalker friends again! They were just passing through, having stayed in a free camp at nearby Niagara Dam, a dam built back in the early 1900's, to provide water for the new railway line from Kalgoorlie to Leonora. We

A Ghostly welcome.

It was a mining town!

headed out to see the dam, which is now a popular free camp and picnic spot. Very nice spot, spread around the dam. We drove a little further on to the town of Kookynie, dubbed the Living Ghost Town. If it isn't dead, it hasn't got long to go! We called into the pub on a Saturday afternoon when the TV was showing the AFL match between Fremantle and the Sydney Swans. The lady publican asked us where we were from, and when we said Sydney, all the heads in the

Sign on the pub wall.

Behind the bar at Kookynie Pub.

bar turned towards us!! All good fun, as we wished them all better luck next season! The old pub still has draught beer on tap, not cans like most have these days, so we had a drink and chatted with the publican, who told us she and her husband had been at Kookynie for 27 years. I joked that she should have taken a plea bargain! She agreed it had been time to move on for some time! The pub is for sale for $400,000, which she said was a bargain. Every blokes dream! Carolyn said "don't even think about it!", so we downed our beer and left the locals

What can I say!!

One of 51 sculptures.

to come to terms with Freo's defeat. We drove around the town,which is just ruins with the odd run down home still being inhabited. Next day we drove out to Lake Ballard, to see the much applauded "Inside Australia" sculpture collection, commissioned by the world renowned British Sculptor, Antony Gormley, who we have never heard of! Reading the brochure, describes how the 51 sculptures are based on photographs of local personalities, and are spread across 10 square kilometres of a salt lake. Wow, sounds amazing! So off we went,

Times long ago.

Niagara Dam.

53 kilometres out of town along a good gravel road to Lake Ballard. We were seriously underwhelmed!! I think the residents of Menzies should start a class action, unless of course they are the world's first 51tuplets! The sculptures are all the same, just some a bigger than others! They are a bunch of naked stick figures. The men have erections and the women have garden implements for boobs! Now I know I'm not an art critic, but come on! The other punters were shaking their heads as well. The general consensus was that you had to come and have a look, but wouldn't be rushing back! For me, the highlight was the chicken sandwich we had for lunch. The March Flies, big enough to put saddles on, and with a bite to match, weren't adding to the ambiance either! Thank God it was free! We headed back to town, and called in at the Pioneer Cemetery. Maybe this is where Antony got his inspiration!
That afternoon, a cold change came through and dropped the temperature 15 degrees. The winds just got stronger and stronger, and were so strong that we thought the caravan might be moved it was shaking so much. We had to bring in the slide out because the awning on it was flapping so violently we feared it may tear. It was without doubt the roughest night we've ever had. We headed off for Kalgoorlie, with a fierce cross wind buffeting us all the way. It was a slow, slow trip!!