WESTERN AUSTRALIAN GOLDFIELDS
Sandstone
From the WA coast we headed inland to follow the gold
fields route down to Kalgoorlie.
The inland scenery of WA is spectacular, even though half of it has been dug up
to mine for either iron ore, or gold.
Besides the large mining companies, there are prospectors who go
out into the heat day after day with their gold detectors and shovels trying to make their
fortune.
We stopped in Sandstone, a beautiful little town on the way to Menzies with a population of 50. We had morning tea at the old Post Office, and across the road was William, a local Chinese man selling fresh homemade products and produce. We couldn't resist buying a loaf of delicious bread, chilli sauce, and some fresh dumplings for morning tea.
William on his street stall
Next stop Menzies where we camped in town in a Council caravan park so we could catch up on some washing. Alan spent the morning re-aligning one of the caravan wheels yet again. This wheel is particularly contrary, and even after being fixed in Brisbane by the guy who did our brakes, it still needs constant adjusting. Last year while we were camped at Nowra, Russ pointed out that the wheel was scrubbed and barely had any tread left on it. Chuck and Alan realigned the wheel using a broom and a piece of string while Sue and I sat and watched them working.
The broom & string method used at Christmas time at Nowra
We have a much more professional set of wheel alignment equipment now – 2 long metal rulers
Lake Ballard
Lake Ballard is a large salt lake near Menzies and we free-camped there for a night
so we could see the “Inside Australia” sculptures. The 51
sculptures are by a famous London artist Antony Gormley, and are derived from laser
scans of Menzies original inhabitants.
He used 'three-dimensional scans to map each body with half a million
digital coordinates'. Alan reckons
this is a load of codswallop, and if he used 5, it was 5 too many.
The sculptures are scattered over the lake bed and are very impressive at
sunset and sunrise. We traipsed
around and found about 30 of them, but any further out and we would have sunk in
the mud. The burden of being
accompanied by half of Australia’s fly population made the afternoon sightseeing
miserable for me, but they didn't seem to bother Alan as much. Sunrise the
next morning was lovely sitting on top of a hill overlooking
the spectacular lake and sculptures (without flies).
Back in 1897, before Herbert Hoover became the 31st President of the USA, he spent quite a few years working in the Australian goldfields as a professional mining engineer for a London-based gold mining company. His description of the area as “black flies, red dust and white heat” is spot on.
There are lots of tiny towns and pubs in the old gold
rush areas, so we left Lake Ballard and drove to Niagara Dam, built to service
the communities and provide water for the steam trains. Now it’s a great place
to camp and if the water isn’t too warm, you can have a dip as well.
If the water temperature is above 24°C you may contract the deadly
amoebic meningitis, so hold your nose if you plan on getting your hair wet!
Niagara Dam
We were looking forward to having lunch at the little pub
nearby in Kookynie, and perhaps camp the night, but the pub was a dump and
looked nothing like the advertising in the brochures.
The owner was a miserable man who could only microwave a pie and sausage
roll because he couldn’t put together a hamburger and chips while his wife was away.
The pub has been for sale since 2009 for $400,000.
Waiting at the Kookynie Pub for a Mrs Mac pie and sausage roll
Kalgoorlie
We love Kalgoorlie so stayed 2 nights, and took the caravan
to a drive through carwash to get rid of the red dirt.
Thankfully the inside of the caravan stays pretty dust-free, although we
do have a 'dirt cupboard' under the fridge.
We still haven’t worked out how the dirt gets in, so we have to be very
selective what goes into that cupboard.
It’s made worse if a beer (or 2) lose their caps in the fridge, and the
beer seeps out of the fridge door and into the dirt cupboard.
That is of course after the beer has squirted through everything in the
fridge first.
The Super Pit Kalgoorlie - mining 850,000 ounces of gold a year
Kalgoorlie services many of the mines in the outback so is full of lonely men who
miss their girlfriends, wives or women in general.
This problem is partly solved by Skimpies who work behind the bars in most of
the pubs. I think these girls earn
more money than the miners.
A Skimpy keeping the boys happy
While we were in Kalgoorlie we had our 34th wedding anniversary so had drinks at Paddy's Bar in the gorgeous Exchange Hotel, then a slap up meal across the road at the Palace Hotel. We'd booked a table on the balcony but the temperature dropped and the rain came down until we were frozen to the bone and eventually took cover inside.
The Exchange Hotel
This mirror was Herbert Hoover's parting gift to the Palace Hotel
To get back home we took the easy route along the 1,675 kms
of the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor Plain.
There’s nothing but the road in front of you and the occasional fuel stop
so we free-camped for 2 nights.
The first 2 days the wind was trying its hardest to blow us back to Perth, and
we were only getting about 25 kms per litre with a 30 km head wind. We thought
we were struggling until we saw a scruffy grey-bearded man trudging along
pulling a rickshaw! You see the strangest things out here. The
weather after leaving Kalgoorlie was miserable and the first rain we’d seen since leaving home.
Spectacular Bunda Cliffs overlooking the Southern Ocean
We’re in South Australia now after finally getting to the end of the Nullarbor Plain and spent the night in Fowlers Bay.
Fowlers Bay Jetty
Alan at the top of a sand dune, with Bailey and a new doggy friend tearing down the dune together
Tomorrow we'll be in Ceduna and by the time we get there we're almost in suburbia. Not long now!
