Day 118 Kalgoorlie-Boulder, WA

Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a mining town.  It is not the prettiest town we have driven into in our 118 days on the road but then again it doesn't need to be pretty.  Leave that to the coastal villages.  The caravan park is also not the best we have stayed in.  At a guess I would say that it is 80% permanent with mostly mine workers.  We found our site only after having to ring the after hours phone number.  On the map that was left for us in the night safe it was marked as site 18 but in reality it is actually site 12.  That is very confusing.  The site has units right behind it and to the right there is another unit in the shape of an airport hangar - I kid you not.  If I didn't know already that I have the best husband in the world, I know now, as he put his arm around my shoulder and said "It's Ok.  I'll make it homely" and he did.  I love this man.

Anyway enough of the negatives, let's focus on the positives.  It is a town with a population of around 30,000 residents, about the same size as Mount Isa.  There are two shopping precincts, one in Boulder and the other in Kalgoorlie.  We are at Boulder.  As we drive into town the "Super Pit" is on our left hand side. We are booked on a tour of the Super Pit on Thursday - the earliest day we could get - but we just could not miss it.  I have been looking at what we should see and do in the area and the Tram Ride is apparently pretty good as it stops at most of the older parts of Kalgoorlie and you can alight at these places.

We have been told to avoid the underground mine tours as they can be a little daunting.  I wouldn't do an underground in any case.  It would freak me out!  The visitor information centre was closed as we entered Kalgoorlie-Boulder so it will be the first place we visit tomorrow. All tours are booked through this centre and we will do as many as we can as we are here for five nights.

So what did we see on our 230km journey today from Leonora to Kalgoorlie-Boulder?  It was almost a repeat of our journey yesterday for the first part of our drive.  One thing we have noted driving throughout Western Australia is the quality of the roads.  They are far superior to any other state in Australia and well maintained.  Admittedly it has a lot to do with the road base and most of Western Australia has the perfect base with its red stony ground that covers the majority of the state.  The roads are some of the straightest we have ever seen and I thought Western Queensland won that competition!  

We stopped at Menzies for our Brunch break and were impressed with the tiny little town.  There were many caravans pulled up outside the one and only shop cum cafe that apparently makes very good coffee. The Main Street is lined with "street art" sculptures all depicting the towns past and well worth stopping to read the information attached to them.

This one says "What on earth made you think you could rob the Post office and get away with it"
(Const Samuel Evans one of the first policemen posted to Menzies in 1895)

Soon, we come across a sign saying "Welcome to the Great Western Woodlands" on one side of the road and the other says "Goodbye from the Northern Goldfields", and all of a sudden there is a change of scenery as large trees loom on both sides of the road.  Is this the western woodlands?

As we get closer to Kalgoorlie-Boulder, there are many mine sites on both sides of the road.  We pass Ora Banda (Gold), Golden Cities (Gold), Paddington (Gold) and Mt Pleasant (Gold), all within a short distance of each other.  No wonder prospectors love coming to this area.  Philip read that a nugget weighing 260g was found by a prospector in 2020 but that is small in comparison to the 1.4kg nugget found in 2019.  It has certainly sparked a "gold rush" in the Kalgoorlie region with many grey nomad prospectors flocking to the region.

There is certainly a chill in the air as I write this blog.  Last night at Leonora the temperature dipped to two degrees.  It didn't worry us though as we kept the heater on all night set at 28 degrees 😁.  The forecast says cold and windy weather for the time we are here with maximums reaching just 16 degrees.  Brrrrrr.....

Dau 117, Leonora, WA

It is around 300km from Sandstone to Leonora in the Northern Goldfields of Western Australia, and that is where we are staying overnight.  It was cold this morning (for us) and the temperature only varied a few degrees throughout the day.  I heard rain on the roof of the caravan at some stage through the night that lulled me into a deep sleep.  We skipped breakfast with a plan for brunch somewhere between Sandstone and Leinster.  This seems to work for us on a travel day.

The scenery doesn't change very much on our eastern journey to Leinster.  We have run out of wildflowers and will start seeing them tomorrow as we travel further south towards Kalgoorlie.  

Leinster is around 150km from Sandstone and even though it is off the highway we drive the short distance into the town.  Leinster Mine is a BHP Underground Nickel Mine and the township of Leinster is a closed town meaning that no-one except mine workers can live in the town.  It is home to around 500 Miners who are given free housing and free access to the local swimming pool and gym as well as a supermarket and cafe.  There is no crime in this town.  BHP have strict rules for this kind of behaviour and you are immediately sacked if you don't follow those rules.  It is a leafy treed town and I can understand why it is not a hardship to live here.

The scenery starts to change as we head further south with lots of wattle on both sides of the road.  

On our right hand side we see the massive Thunderbox Gold Mine.  The Thunderbox deposit was discovered in 1999 and is considered to be one of the significant gold deposits discovered within the last 20 years in Australia. It is an open cut mine with the potential for underground operations.

It is not very much further along the road that we pass the turnoff to King of Hills Mine, another gold mine.  I look up Wikipedia and see that it is an underground mine although the satellite image that I have is very similar to Thunderbox Mine so I presume it started as open cut and moved to underground production.  Plenty of gold in this area!

We are now ensconced at Leonora.  You instantly know that this is a mining town by the number of mine vehicles lining the street.  It is a larger town than I imagined with most services available.  There is only one caravan park to service the town and even now as I write this blog I can see that it is almost full.  I booked the site in advance but haven't paid for it yet and wonder how I'm going to do that as it is a contactless check-in.  I'm presuming someone will collect our money at some stage.  Perhaps it's free 😂

Day 116 Sandstone, (London Bridge Tourist Drive & Heritage Walk), WA

Today was a full on tourist day and even the rain did not deter us. First up this morning was the twelve kilometre Tourist Drive that took us to Contradiction Well, Former State Battery, London Bridge and Old Brewery.  It was interesting and each place we stopped at gave us more and more insight into how much the Gold Rush days in the early 1900's played such a vital part in the development of this area.  

Contradiction Well seemed to us to be in the middle of nowhere but then we read on the information board that stated it was a government initiative to put down these wells to encourage exploration and settlement to the area.  Contradiction Well was sunk by hand to a depth of 100 metres and is thought to be the towns first water supply.

The Former State Battery is heritage listed and is only one of six remaining in Western Australia, from a peak of forty.  These Batteries were of vital importance to the mining industry and it is sad to see them slowly deteriorating.  The landscape surrounding the Battery has been well and truly turned over by gold prospectors looking for that elusive nugget.

My favourite place on the Tourist Trail was London Bridge.  London Bridge is part of a larger rock formation around 800 metres long and varies in height from three to ten metres.  The Basalt ridge is thought to be about 350 million years old and the "bridge" is the result of different rates of erosion in hard and soft rock.  It sounds old but I read that the underlying rocks of the Sandstone area may be as old as 2 billion years - nearly half the age of the Earth itself.  Unfortunately London Bridge is falling down and over time has become thinner and thinner.  It will eventually collapse.

The last stop on the Tourist Drive was the Old Brewery.  We had to climb to the top of a rocky hill to reach the sight for what used to be the Old Brewery and marvelled at the ingenuity of the design. The main building was on top of the hill that we climbed, around 10-15 metres in height and water from a nearby well was pumped to an elevated tank and from there it was gravity feed to coolers and then into vats on the main floor.  Finally the beer flowed via pipes to a giant cellar via an immense tunnel driven into the hill.  This underground cellar could be kept cool in even the hottest weather.

After the drive we stopped at the one and only coffee shop in Sandstone where we enjoyed our hot beverages with homemade fruit cake.  It was a very busy cafe and it's sad that it has been sold and the new owners are closing the cafe.

By the time we had finished our tea and coffee it was time to gather at the Information Centre for the guided tour around the Sandstone township that is full of heritage listed buildings.  We visited the Former Police Station, Former Sandstone Primary School, the Gold and Wool Interpretive Park, Black Range Chapel, Heritage Cottage, Former Post Office and lastly the privately owned Outback Shack that I felt very uncomfortable visiting as it really triggered my OCD.  They say one persons trash is another persons treasure.........

Almost all of the old buildings have been purchased by the local shire council and our tour guide was in fact the Shire Chairman.  She is so passionate about the town and has lived here almost all her life.  She is a very forward thinking person and when she heard that the cafe was closing she instigated a plan to have the old Post Office converted to a cafe/restaurant. The tour was great and we learnt so much about the town.  There were some great anecdotes about the people living in the shire and I enjoyed listening to them.  An example was a story told to us when we were in the church. Apparently an elderly resident who passed on did not under any circumstance want a church service for her burial.  The family did not follow her instructions and went ahead and organised a church service.  Apparently the day of the funeral was the biggest downpour of rain in living history and everyone had to wade through ankle deep water to get inside the church and all through the church service the smoke detector repeatedly sounded the alarm. 

 

We will leave Sandstone tomorrow with lots of fond memories.  It is a tiny town with a very big heart.

Day 115 Sandstone, WA

Much of our easterly journey today looked like this......

 The carpet of white wildflowers lends a welcome relief to the many kilometres of saltbush scrub country. It is red soil country with lots of rocky patches.  There are very few hills and the country is typical of a lot of country right across the top end of Australia. But, I kinda like it......

When we reach the turnoff into Sandstone and drive into the small township we are pleasantly surprised.  Once again a lot of $$$'s has been churned into the tourism industry with many tourists trying their luck at gold prospecting. The main industry around Sandstone is pastoral but we did pass a Valadium mine between here and Mount Garnet.  We also passed quite a few four trailer trucks heading West so we will have to ask about mining.  Our first stop is the Tourist Information Centre/Museum.  I don't know where they find the staff for these centres but every single one we have been to (and there has been dozens) the staff are just so helpful and obliging.  This centre was no different.  The museum attached to the visitor centre was a walk down memory lane and you are really showing your age when you remember most of the items on display! By the time we walked out of the centre we had already decided to extend our stay to two nights instead of one.  There is a walking tour around Sandstone tomorrow morning that starts at 11.30am and there is a tourist drive that takes us to London Bridge, a well known tourist attraction.

(We had this exact same cash register when we were kids and we played "shop" in our cubby house)

We check into the one and only caravan park at Sandstone, that we have had to book into in advance.  Sandstone has become quite a popular stop-over.  It is a clean well maintained park with gravel underfoot. We will appreciate the gravel tomorrow if the prediction of rain is correct.  We are like a well oiled machine these days when it comes to packing down and setting up the van.  It takes us around twenty minutes to do both.  As it is almost lunch by the time we finish we decide to head to the local pub for a counter lunch.

This old pub, built in 1907 is wonderful.  I just love walking into these buildings. You can almost hear the walls talk and I wish they could because they would tell some pretty darn good stories.  The pub was built after the gold boom when the whole town was shifted to a different area.  I can't wait to hear more about this tomorrow.

We order a simple meal of hamburger for Philip and Steak Sandwich for me.  It is pub grub but it's nice to have someone else cook lunch for us.  The pub is also the grocery store that stocks basic items that I'm sure many travellers would appreciate.  I comment to Philip that it is 150k back to Mount Magnet and 150k to the next centre, Leinster, so the locals have quite a way to drive to stock their pantries.

After lunch we walked a different path back to the Caravan Park and were totally amazed to find half a dozen thriving olive trees.  They are well maintained and have just undergone a pruning. There are olives all over the ground and on the trees and I wondered whether anyone harvests them and pickles them for eating.  They would be good eating.

Day 114 Mount Magnet, (Tourist Trail), WA

 Mount Magnet has put a great amount of effort into securing its position as a tourist stopover with a modern information centre with very helpful and knowledgeable staff.  When we visited the centre yesterday we were given a lot of useful information about where we should go today and what we should give a miss.  The Tourist Trail is a must do but the Dalgaranga Crater is a miss.  The crater is over 80km outside of Mount Magnet and our helpful lady said that when she visited the crater she asked her husband where it was and he replied, "You're standing in it!"

Anyway, back to the Tourist Trail.  There are seventeen points of interest along the 35 kilometre trail.  Some are inaccessible at the moment due to mining but we managed to see most of them.  Our first stop was Poverty Fats where a few months after the first (reef )gold was found near the Mount Magnet in July 1891, 250 ounces of alluvial gold was "dug up like potatoes" in a few hours.  The largest nugget weighed 100.03 ounces.  There is not much here now except an old mine shaft seen in the distance.

Next stop is the Miners Cottage that you also can't access and can only see from afar.  It is the last stone miner's cottage that is near the old Boogardie Townsite which has succumbed to mining operations.

The Warramboo Hill was originally named West Mount Magnet by explorer Robert Austin in 1854.  This is not the magnetic hill which he climbed and named Mount Magnet which rises to the east.  In 1886 surveyor HS King returned the hill to its Aboriginal place name Warramboo.  The lookout here is great with views for many kilometres.  To our right we see the giant open cut gold mine and directly in front of us lies the Mount Magnet township.

At Checker Mill we once again have no access but I can tell you that it was named after Hill 50 Gold Mine manager Lou Checker.  Ore is treated here and gold extracted and poured.  Only the gold leaves Mount Magnet.  The treated ore is returned to the landscape forming man made "dumps" which are revegetated.

Mother and Child Grave is so sad to see.  There is a poignant ballad of the unidentified mother and child who died during the typhoid plague of 1908.  I picked a tiny posy of little wildflowers and laid them on the grave.

The Amphitheatre of weathered laterite, was awesome and Philip and I took turns at Coo-ee-ing to hear the echo.  The amphitheatre is thought to be the site of an ancient waterfall from an earlier land level time. It is a great place to explore the nearby caverns.

We didn't stop at the Cave that is a result of erosion over eons of time.  Geologically this area has not undergone any major upheaval since the Pre Cambrian period.  Archaean rocks form the basis of the whole plain.

Some people like to visit cemetery's.  I am not not one of those people.  I get too emotional and today was an example when we stopped at Lennonville Cemetery.  There were so many difficulties living in this remote area in the early 1900's with little or no medical assistance.  The fact that the majority of the graves are for children disturbed me greatly.

Lennonvile townsite lies abandoned.  In fact whatever was left after the miners departed was burnt to the ground.  In its heyday when gold was booming there were 3000 people living at this site.  The gold boom lasted from 1897 to 1905.  The old railway platform is still standing and I read that it was the pastoralists who lobbied for a railway line to carry their wool to the port at Geraldton but it was the later discovery of gold which brought its construction in record time!

So that brings us to our last site of interest - The Granites.  It is a spectacular 15 metre escarpment fantastically sculptured by erosion.  It is a special place for the local indigenous and holds many sacred sites.

The Tourist Trail took us around three hours and it was certainly well worth our time. Each site is well signposted with information boards at each place.  We give it a four and half stars out of five!