Wednesday Sept 10th – Thursday Sept 11th.

Wednesday – We were up and out by checkout time at 10am. There is not much on the road from Esperance to Kalgoorlie so we decided to stop back by the bakery, that we have been to twice, and pick up lunch for a picnic while on the road. I chose not to get another meat pie since we were not eating right away and they are best hot. Kathy got an egg sandwich and I got a chicken schnitzel wrap which is basically a fried chicken wrap.

We had a 5 hour ride ahead of us and the country side is totally different. We are now turning inland, away from the coast, and heading into the desert region of Australia. This area does not get much rain and instead of the forest region we went through earlier in the trip this landscape is flat and lots of scrub brush. We kept seeing signs warning us about kangaroos but we definitely don’t see them like we do around the farm.

This is also a poorer section of Australia. Most of the region used to be mining areas and a lot of the mines are either played out or the product is not worth the labor. There were lots of lithium and nickel mines which are now all closed.

The one thing this area is known for is wild flowers. They are all along the side of the road and they grow every where and are in vibrant colors. The area we stopped for our picnic had a ton of them so I took some photos.

These are the Gazania flower and have daisy like blooms. These are drought tolerant perennials and are considered weeds. My friend Lindsay posted out that the ones on the right are garnet and gold so FSU colors!

We arrived in Kalgoorlie at 2:30 and we were able to check in to our accommodations where we will be the next 3 nights. We are staying in a 2 bedroom / 2 bath apartment which is more like a home than a hotel room. There is also a nice covered outdoor area. All the apartments have covered car ports because in the summer it is very hot and sunny here. The hotel reminds me more of a subdivision than a hotel.

Our outdoor area on the left with artificial grass an a clothesline and on the right is just 1 of the 3 streets with all the covered carports in front of the apartments.

We had dinner in an Italian restaurant that Merv & Michelle have eaten in before and it was excellent.

Thursday – The apartment has a washer and dryer so we did a couple of loads of laundry this am before heading out. We had a perfect day. The weather is clear blue skies and it has definitely warmed up. We got to see more of the town and it is poor, very flat and no buildings greater than 2 stories. The main downtown street really does look like an old west town from the 1800s. Most of the hotels have the original facades on them.

Some of the building fronts. When gold was discovered in Kalgoolie in 1893 word spread quickly. Since the area was a desert area they brought in camels from the Middle East to transport their supplies to and from the gold mines. The Main Street in Kalgoolie is very wide and they say this is because of all the camel caravans and wagons, to give them room to easily turn around. Water was actually more expensive than whiskey and the story goes that whiskey was kept on top of the bars and water was secured behind the bar.

We went to an old gold mine that is now an interactive museum. It is all out doors and they show how things were back in the day of the gold rush but also had some of the modern trucks that they use today in the mines.

The transport trucks used in the mines are huge and can easily run over a car without feeling it. In the left hand picture you can see Merv & Kathy in the upper right hand corner. Each one of these “dump” trucks cost 5.7 million.

Kathy standing next to the massive earthmover and us in the shovel of the earth mover.

It takes 6 months to learn how to drive one of these vehicles.

A regular size dump truck next to one tire for the massive trucks used in the mines.

They had buildings that showed how the miners lived and the equipment that they used in the mines along with several of the structures leading down to the mines.

Kathy coming out of one of the safety pods they used down in the mines in case there was a landslide, fire or a cave in. The pods had oxygen, food and medical supplies.

The different buildings at the museum.

Some old vehicles at the museum that have now become picturesque planters. When the gold field was discovered they were finding chunks of gold that were fist sized lying on top of the ground.

We walked around for 3 hours and looked at every display which included the steam engines, drills to go into the ground, rock crushers, where they weighed the gold found and of course a bank. Most of the workers lived in tents under very harsh conditions. We also visited the first aid building & the bank, payroll office, and the “scale building”, to weigh your finds.

After our visit to the gold mine area we headed back into town and found a “bakery” and got some meat pies and veggie egg rolls for lunch. Most of these bakeries are owned by Asians and have a mix of different kinds of food.

This is a picture of my lunch steak and mushroom pie. It is served in the package it is sitting on and you eat it like a burger. It is hot and flaky and cost 4 US dollars.

After lunch we headed to the reservoir to read about how Kalgoorie is getting its water piped in from Perth which is 350 miles away. It was the longest fresh water pipeline when built and took from 1895 to 1903. It was run by 8 steam powered pumping stations. You can see the pipes all around the countryside. The tank the water is stored in can hold 2,377,548 million gallons of water. Enough to fill 4 and a half Olympic swimming pools.

The pipe coming up to the holding tank with Kalgoorie in the background. Quite an accomplishment and still in use today.

Our next stop was to Australia’s largest super pit where they are still mining gold today. It is 2 miles long, almost a mile across and almost 2000 feet deep. You can do tours of the mine but they were all booked up for several days by large tour groups. There is a viewing platform that you can see down into the mine.

A view of the “Super Pit” in the distance and you can also see the landscape.

The deepest part of the mine. We counted at least 25 of the super large dump trucks going back and forth. I cannot imagine how long it takes to go from the bottom of the mine with a full load back to the top, when filled they sure moved slowly. It takes 4 scoops to fill each truck, pretty fast process.

You can see a few of the super trucks in this photo from a distance.

The mining site is very barren with all different levels of earth being brought up from the bottom of the pit.

After our view of the super mine we did a quick run to the grocery store and then back to our deluxe accommodations. We could not have asked for better weather and had a wonderful day exploring the mining town of Kalgoorie.

Merv and I shared another chicken parmesan for dinner or as they like to call them in Australia a “parmy”. We have another day to enjoy here as we are winding up our road tour. We also got a bonus of being able to watch a couple of movies on Netflix thanks to “Kane” who forgot to log out of his Netflix account when he stayed in this apartment.