Day 19. Kalgoorlie and Boulder

One of the questions about which I have lately become interested is why Kalgoorlie had recently become Kalgoorlie-Boulder. The answer was provided today. Kalgoorlie is the city here and Boulder is the shire surrounding the city. This is much like the old Thuringowa Shire which used to have its headquarters near the Causeway Hotel. Boulder also had a town centre. Like Queensland, the Western Australian government decided on amalgamation. But the fiercely independent people from Boulder insisted that the new entity be called the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Regional Council.

Today we concentrated on the architecture in this area. This town has held on to its historical buildings unlike places like Townsville. They are very proud of their old buildings. But first, as far as old habits go, photo 1 shows a “pay to pee” here in Kalgoorlie. I was trying to be unobtrusive and missed the prices. I recall the first price in the list was $0.25. Photos 2,3,4,5 show the corner where we live in the Palace Hotel. Photos 6,7 more hotels.

We travelled the short distance to Boulder to look at the effects of the recent shallow earthquake in the area. Photos 8 to 11 refer.

We then went to the Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mine Super Pit. This is a serious hole in the ground! Driving around, you cannot help notice the spoil which is heaped everywhere. Check GoogleMap.

Note in the closeup of the work site at the bottom of the Super Pit. You can see a hole in the face in the third level up from the pit floor. This is actually an old drive from when miners dug down from the surface before the decision was made to open cut.

This afternoon things slowed up a bit and we went for a tour of one of the remaining three licensed brothels in Kalgoorlie. This brothel is the only remaining original. The madame, who was very entertaining, says she is the only madame who did not come through the ranks.

Day 18. Kalgoorlie

Today we turned inland for the first time since arriving in Western Australia. The endpoint was Kalgoorlie, Australia's capital of gold mining. The journey was a little under 400km, into an area reminiscent of far western Queensland mining country.

The trip took us through Norseman, around which there are mines also. An interesting feature at Norseman was the tin camels. We did not understand it either until we drove up to them. They adorn the main roundabout off the highway into the town.

We arrived in Kalgoorlie after 1pm and after the obligatory visit to the Information Bureau, we had lunch in a local park. This is two picnic lunches in two days. Yesterday's surroundings (Lucky Bay) were very different from today's.

Driving into the town, getting out of the car and feeling the atmosphere, we were both immediately reminded of Mount Isa.

One of the attractions of Kalgoorlie to me is the Dennis fire engine which is part of the Museum of Western Australia display here. This Dennis is similar to mine, but from 1925. It was cosmetically restored in the 1990s, which means it is in very original condition.

Day 17. Esperance day 3

Today's meanderings took us east of Esperance to Cape Le Grand National Park This park features places like Cape Le Grand (photo 1), Hellfire Bay (2), Little Hellfire Bay (3), Thistle Cove (4,5,6,7) and finally Lucky Bay (8,9), which is renowned as having the whitest sand in Australia. We had our picnic lunch at Lucky Bay.

After lunch we drove to the eastern extremity of the national park to look at Wharton Beach (10) and the Hammerhead. A stop for coffee at Condingup finished off a relaxing day.

Enjoy the photos.

Day 16. Esperance day 2

We toured a circuit to the west of Esperance, which covers a number of beautiful beaches. In this part of the world, beautiful beaches go on and on like Blue Haven Beach, Salmon Beach, Twilight Beach. The circuit took us by the Pink Lake, which is part of the water supply for Esperance. The reason for the word “pink” in the description is technical, associated with algal bloom and was not evident today.

On the tour we saw our third wind farm in the past three stops. Albany, we photographed. There were two turbines at Hopetoun. At Esperance, there are 14 turbines. It is clear that Western Power relies to a great extent on network support from wind power.

On this trip we at last we found a gallery which was both interesting and had content which was desirable. It was Cindy Poole's Section Art Gallery. Cindy works in glass, not manufacturing it, but moulding it in a furnace to make glass objects from bought sheet glass. She also hosts a great cup of coffee in her cafe.

We were ale to get into the museum in Esperance after lunch. This proved to be the best $5 I have spent since being here.

There were two historical displays which were very interesting to me. The first was a Stirling two arm bowl mixer. Cerutti's Bakery had one of these. It has been a long time since I have seen one. I never thought one of these would be a museum item.

The second was the SkyLab exhibition. From the look of the circuit board which I photographed, you can understand these astronauts were really brave to have to had relied on this. Though, I suppose it was state of the art 40 years ago.

The last issue for the day is a complaint. Adrienne wants to make an issue of what the owners of holiday units expect us to use to keep their unit clean. This is the dish cloth provided. A normal Chux cut into 6. !

Day 15. Esperance

Today was a day to travel to Esperance. It is the ANZAC Day public holiday. The road was the most active we have seen all holiday. Maybe it was the day. Maybe it was the location. We arrived in Esperance too early to check in, so we went looking for a morning cup of coffee. It was 10:30.

We finally settled for the only place we could find a coffee, the first and brand new McDonald's in Esperance. I am not a fan of this company nor its products, but they were the only one we could find open. I do confirm that I found their McCafe coffee very good. We had some time to waste, so we drove around for a while. We found a supermarket which was open as well as a laundromat. We saved that information for later.

The time came for lunch and we found only the second food place open today, a fish and chip shop across the road from Maccas.

In the afternoon we settled in to the unit and relaxed. We are going to do a fair bit of relaxing here over the next three days.

We later bought some provisions from the IGA. Our grocery bill was $50, which will sustain us during our visit. This is equal to the amount we paid last night for the second worst meal we have ever had, at the Port Hotel in Hopetoun. The honour for our worst meal goes to Hotel Tiffany at Trezzano Sul Naviglio on the outskirts of Milano, Italia during our visit in 2008.

Tomorrow we are doing some exploring

Day 14. Hopetoun

Today was a travelling day. Before that we woke to a calm, warm and cloudless day for ANZAC Day in Albany.

History records that the first ANZAC Day Dawn Service was held in Albany on 25 April 1923 when Rev White led a group of friends in a moving dawn commemoration service to honour the men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice for Australia. News of the simple and moving ceremony spread very quickly and the ANZAC Day Dawn Service became a national commemoration. Rev White was an Australian Army pastor who served in Europe during the First World War. We were here on the anniversary of the very day it all started.

After packing, breakfast and loading the car and we were off to Hopetoun. The trip today, via Jarramungup and Ravensthorpe covered 340km. We have found out that the suffix “up” means “place of” in regional Aboriginal language.

We made Jarramungup by 10:15am, just in time for the local ANZAC Day commemoration. We saw people coming to town for the service from all directions. The road to Jarramungup can be called a typical Australian road scene. Then to Ravensthorpe, which is a road junction on the way to Esperance. We planned an overnight stop at Hopetoun to break the journey and hoping to find a place to relax. There is a camel farm at Ravensthorpe.

Hopetoun was settled in 1901 and is a small but very beautiful and quiet place. Please share the views we had at lunch on the upper floor of the cafe in Hopetoun.

Then we toured the 12 mile beach and the 5 mile beach. At the 12 mile, we saw a rocky bar that has withstood the erosion that formed a quiet lagoon between the bar and the shore. At the 5 mile, the interest was in the formation of sandstone. The stone upon which we were standing was hard rock. The stone further up, whilst looking the same was sufficiently soft to be broken with the fingers and is easily eroded by water, as the photos show.

We relaxed for the short remainder of the afternoon.

Day 13. Albany, day 2

Today is a different day from yesterday. We were greeted with not a cloud in the sky and no wind to speak of. It was bright and cool. I think the bridge and the gap would not be as impressive in these conditions.

The first item was to attend the Farmers' Market. This was as a produce market should be. Only bona fide primary producers are permitted to attend. To participate, they must be local and must only offer their own produce. There was red meat, white meat, seafood, fruit, vegetables, honey, herbs, dairy products, a bakery and a coffee place. Although small in the number of outlets, it was very popular with the people of Albany.

We chased down a couple of galleries, but they did not satisfy.

Later in the day we travelled out of town to take in some other places of interest. The first was Little Beach in Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve. This pretty little beach is noted for having the bluest water. It did not disappoint.

We then wanted to visit Nanarup Beach close to the Gull Rock National Park. On the way we saw a bird park and marron farm which incorporated a restaurant offering marron, a freshwater lobster. Adrienne had wanted to taste marron since hearing of them over here. She dined on a plate of a marron and yabbies. The yabbies are bigger than we normally see in the North. I supped on Chicken Chilli on Turkish. Both very nice.

Nanarup Beach was next on the list. It was beautiful but different from Little Beach. There were plenty of 4 wheel drives on the beach and fishermen feeding potential prey in the Southern Ocean. A family including young children were preparing to do some boogie board surfing.

Thus came to an end a restful day before we depart tomorrow, ANZAC Day, for Hopetoun.

Day 12. Exploring Albany

Today, Friday, dawned overcast and looked cold. It was windy. We planned domestic duties (washing) to occur during breakfast. There was a laundromat close to our accommodation, which provided a good service. With breakfast done as well as the laundry, we decided to take in the things to see within walking distance.

We did a little local shopping because Adrienne had a blowout in one of her shoes. They didn't fit too well anyhow and were being massaged with leather expander. Anyhow the new shoes are comfortable and look good.

The first stop was the Brig Amity, which is a reproduction built at Albany of the first boat to bring settlers, read convicts, to Western Australia. Leadership of the reproduction was a resident of Albany who worked in the industry years ago. The Amity arrived in Princess Royal Harbour on 25 December 1826.

We then travelled to Mount Clarence, upon which is situated the ANZAC Memorial. This provides an all round view of Albany. If you look in the distance of the photo overlooking Albany, you will the the wind farm which is featured later.

Half way down the mountain we went to the Princess Royal Fortress, which is a big gun emplacement built to protect Princess Royal Harbour in 1896. There remains some restored buildings which were in use as late as 1956. The buildings contain memorabilia from both World Wars. One of the features is a muzzle loading cannon, which will be fired on ANZAC Day. Here we met Rene, a volunteer who looks after visitors to the site. Rene's job, besides collecting $9 per entry, is to tell you all about the site. Entry cost us $18 and 15 minutes.

For lunch we went to Middleton Beach. This is a very peaceful place, as the photos show.

We then left the city limits for three “must see” experiences, the natural bridge, the gap and the wind farm.

The bridge and the gap are on the southern coast, west of Albany, within 20km of the city. These features are being fashioned by the Southern Ocean. Local information tells us that the South Pole is a mere 6,100km from there. These points are within 50m of each other. Truly inspiring!

Closer to town is the wind farm. The photos speak for themselves. Adrienne has always wanted to get close to a wind farm.