Kalgoorlie - Golden Outback

Just some of the fantastic architecture of Kalgoorlie-Boulder



Kalgoorlie was founded upon gold and gold seekers during the 1890s and mining continues to be its main industry over 100 years later.  Kalgoorlie is definitely the service and shopping centre for the golden outback.  The city of 30 000 is a 7 hour drive from Perth and the next major centre east would be Adelaide 2000+ km away.  A treasure trove of turn of the 20th century architecture gems and plenty of things to see and do.  The streets are wide - wide enough to turn around a camel train.  The reason for my stay in Kal was an exchange teachers P.D. (professional development) weekend.  Myself and 8 other teachers visited 3 schools (Kalgoorlie Boulder Community High School, East Kalgoorlie Primary, and School of the Air) plus the Goldfields School District office and of course the local attractions.

KBCHS was an interesting school visit.  This public school serves years 8, 9, 10 and a couple stats that the principal gave us made us think. 

(1.) Because Kalgoorlie-Boulder is a transient community, just 43% of kids entering year 8 will be there at the end of year 10.

(2.) 80% of the staff has 4 years of teaching or less.

Sorry, no photos. 

Above - School of the Air building

Left - map of where the families live.


The second school visit was to the School of the Air.  Started many six decades ago and back then children in remote and outback areas were taught over short wave radios.  Nowadays, primary aged children are taught via satellite internet connection.  School is in session Monday to Friday with a live two-way broadcast lasting for less than an hour a day.  The rest of the time children will complete workbook type packages and are expected to attend "school" 9 till 3.  All exchange teachers were very keen to learn more about this distant education.

The third school visit was to East Kalgoorlie primary school.  Again, another interesting tour.  Again, a different type of school.  This primary school serves students of aboriginal heritage.  Started by an aboriginal principal to deal with declining enrollment, she started focusing on specific needs for aboriginal students that might have been missed otherwise.  Sorry, no photos.


5 Canucks, 2 Brits, 2 Aussies Teachers



Before electricity reached remote stations,
people peddled to power up their short wave radios.



Two more tours for our group.  First, the Royal Flying Doctor Service at the airport.  Flying Doctors (similar to air ambulance) began many decades ago to serve the remote areas of Australia with medical help.
The Kalgoorlie-Boulder post is still being called out on average 3 times a day.

Secondly, we played a Two Up game.  An Outback Australian gambling invention and ANZAC day tradition.  Throw TWO pennies UP in the air and put money on whether both coins are going to be heads or tails.  If it's odds (1 head and 1 tail) the spinner throws again.  This ram shackled site is no longer in daily use, but at one time it had big crowds and wages were won and lost.   

The bush land that surrounds the goldfields of Kalgoorlie have grown back naturally over the past half century.  Miners and builders cut down every available tree for construction of buildings and mining supports as well as fuel for the furnaces that ran steam engines, water condensers, and smelters.  Today, it is a beautiful semi-desert thriving once again with just 250 mm (10 inches) of rainfall per year.  [But, has an evaporation rate of 2500 mm a year.]

No tour of Kalgoorlie would be complete without a tour of the Super Pit.  Originally, the 'Golden Mile' was independently owned and operated by many different underground goldmine companies.  Old photos show dozens of head frames just on the outskirts of town.  Then in the 1970s and 80s, a WA business man started buying up the leases for the idea of starting an open pit mine to extract what was in between.  Set to dig until 2017, the Super Pit will eventually be almost one kilometre deep, 4 km long and 1 km wide.  Look how tiny the big equipment looks now!  Imagine in a few years time!

Nightlife in a wild west town full of miners, locals, and tourists alike was a blast!  We hit a few pubs - one had a glass section to walk on showing a mine shaft right below the floorboards.  Several other pubs included: The Exchange, famous for it's 'skimpy' bartenders in their undies and The Palace, famous for it's minerals and stock prices ticker and also their 'skimpy' waitresses.  Kal also has 3 working brothels.  And since we were on an educational P.D... we went on a bordello tour of one of the premises.  Although there were lots of questions asked, no homework assignments were given?! 

Lily Langtrees Country Club - a.k.a. brothel.    

One of the many bars in town and also a former mining head frame in the background.

Gold pouring demo at the Mining Hall of Fame.



Coolgardie Safe - an ingenious invention. 



The Coolgardie Safe is an Aussie outback fridge in the days before electricity.  Water in the metal tray is sucked up the hessian (burlap) walls and the breeze cools anything inside. You can actually feel the coolness!

Last touristy stop before heading home - Rabbit Proof Fence.  Built to try to stop the hoard coming from the eastern states - but to no avail.  Lots of stories and history comes from this long, long, long fence line.

Avon Descent

The Avon Descent is a paddling and power boating race down the Avon and Swan rivers.  Starting from the inland town of  Northam and ending up 124 kms later at Bayswater, a suburb of Perth.  Avon descent has been around for 39 years and attracts international (South Africans have won it for the past decade) and local whitewater paddlers (from rookie to olympic calibre).  Last year's Avon Descent was somewhat a failure as the drought made the river levels at 0.2 m and only 3 motor boats finished the race and the paddlers commented that it was more of a foot race than anything.  This year with better winter rains the river level was above 2 metres deep.  Making this year's race highly anticipated.  Our family travelled from Harvey to Northam for the Friday nights festivities, main street parade, fireworks, and fair.  We were guests of a former Australia-Canada exchange teacher who treated us and fed us like royalty.  Thanks again Lindsay and Liz.  On Saturday we followed the kayakers and surf-ski paddlers along the river route.  Stopping at key viewing areas where white water would show spectators some drama and the little town along the route with their own fairs and food festivals and museum visits.  See the website for a little more information.   http://www.avondescent.com.au/

 

The man-made Extracts Weir makes for some good whitewater kayaking.  Even the tandems, double surf-ski, and power dinghies went down the rapids.

Below is the town of Toodyay's fair with pony rides and international food festival.

Jackson and his hobbit pony. 

 Caleb and his horse.

We all went on a mini-train ride which was squishy, as all 4 of us plus another family of 4 sat in one car, but super fun time.  Not sure who is the youngest?  The dog, the train, or the conductor?

Collin got put into the stocks for bad behaviour at the gaol (old time jail) museum.  Lots and lots of interesting settler and convict stories told inside.

Great Northern Highway Continued - Days 11 & 12

Kirkalocka Station south of Mount Magnet was our second overnight stop on the Great Northern Highway.  It is approximately the halfway point between the 1200 km distance between Newman and Perth.  We had the shearer's quarters and it was basic; thank goodness for the extra wool blankets and flannel sheets as it was a cold night.  The station has 30 000 hectares of pastoral lands for their numerous grazing goats.  Boys and dirt and animals and farms - of course they thought that this was their favourite place to stay. 

Here's what happened after 50 mm of rain.  Nothing compared to when cyclone rains come and swells the road crossing creeks up to 2 metres deep.

New Norcia -  New Norcia Hotel was a luxury compared to the caravan parks, camp trailers, backpackers,  roadhouses, and sheep station stays that we had on our July holiday.  Hot showers and clean white sheets in a heated room, that also came with a breakfast the next morning was heaven.  The stonework at the entrance titled SALVE, Latin for salvation, was fitting.  New Norcia is a monastic community, all buildings belong to the 70 or so Benedictine monks that live, work, and pray there.  The walkabout in the grounds was peaceful and tranquil.

The abbey grows a lot of olives to produce gourmet oil.  They also sell stone baked bread, abbey ale and other hand made crafts in the gallery.  I looked for a T-shirt that said "I did it missionary style in New Norcia", but of course, there was none. 

Great Northern Highway - Days 10 &11

The Great Northern Highway links Perth to the outback mining towns and northwest ports.  It is lesser used by tourists than the coastal route, but traffic was nonetheless just as busy.  We passed oncoming road trains up to 50 metres in length and with 3, 4, and even sometimes 5 trailers in tow with all sorts of construction camp and mine supplies.  When passing a road train, the rule of thumb is to use at least 1 km of clear roads ahead... and try doing that at night!  Top right pic is Mt. Whaleback near Newman, it's one of the richest iron ore deposits in the world.  And on the right is me standing in front of Newman Senior High School, where my current principal, Mrs. Caudle taught for 15 years and my exchange partner also taught there for a few years before coming to Harvey.  If you would like to see the Australian perspective of Western Canada, check out Mr. Spragg's blog at...

http://www.spraggsincanada.blogspot.com/

Above left is a dry river bed that was right beside our roadhouse accommodation.  It ran directly across the highway as well.  As with most roads in the north, a road sign would warn drivers that a dip is ahead and possible flood way.  It's too expensive to build up the roads and put in culverts or bridges everywhere where water could be only a few times during the year.  Above right, is another post-mine camp ATCO trailer serving as a motel behind Kumarina Roadhouse.

Where else would a guy pee when the next town is 200 km away and no bush in sight?

We stopped at a pretty picnic spot outside of Meekatharra.  Again, we had to use our 4x4, but well worth the short drive.  The giant granite boulders in Peace Gorge provided plenty of climbing opportunities for the boys and entertainment.  Good thing - no snakes!

Next stop was Cue, a former gold rush town at the turn of the last century.  At one time there was 4000 people with all the modern conveniences, like electricity and a booming economy.  Now it's a sleepy little village of 300 with some neat old architecture.  Soon, we got back in the Suzuki for another drive.

The last stop of the day before our sheep station stay was at an aboriginal site near Mt. Magnet.  If we knew what to look for, we would of found hand stencils, rock art, and pictoglyphs.  But, all we saw was roo poo and more rocks to climb.  Next time we'll hire a guide.

Karijini National Park - Day 10

Karijini National Park is one of Western Australia's most beautiful national parks.  It is very remote and rugged and doesn't get too too many visitors each year, being so far away from Perth.  But, those who venture into Karijini's gorges will never be disappointed.  This area of the world is ancient, some of the oldest rocks found any where on earth.  Deep weathered gorges and eroded mountain ranges full of red rock captures your imagination.  We left our bed in Tom Price to drive about 40 minutes to get to the park gates.  Once in the park, the roads turned from smooth payment to rough, rocky, corugated gravel roads.  Good thing for 4x4 and driving slow.  The first stop was Oxer Lookout which overlooks the meeting of 3 deep gorges - Red Gorge, Weano Gorge, and Joffre Gorge.  Pictures and words are hard to describe the natural and relatively unspoilt beauty.  The picture on the left is Becky's quick paced descend to the bottom of Weano Gorge. The pics below is of  where two of the three gorges meet.  

White gum trees grow best along the gorge edges and the sometimes dry and sometimes wet river beds.

An interesting thing I read about termite mounds (also called white ants) is that you can tell direction from them.  The termites build their nest thinner north/ south to avoid the heat from the sun during the hottest part of the day, therefore keeping their home cool.  The east side is wider to capture the warmth of the rising sun acting like a heating system.

Joffre Falls - During 'the wet' the river could fill the narrow gorge up to 60 metres deep and during 'the dry' it can dry up altogether.