Leonora - Mt Magnet

From Kalgoorlie we headed north into the northern goldfields, staying at Leonora one night. Just south of Leonora is the old gold mining town of Gwalia, home of the well known Sons of Gwalia mining company. In case, like us, you ever wondered about that name, apparently Gwalia was a poetical name for Wales, and the original gold mine was discovered by a group of Welsh prospectors. One of Gwalia's claims to fame is that after the original owners sold the claim, the mine manager who actually developed the mine was Herbert Hoover, who later went on to become the 31st president of the United States. The mine closed down suddenly a week before Christmas 1963, within 3 weeks the population went from 1500 to about 40. Most people just walked out with at most a bag, all their possessions were just left behind. The mine is once again operating today, but most of Gwalia is a ghost town. The only substantial building left is the old State Hotel, which is now the office of the reopened mine. It was interesting to wander around the tumble-down miners' shacks and think about what it would have been like to be told you'd lost your job, and had to leave within a week with only what you could carry.

From Leonora we headed back to Mt Magnet for another couple of days, 5 weeks after being here last time. We spent most of a day looking around Cue, another gold mining town that has seen better days. The picture at left here is of the original Cue masonic lodge, a very impressive corrugated iron building. Apparently corrugated iron was a very popular building material on the goldfields, as it was light and could be easily transported by camel train. We also went to have a look at Walga Rock, which has some interesting aboriginal rock art, including a graphic picture of what is quite obviously a sailing ship, 500km from the coast! Apparently scientists believe it was painted up to 300 years ago, and represents one of the Dutch sailing ships that visited Australia's west coast before Captain Cook decided he liked the look of the place. There was a very energetic goanna at Walga Rock, determinedly trying to push his way through the rabbit proof fence, but having no luck with his big belly. Also in the area is a small crater made by a meteorite several thousand years ago, but to the untrained eye it was pretty indistinguishable from any other hole in the ground.

Mt Magnet represents the end of the current stage of our around Australia trip. It is the last place we will be in the outback until we cross back east across the Nullarbor Plain early next year. For the next few months we will be making a much more leisurely pace through the cooler, more civilised south west of WA, getting back to playing some golf and, hopefully, getting away from some of the flies.

Kalgoorlie-Boulder

Kalgoorlie and Boulder were gold rush towns founded in the 1890's, only a few kilometres apart. They finally succumbed to the obvious and merged into one town but kept both names, however most people do the easy thing and know the place just as Kalgoorlie. The individual underground mine workings have now been swallowed by 'the superpit' - a giant hole in the ground that is growing deeper and larger by the hour. Kalgoorlie still has all the swagger of its frontier town roots, with lots of pubs advertising scantily clad barmaids and imposing civic buildings. Because of the history of the town, there are actually two town centres, each with a town hall, post office and court house. We spent a pleasant half day wandering around each main street, admiring all the imposing buildings. We also did a free tour of the old Kalgoorlie town hall, going behind the scenes to the council chamber, theatre backstage and various offices and dressing rooms.

The main problem for the early miners out here was a lack of water, but this was solved by the building of a new dam in Perth and a pipeline nearly 600km long. This massive engineering feat was completed in 1903, and Kalgoorlie is now as green and leafy as anyone would wish. There is a really nice lookout over town at the site of the reservoir built to store the water once it arrives after its long journey.

About 35 km south of Kalgoorlie is the town of Coolgardie. This was also founded on gold, a couple of years before the first strike at Kalgoorlie. The first gold strike at Coolgardie was at a place they originally called 'Fly Flat', which gives a fair idea of what it's like. Like Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie has lots of pubs and very impressive public buildings, however the gold started to run out in Coolgardie after about 20 years, and it is now a mere shadow of its former self. All but one of the pubs has closed down, and only small corners of the public buildings are still in use. The hugely wide main street (built to allow camel trains to turn around) has more empty lots than buildings standing, and the whole place is quietly sinking back into the scrub. Its a salutary lesson for Kalgoorlie, the citizens of which don't appear to be giving too much thought to the fact that the superpit is estimated to run out of gold in less than 10 years.

The other thing we did here is visit Kalgoorlie's Miner's Hall of Fame. As well as the usual recreations of miners' huts and such like, they had reasonably interesting displays explaining the history of the exploitation of various minerals in Australia (who'd have guessed how many different things we dig up and ship overseas - we'd never even heard of wolfram before!) plus tales of various mining pioneers and characters. The $2 entry fee was a definite bargain given the couple of hours of entertainment we got.

Southern Cross

Southern Cross is a small town about 400 km east of Perth. It is at the eastern edge of the wheat belt and the western edge of the WA goldfields. We filled in a day here exploring all the rock formations in the area, including Baladjie Rock pictured left. This involved a very steep scramble to the top, where we got good views over the nearby salt lakes. We proved not to be the seasoned travellers we had been imagining, arriving early Saturday afternoon we found that the local supermarket had closed at 12:30 and wasn't opening again until Monday. Luckily we had enough supplies to cover our meals, but we could have been caught out as we hadn't planned for it.

Toodyay

We have now left the WA coast and headed inland, happy to be away from the constant coastal wind. On our way we stopped at New Norcia, which is a monastery settlement built by Benedictine monks in the middle of the 18th century. There are now only about a dozen monks, but the monastery still owns all the land in and around the town, and the only residents are the monks themselves and the people the monks employ to do all the work. The mission was founded to minister to the local aboriginal people and to provide an education to both the aboriginals and the settlers' children. At one stage there were four completely separate schools run by the monastery - aboriginal boys were taught to be farm hands and tradesmen, aboriginal girls trained as domestic servants, white girls taught refined arts such as sewing and music and white boys actually given what we would consider a proper education, including such esoterica as reading and arithmetic. Over time the schools were merged and the overt discrimination was dropped. Once the supply of teaching monks started to dry up in about the 1970's, and the monks had to hire lay teachers and actually pay them a salary, the schools became uneconomic, and the buildings are now hired out for things such as school camps and company seminars. We did a tour of the town, which included entry into one of the monastery prayer rooms, the town church and several chapels in the old school buildings. The nativity fresco on the wall of the church (shown above) has a distinctly Australian feel!

Toodyay (pronounced 2jay) itself is only about 90 km east of Perth, and has all the hallmarks of a weekend getaway and Sunday lunch town - lots of cafes and museums in quaint restored buildings, all with lovely big verandahs. There is also a rail connection for commuters into Perth

which runs morning and evening. The Avon river runs through town, and through a national park about 30km west of town. We went to the park thinking there'd be interesting walking tracks, but apart from one not very interesting lookout there was virtually nothing to see. You certainly couldn't do any bush walking - notwithstanding the flyer on the park boasting of its 'wilderness values', in fact the area was an army firing range mid last century, and there are signs warning you not to leave the road due to the possibility of 'unexploded ordinance'. We didn't have to be told twice.

Having got so close to the city we decided to drive to the suburban outskirts, and experienced our first big city shopping centre since leaving Darwin nearly 3 months ago (and Darwin isn't really a big city anyway). We felt like country cousins, getting excited by so many shops in one place! We also filled up the Patrol with fuel, diesel was the cheapest we have seen on the trip since long ago Port Augusta, and 10 cents cheaper than even here at Toodyay.

As well as doing the history walk around Toodyay, we also drove up the Avon Valley, which is quite pretty and green, dotted with historic towns, and several wineries. It was certainly a much more civilised tourist experience than most we have had so far on this trip!

Jurien Bay

Jurien Bay is only 250km North of Perth, so is well and truly in holiday and weekend away distance. When we arrived it was still the end of the WA school holidays and the park was heaving with families and kids, 2 days later we were almost the only people here. We had been hoping to have a game or two of golf while we were here, but found that the local course had sand greens. However, John was so desperate to get a club back in his hand he decided to play in the club's Saturday competition anyway, a bit of an experience for someone who has only ever played on grass. Interesting, but probably not to be repeated in the near future!




Just south of Jurien Bay, Nambung National Park is home to The Pinnacles, a collection of weird rock pillars sticking up out of the desert. Elsewhere in the area it is scrub and grassland, including heaps of wildflowers, but just in this one patch it is classic desert country. There was a brand new visitors centre giving both Aboriginal and scientific views of the rocks and native flora and fauna, and very well set up walking and driving trails, winding their way around and through the rock formations.



The whole area around Jurien is classified as a 'bio-diversity hotspot' and there are more species of plants in the area than in a tropical rain forest. Accordingly, there are several national parks set aside to preserve the various ecosystems. One such park is Lesueur NP, where we did an interesting 8km walk to the top of a flat-topped mesa, providing panoramic views across the countryside and down to the sea. We also went to Stockyard Gully Reserve and did a walk through a cave cut by a creek - luckily dry at the moment. The part through the cave was about 250m long, pitch black of course. We only had one torch with us so held hands tightly to make sure neither of us wandered into a wall or hanging stalactite (or got taken by monster bats). Unlike our previous cave walk at Tunnel Creek (see Derby), we were the only ones there, so we weren't helped by other people's torches. It felt a lot longer than 250m before we turned a corner and saw the glow from the other end of the tunnel!



We also had an its-a-small-world experience while in Jurien. As we were driving out of Stockyard Gully, on a VERY rough 4wd track (probably the main reason why not many people visit) we came across a camera bag, just sitting in the middle of the track. It looked like quite an expensive camera, certainly a lot flasher than our little pocket job. There was no name or phone number in the bag, so we handed it in to the police station at the nearest town. The next day we got a phone call from the owner thanking us for handing it in. As John was on the phone Wendy could hear the conversation in stereo - it turned out the people who lost it were in a tent right behind our van! They hadn't even realised the camera was missing - he must have put it on the bumper bar of his car after they had done the walk at the cave and then driven off with it still there. The police had looked at the photos on the camera and recognised one of the people - it turns out the camera owner had visited his brother recently and taken a couple of family snaps, the brother was a policeman and one of the police at the station we handed the camera in to recognised him from a training course they had done together. How lucky was that!



We have updated the mailing list at the bottom of our blog slightly, please note for correspondence.

Dongara

Dongara is a small fishing and tourist town. The main industry is rock lobster fishing, but unfortunately the season doesn't start until November, so we didn't get to try any. They have a Larry the Lobster Big Thing at the entrance to town, but it is very much a little brother of the one at Kingston (see our post on Kingston SE - Murray Bridge for a photo of that Larry). We only spent one day here, just enough time to have a game of golf and do the history walk around town.

Kalbarri

Kalbarri is a tourist resort at the mouth of the Murchison River, surrounded by the Kalbarri National Park. It is now school holidays in WA, and the town and caravan park are heaving with families and kids, who seem to all start screaming with excitement at 6am. We spent 3 days here and could have doubled that, particularly as it has quite a nice golf course. However, we only got in one game of golf, and spent the other days exploring the national park.

The park has 2 quite distinct sections - inland around the Murchison River hinterland, and a spectacular section along the coast south of the town of Kalbarri. The river has cut some spectacular gorges, and there are numerous lookouts and short and long walks. The most famous feature around the river is called Nature's Window, being a natural loop worn through the rock that gives a view along one of the river gorges, we only had to queue up for a little while to get the above photo without any other tourists in it! From there we did an 8 km loop walk, which was probably just 1 km too far. The walk went along the top of a ridge, then dropped down to the river before climbing back up to Nature's Window. We were both drooping severely by the time we got back to the car park.

As well as going for walks, we also decided to do a canoe safari down the Murchison River. We were taken by 4wd from town to a spot up river, given some brief instructions, then sent off downstream in canoes. The two of us shared a canoe, and we managed to paddle downstream as a team without too many cross words. Being school holidays, the tour was full, and the other canoes all had some combination of Mum, Dad and the kids. Typical overheard remark was 'paddle faster Dad' from the 6 year old sitting snug in the front while Dad did all the work at the back of the boat! After about 45 minutes we pulled into the bank where the organisers had barbecued a major breakfast - eggs, bacon, baked beans, toast and hash browns. Very welcome after our hard work! Then it was back across the mud (note how far down John's feet have sunk in the photo at right) and into the canoes for another 45 minutes, after which we beached the canoes and were taken back to town. We had a great time, although it is going to take a few days for our shoulders and arms to recover!

The coastal section of the national park has spectacular limestone cliffs, with sea stacks, natural arches and secluded beaches. We did a couple of interesting short walks, deciding not to do the longer walk on offer as the constant sea wind was just too wearing. All in all Kalbarri has a lot to offer, and may well be on our revisit list for the next trip around Australia!

Denham (Shark Bay World Heritage Area)

Denham is the only town on the Peron Peninsula, most of which has been designated a World Heritage Area for outstanding natural and historic values. Denham is also the most Westerly town in Australia, so after this we will be heading gradually eastward again.

The most famous thing about the Shark Bay WHA are the wild dolphins that come into the bay at Monkey Mia daily to be fed. There are apparently around 16 dolphins that visit regularly, but only about 6 of these actually get fed. The Department of Environment and Conservation have worked out a strict feeding regimen to ensure that the dolphins still get the bulk of their food from hunting, so they do not lose their wild instincts. DEC have also cannily worked out that dolphins tend to hang around in family groups with a dominant female, so they only actually feed a few of the matriarchs and still get the benefit of the whole family visiting the beach. School holidays have started here in WA, so there were heaps of people at the dolphin feeding, unfortunately we weren't one of the lucky few chosen to actually hand over a fish but it was still lovely being there so close to these beautiful animals.

Dolphins aren't the only wildlife in the waters of Shark Bay, it is also home to 10% of the world's dugongs, as well as turtles, rays and, as the name suggests, lots of sharks. Dugongs are large marine mammals, supposedly the basis of the mermaid myth, but having seen the rotund beasts in real life we can only think that those sailors must have been out at sea a LONG time to mistake them for beautiful women. We did an afternoon cruise wildlife spotting, and saw quite a few dugong. The cruise company was offering a deal whereby we also got a free 1.5 hour sunset cruise included with the afternoon wildlife cruise. We figured as it was free we might as well go along the following day, although we weren't really expecting anything special. We should have read the brochure more carefully, the boat was originally built as a racing catamaran and in the brisk evening breeze we hurtled across the water with spray flying. Exhilarating!

Another, more sedate, feature of the area is the stromatolites, spongy rocklike formations created by blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, representatives of the very first life forms on earth. Nearby are areas where layers of shells up to 10 metres deep have hardened and bonded to form a rock like substance that looks just like a pile of shells. Early settlers quarried this for bricks, some of the very first buildings in Denham were made from these bricks and can still be seen.

Until less than 20 years ago the peninsula was a pastoral property, and the original homestead is now open to visitors. Wendy was going to pose for a photo with her legs in the tub filled from the water drawn up from underground springs under the property, but the artesian water was so hot that she couldn't get more than one foot in it! A very sandy 4wd track leads from the homestead to the very tip of the peninsula, where a walking track gave magnificent views into the shallow waters of Shark Bay. We saw rays snuffling in the sandy bottom, dugongs wallowing, sharks circling and a dolphin chasing, and ultimately catching, some prey fish. All in all we had a terrific time in one of the world's truly magnificent natural wonders.