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Published: December 3rd 2006
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Kalgoorlie Main Street
We had dinner at the pub on the corner with the verandah. Time to leave the coast for a while. We headed inland 370km to the outback Gold town of Kalgoorlie. Its has such a colourful history - with legal two-up, brothels, race riots - even a future American President was a mine manager in a nearby ghost town in early 1900’s -all based around the discovery of gold in the late 1800’s.
I was really looking forward to seeing Kalgoorlie and it didn’t disappoint. What with the 26 Hotels who can be disappointed???#!! One night we did a pub crawl - only managed to mark 5 off the list (or was it 15 - I lost count after the 5th beer!) The pubs here have such character and are quintessentially Australian.
As if 26 pubs was not enough to keep Wes smiling - there were the 4 different brothel tours as well. And the one we took was definitely a highlight. It is the oldest original and continuously operating brothel in Kalgoorlie. Kalgoorlie was the first place in Australia to have legalised brothels and that was in the late 1800’s. They were considered a necessity due to the large numbers of mining men in the town. Right up to 1984
Questa Casa Brothel
As you can see Wes was very excited about going in. the working girls had to live on the premises and were not allowed to be seen in public. WA still has not legalised the trade anywhere except here in Kalgoorlie and that is only if they remain in the same place, with the same building and operate under strict rules, so most of the buildings are pretty much as they were with minimal renovations. A quirky part of the story is that all brothels were originally located in Hay St, intentionally. Then once in the early 1900’s a visiting politician from Perth noticed that the Court House was further up in the same street and considered this unsatisfactory, so the street was split and the courthouse section re-named. But aside from the history the most fascinating part of the tour was the stories about clients and the different types of ‘things’ the girls get paid for …….and men think women are strange at times!!!
We rode the bikes round Kalgoorlie twice - once 25km on a 35 degree day - mad in more ways than one. Here in Kalgoorlie they have the dreaded 3 headed burrs and in the two days that we rode the bikes, Wes mended 8
punctures and we replaced 2 tubes!!! The bike shop owner makes a fortune out of selling tubes and puncture repair kits.
Went to the Prospecting Hall of Fame and did the underground mine tour - another thing that Wes never seems to tire of - in my view, seen one underground mine, seen them all. We also drove the 6 km out of the town to the original two-up site, This stadium, if you can call it that (see photo) is no longer used and is just rotting in a paddock. This is another quirk of Kalgoorlie - this is the only place where two-up was legally allowed to be played. In other states it is played only in Casinos or on Anzac day, and that’s only because authorities turn a blind eye on that day for the diggers sake.
Apart from all that, in the 4 days we had here, we did another open-cut mine tour of the Superpit, went to the museum and had a great dinner at the balcony restaurant of the one of the pubs downtown.
Then it was off on our trek across the Nullabor. On the way to Norseman which is
at the start of the Nullabor, we stopped for a while in Coolgardie which was the sister gold-mining town to Kalgoorlie but didn’t survive and is now pretty much a ghost town, with a very small population and some historical buildings remaining. There was one story of a miner who found a huge nugget worth $35000 (back then) and he went to the pub to celebrate and must have one too many, ‘cos he fell off the balcony and died. Bugger.
We passed through the very small town of Norseman and headed down the highway to stay our first night at the roadhouse at Belladonia - 409km, then the next day travelled over the longest straight stretch of road in the world - 146km - and on to the halfway point of Eucla - 496km in total for the day. Eucla is very remote and is really just a stopping point, but after arriving we walked 8km return to go to the beach to see the old Telegraph Station which is slowly being swallowed by the sand dunes.
The next day we drove the 582km from Eucla to Streaky Bay as we had been advised by a few
Boulder Town Hall - Goatcher Curtain
Boulder is the twin town of Kalgoorlie - just 3km apart. This curtain was amazing. It is all a two-dimensional painting including the velvet drapes. It was painted in 1908 Phillip Goatcher, who was world renowned at the time. that the town of Ceduna on the far edge was not much chop. We also lost 2.5 hours when we crossed the border, so it seemed like a really long day.
The Nullabor is a 2 magazine and a book long trip. The scenery does change, but there are a lot of miles between each change. It goes from bush to salt-bush desert to dry grazing land, to wheat fields at the SA end. But it is still considered one of Australia’s great frontiers, although these days the roads and fuel availability are a vast improvement on years ago.
Streaky Bay is a pretty fishing village surrounded by wheat fields. Unfortunately with the current severe drought all the hills and valleys were brown and tinder dry and add to that the harvested straw coloured wheat fields, the whole place looked like it had been hit with a severe frost. I’m sure that it looks quite different when there is green about.
We stayed 2 nights here then on to Coffin Bay for another 2 nights, at the tip of the Eyre Peninsula. Another pretty fishing village famous for it oysters, although we didn’t partake because I am
House in Coolgardie
And I thought Wes had trouble throwing things out. allergic and Wes hasn’t gotten over his last bout of food poisoning from oysters. But they were so cheap at only $5.00 a dozen! I am hanging out for Rock Lobster in Robe - luckily there are no allergies to this or prawns!!
The next day we drove to the outskirts of Adelaide to a little village called Redhill and as we couldn’t find the listed free camp, we cheekily pulled up in the main street…opposite the pub….and stayed the night. We went into the pub and had a couple of beers with the friendly locals, who didn’t seemed phased at all that we had set up camp across the road.
The next morning we called in at Snowtown for a geek. This is the place where in 1999, 3 local blokes murdered 9 social security and pension recipients and continued to claim the benefits. They chopped 8 of them up and put them into barrels of acid in a disused old bank vault in the town - until they were discovered and jailed, blah blah blah. The locals don’t advertise this macabre part of their history, rightly so, but it’s still an unofficial tourist site.
Then
off to Adelaide - next blog. Sorry blogs are getting longer because I was getting behind.
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Gerry
non-member comment
Hopping with excitement!!!!
This is a good travel blog with pictures- "rooey" written all over the kangaroo's chest "rootey" written all over Wes' face (as he excitedly enters the brothel) .......