Gold!!


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Oceania
December 7th 2010
Published: December 17th 2010
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The next stop on my trip was out in the middle of nowhere in a town called Kalgoorlie. To get out there I got the train, which took about 7 hours and didn't go anywhere near as fast as trains in Europe. I had to concentrate on staying awake, as, if I missed the stop at Kal, it was about 5 hours or something crazy til the next stop! However, fairly good trip, and I read most of my book, as after about 10 minuntes of looking out the window the scenery of; sand, sand, more sand, a tree!, sand, more sand (etc etc), got fairly dull. On arrival in Kalgoorlie I met up with Pam and we headed back to her house, met Cookie and Mitsy the cats, and chilled out for the evening.

The next day we got up early to go land-sailing on a salt lake called Lake LeFroy with Paul, his daughter Catherine and a Belgium backpacker called Louis. When we got there Paul got 3 land yachts and a bunch of spanners and other tools out of his trailer, and set to putting them together. It turns out Paul makes the boats himself - the yachts out of old bits of metal and fabric, and the sails from old windsurf sails. We were sailing the smallest of his inventions, with 3 to 5 ft sq sails, but even so, their max speed was 88k per hour. To start off, me, Louis and Catherine took the yachts on the smaller of the two salt lakes, to check that I could actually sail before going on the bigger one. The land yachts handled very similarly to a dinghy, except after getting up speed downwind, you pull the sail in to go faster. After half an hour or so me and Catherine came in, and Paul and Louis took the yachts out for a bit. Then we carried them over the road onto the bigger lake, where me, Catherine and Louis took them up to a couple of salt "islands", which were basically a bunch of rocks piled up to make a small mound 5km away. After looking around the islands a little bit, we sailed back, downwind this time, meaning we covered the 5km back to the truck in just under 3 minutes.

Then we paused for a picnic lunch at the truck, before me, Paul and Louis headed out again for about an hour of sailing back and forth around the lake. Me and Paul had a mini-race up the lake and back down again, and I beat him twice - once on the tack, once on the gybe. Considering he is one of the best land-sailors in Australia, I think I should start landsailing more often - I might win more than when I sail on water! Paul reckoned that in the race our yachts were just on the point of going so fast we lost control, which is round about 88km per hour :D. Then, after a brief rest we swapped yachts and did another race up to and around the islands, and back to the truck, which Paul won, dismantled the yachts and headed back to Kalgoorlie. That evening me and Pam went out for a buffet dinner at a nearby pub. It had a section with "skimpies" (topless women) serving, but we went to the section with the all-you-can-eat buffet option.

The following day we went on a tour of "Kal", and Pam told me the local history of the neighbour town "Boulder" - which despite being essentially in Kalgoorlie, refuses to admit it, and still calls itself Boulder. It seems to be the part of town where the miners tend to live, along with their practical approach to politics (e.g. when the council wanted to move some mining statue into the middle of a new roundabout, one morning, magically, a massive palm tree had been planted there instead; and when the council refused to build a bypass for them, they borrowed a few trucks etc from the mine, and built one themselves one weekend). After touring the town we went out to The Super Pit, which is exactly what the name suggests - a big pit. They basically got bored of mining in shafts and dug a massive pit to get the gold out instead, and years later it is still going, and is pretty impressive. The trucks they use are absolutely massive, and cost about 10mil each, but looking down from the top, they look like little toy trucks. When we had finidhed looking at the big hole in the ground, we went over to the local swimming pool, where unfortunately the wavepool was shut, so I did a couple of ks length swimming instead.

After having had the tour of town, the next day, we went out bush with a guy called Stan and his wife. We started off by going to a ghost town called Ora Banda, which basically had a pub and a graveyard, and not much else - happy place 😉. Then we went out into the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and red dust, where Pam and Stan set up table, chairs, and picnic, complete with salmon, fruit and chocolate fondue dip. Towards the end of the meal, the wind suddenly picked up a lot, and a little whirlwind or "willy willy" went past us, just the other side of the road. On the way back to civilisation, we saw another willy willy going through the countryside beside the road, this time much bigger. That evening we went out for dinner with Stan and his wife, and then walked back to the house.

On Thursday we went to some museum opening thing that was basically some museum dude talking about museumy stuff - I was fascinated 😉 - and then some of the local aborigini's and school kids sung for us. Then we looked around the museum which turned out to be quite interesting - they had displays about Kal's history and a gold vault - which unfortunately didn't let you take souvenirs. After we'd finished looking round the museum we went back into town to go on a tour of one of the local brothels: "Langtrees". We ended up being shown round by Leigh Varis-Beswick. She started the tour by revealing to us that she used to be a man, and had changed sex at the age of 35. She then was persuaded to come back to Kal, where she worked as a prostitute and city council member, and slept with various guys from her old school who didn't recognise her. She is now madam of the brothel. We then went round various rooms including one with a car for a bed (complete with noises if you hit it or spoke loud enough), one designed as a mine, the Roman Orgy Room with 2 double beds and a spa for groups of up to 4 guys and their "escorts", and 13 others.

The following day we went to the miners hall of fame, where I went on a "Pitch Black" tour of the mine. First of all I met the guide who was a girl who works the mines normally, and did tours as a part-time job. She gave me steelcap boots, a helmet and a torch, and promised to "deck me one" if I shone it in her eyes. We went down a lot of steps to the first level, at 36m. It was quite cramped but as neither me or the guide were very tall, we could walk along standing up which was good. Then we went down another 36m, this time via stepladder, to the 2nd level, which was much smaller as they don't take as many tourists down. There we walked along for a bit and saw a big tool used for drilling holes in the wall, and my guide assured me that if you wanted to date a miner, you dated the guy that operated that as he got paid $1500 per 12 hour shift. Then we crawled along a passage until it became high enough to stand up again, clipped hench-looking caribeaners onto tiny plastic loops on out harnesses, and went over a rather unstable looking bridge spanning a 36m drop to the next level. Then we unclipped from the safety line
The Bridge Of DEATH!!The Bridge Of DEATH!!The Bridge Of DEATH!!

Spanning a 90m drop :D
and came to an even more unstable bridge. Here the guide made us go one at a time, only treading on the middle plank -"'cos the others are rotten, and they cover a 90m hole in the ground". Reassuring. Once we were both across, and luckily still alive, we went to the end of the passage to look at a bit of equpiment called the "Widowmaker". Then the guide turned off all our light for a few minutes, and it was literally so dark that I couldn't see my hand 2 inches away from my face. I tried to bring my finger close enough to see it, and ended up nearly poking myself in the eye - it was as the tour name suggested: Pitch Black. After a while, the guide turned the torches back on and we went back to the bridge of death. Once I had gone across, she got me to help her pull one of the planks forming the main bulk of the bridge off, and put it to one side. This revealed a tiny hole and a rusty stepladder, which led down to the third level. Once down, the third level turned out to be much smaller, and we could look up at the bottom of the bridge, and then down the steep drop that we would fall down if the rotting wood gave way. Then we went back up to the 2nd level, and got a "lift" (which turned out to be a cage on a wire) up to the top. There I met up with Pam again and we went to a gold-pouring demonstration. The guy started off by handing round bits of rocks, and a 1 ounce gold coin, which was tiny, but worth about $1400. Then he poured the gold out of a heater to make an ingot, which he let us hold, but unsurprisingly kept quite a close eye on.

Then we went to have lunch at the cafe, and in the afternoon we looked around the rest of the hall of fame. We started by panning for gold, and failing quite epically. Then we looked round a hut housing the dynamite exhibiton - basically lots of old crates that used to contain nytroglycerine and other fun substances. After that we looked round the Chinese gardens which had a fish pool, and were quite strange in amongst the miners stuff, and had a look a a very big truck. Finally, we decided to head back to town, and that evening we went to a local production of Singrad the Sailor, which was terrible, and prepared for the trip to Esperance the next day.

The drive down to Esperance took us about 5 hours, and after leaving Kal, there was not a single turning in the road until we reached Esperance. There was also nothing much in the way of scenery apart from a dead kangaroo or 2. Me and Pam shared the driving, and when we got to Esperance we walked along the beach next to the hostel, before getting back in the car to go and see the nicer beaches nearby the town. The first beach we got to looked like serious fun with some nice waves, but as Pam decided it was too dangerous, we didn't go down, instead heading down to beach #2. The waves here were much smaller, and there was only one rip, on the far side of the beach near the rocks, but though we got out the car and went for a walk, Pam still said it was too dangerous, so
Me on a tyre of the very very big truckMe on a tyre of the very very big truckMe on a tyre of the very very big truck

It was actually an effort to get up there - 'tis a big tyre!
we ended up in the car again to go to the final beach, which was much longer and more public, and had no waves whatsoever, and as such I was allowed to go swimming. The water was a lot colder than Cairns, though nowhere near as cold as England, despite what the Aussie's all said about the water being "freezing" and "too cold to swim in". That evening we went down to a little restaurant on the Jetty for fish and chips, and watched the Sourcerer's Apprentice.

The next day it was back in the car to head up to Cape Le Grand, where we went to more beaches, first Lucky Bay, where I went swimming. Next was Thistle Bay, which I went down to briefly, though it involved clambering down, and sliding the last 5m down smooth rock. This then posed a difficulty in getting back up, but luckily there was a crack in the rock a bit further along that gave a handhold, so I wasn't trapped forever. The final beach was HellFire Beach, which although it wasn't ringed with fire, did have a lot of small children running about, so you could say it was aptly named. We walked along a bit away from most of the other people, and had lunch there. Then we chilled out for an hour or so before going up to look at "Whistling Rock" and another big rock, that we decided not to climb, seeing as how the board reckoned it would take 4 hours return. That was pretty much Cape Le Grand covered, and so we headed back to Esperance, and had dinner with Pam's friends who cooked an amazing meal, and were pretty cool people.

For our final day in Esperance we took a wildlife tour on a Cat out to Woody Island. On the way out there we saw a few seals, lots of seagulls and a couple of eagles. Once on the island we were given tea and choc cake, before going on a glass-bottomed boat out over the coral. There was a lots of weed, but still quite a bit of coral, and some pretty big fish, though they weren't very colourful. We also saw some pretty plate corals, and you could see how the cliffs at the edge of the island continued straight down to about 18m. Then we took the boat back to the mainland again, this time taking only half an hour as we weren't stopping to look at seals etc, and did the long drive back to Kal, ready for my flight out to Adelaide the next day.

K xx




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LandYachtLandYacht
LandYacht

The one I was sailing
Me looking VERY coolMe looking VERY cool
Me looking VERY cool

Paul and Catherine in background


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