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Published: June 10th 2009
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Love those trees
I've taken dozens of photos of them! We are back in Norsman after driving to Kalgoorlie yesterday and staying there overnight.
The beautiful gums with the bronze trunks were quite prevalent on the way and everywhere as we came into the twin towns of Boulder and Kalgoorlie. This is the main area of the goldfields - and my primary school lessons of Paddy Hannan finding gold there in 1893 came flooding back. The main street in Kalgoorlie is Hannan Steet and there is a statue of the man himself in front of the town hall. There are signs of what a wealthy town it was in those days with many large and ornate Victorian buildings.
It is still a huge gold mining town. Alan Bond himself was responsible for buying all the individual claims to join together and beginning the open cut mining here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Pit_gold_mine
We visited the lookout to see the open cut mine - what a surprise - it was HUGE! Very wide and very deep. Many large trucks were driving up and down the steep site , each filled with 258 tonnes of the ore - they looked like toy Tonka trucks. It takes 40 minutes for the trucks to make it
to the top of the pit.
They work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I was surprised at the amount of gold there must be to be so constant in the blasting and collecting, but to me it’s an environmental disaster, so big and so ugly.
This morning we went to the RFDS (Flying Doctor) base at the airport. I worked in their Sydney office for a couple of years in my single days, and retain an interest in the work they do- we’d called into their base when we were in Broken Hill one trip so wanted a look at the Kalgoorlie base.
We were taken to a small theatre to view a short film on their role in the outback - not only going to the aid of sick and injured in remote areas, but they hold regular clinics in the outback and generally keep those living such distances well and healthy. We were then taken on to the old hanger - they still use the original 1937 hanger - where a Pilates plane was parked and open for us to look into. Though it’s quite small, there is room for two patients, a
doctor, a nurse, and of course, the pilot. The government pays for the basic needs but the day to day running of the Service is by donations and fund raising, which seems so wrong to me.
We drove around Kalgoorlie one last time, including a look at the old bordellos - they have tours but drove past, took a picture, tick it off. Then we were on the road to Norseman, via Coolgardie. I expected Coolgardie to be similar to Kalgoorlie, but I think the glory days of the town are well and truly over. The main buildings are large and of stone, the main road in and out of town is very wide, but it was like a ghost town with just a few caravanners, and us, having a look around. We found the streets were wide so they could turn the camel trains around. There are signs around town as to what all buildings were where and what they housed but our attention span waned after awhile and we continued back down to Norseman and the caravan park here.
Tomorrow we head to Esperance, hoping the rain that’s expected for the south-east corner doesn’t eventuate -
The Super pit
If you enlarge the percentage of the photo at the bottom of the screen, you'll see those huge trucks driving along the roads we love these warm sunny days.
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