Sunday 22 July

This a very quick post as we are off for another period outside mobile phone coverage.   The next post will be from Karnup!

The terrain between Laverton and Leonora

 

Malcolm Dam was built to service the newly established mining communities in this area, unfortunately, having built it, permanent underground water was discovered not far away and so it was never used for its original purpose.

Gold was first discovered in this area around 1894, by 1900 the whole area between what is now Coolgardie and Leinster in the north, an area around 700 x 200 kilometres was being explored.   Towns grew form nothing to serious conurbations in 2–3 years, lasted until the gold ran out and disappeared as quickly.   Places such as Kanowna where, gold was discovered in 1895, had 12,000 in habitants in 1902 (and a train every 15 mins to Kalgoorlie) but by 1920 there was nothing left of it!    There were literally hundreds of similar townships all over the goldfields.

One such place was Gwalia, to the southwest of Leonora, where some of the local people have tried very hard to preserve some of some of the town as it was in the last century.   Some of these homes were still being occupied in the middle of the last century.   The pub finally closed around 1960.

 

 

 

  A ‘Pot Plant’!   

These figures adorn the main street at Menzies, about 40 ks north of Kalgoorlie.   The decoration on the end of the building is made up of car number plates!

   

Then there’s Kalgoorlie and the epitomy of modern mining, the ‘Superpit’.   In the 1980s there were 8 mining leases on the Golden Mile, all struggling to make a living, these were eventually all combined into one large company called KCGM , Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Miners.    The superpit is the result of combining all those leases and is now 3 or 4 ks long and a kilometre deep.   It has produced over 1000 tonnes of gold.   At today’s price around at around 1500 US an ounce it is a profitable business!

The ‘Superpit’

 A really big ‘TonkaToy’!  Carries 225 tonnes, each trip!

Broad Arrow, another defunct mining town, all that remains is the pub which like many others survives almost entirely on its novelty value.   In the case the walls are literally covered with names of visitors.

 

 

Niagara Dam

A night stop and a bush camp south east of Leonora, arguably the nicest one we stayed at.   The dam is one of many built to service the goldfields towns and the railway system.   It is currently 90% full and so is an oasis for birds, animals and of course people.    

     

   In 2003, for the Perth festival of Art, these figures were produced by Peter Gormley ( British artist).   There were 51 altogether and they were placed on Lake Ballard, a huge claypan to the west of Menzies.   The distribution seems random but they are speaced so that it takes up to 7 hours to walk around all of them!   Needless to say we didn’t, apart from the fact that the clay surface is still a bit moist, we’re really didn’t have the time.   We talked about it as a work of art and decided that it was too big to get the message (if there was one!).

    

 

We’re headed south again now to Coolgardie, once the hub of the Goldfields, now reduced to surviving as a small town with not much going for it, apart from some 19^th  century buildings.