Wandering in the West

The Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Super Pit at Kalgoorlie Boulder swallows up a staggering...
The Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Super Pit at Kalgoorlie Boulder swallows up a staggering amount of land. Photo by Pam Jones.
Kalgoorlie's Exchange Hotel stands on the town's camel train-sized main street.
Kalgoorlie's Exchange Hotel stands on the town's camel train-sized main street.
One of the 51 sculptures from the ''Inside Australia: Antony Gormley Sculptures'' installation on...
One of the 51 sculptures from the ''Inside Australia: Antony Gormley Sculptures'' installation on the Lake Ballard salt plain.
The old Gwalia State Hotel is a reminder of the once-thriving Gwalia gold-mining town, which is...
The old Gwalia State Hotel is a reminder of the once-thriving Gwalia gold-mining town, which is now a much-visited tourist attraction near the historic Hoover House.
Western Australian wildflowers dot the old Laverton Road along the Golden Quest Discovery Trail.
Western Australian wildflowers dot the old Laverton Road along the Golden Quest Discovery Trail.

A ''golden quest'' adventure drive takes Pam Jones through modern mines and goldfields of old in the Kalgoorlie region of Western Australia.

Kalgoorlie lies at the end of a 600km stretch of the Great Eastern Highway but it is just the beginning of an adventure in the goldfields.

The literal pot of gold still lures thousands to the Western Australian outback, but much gold lies further afield as well.

Just four years ago, a prospector found a 23kg nugget in the Kalgoorlie region (yes, really) and the chance of such fortune still sees many go bush and start digging, although they need a formal prospector's licence first.

Evidence of mining is everywhere and it is not just gold that brings riches to the Kalgoorlie region - good reserves of nickel are also being mined and boosting the area's economy while gold prices remain low.

The area is a curious mix of Wild West and family town and an excellent prospect for those who like a dose of history, romance and adventure in their holiday.

You can travel by train, car, bus or plane to Kalgoorlie easily in a day from Western Australia's capital of Perth, but we see many who have done what we did and put their home ''on their backs'', travelling by campervan to enjoy a more relaxed itinerary that allows frequent stops to smell the (wild)flowers.

After Southern Cross, which is 370km from Perth, the first serious gold-mining town we reach is Coolgardie, another hour's drive east along the Great Eastern Highway and the official start of the Golden Quest Discovery Trail.

This 965km self-drive journey takes you on a figure-eight-type trip past modern mining ventures and wildflower landscapes to northern ghost towns and old outback pubs.

It's a superbly thought out, well resourced and easy-to-drive trail, helped by the excellent $A40 A4-sized Golden Quest Discovery Trail guide book, which is filled with maps, stories and even two CDs of oral histories about the old gold-mining era.

Coolgardie is an impressive start to this, a shadow of its former gold-mining glory days but, like so many other towns settled by miners, bearing huge monuments that witness the heady successes and revelry of old; sit outside the majestic town hall and imagine when 15,000 thirsty miners lived here and the town had 700 mining companies registered with the London Stock Exchange.

We decide to tweak the suggested order of the discovery trail and head another half-hour onwards to Kalgoorlie, enjoying a day spent exploring the centre of the town before swapping our campervan for a 4WD and heading north.

Kalgoorlie is friendly and fun and boasts plenty of monuments of its own.

The layout of the main street is in itself a legacy of the town's goldrush development; it is wide enough for a camel train - often the transport of choice in the 19th century - to turn.

Many beautiful buildings remain from those early days, including the much-photographed Exchange Hotel (on a street corner of Kalgoorlie Cops fame) and the historic Palace Hotel, which has possibly the best restaurant in town, serving supersized, top-rate cuisine on a balcony overlooking the main street.

We see no Kalgoorlie Cops-type behaviour, instead noting everyday family life and hard-working miners driving through town before or after work, although if you want to, you can muster some extra excitement by calling in to one of the main bars at night to order your beer from a scantily-clad ''skimpy'' barmaid, or even tour one of Kalgoorlie's last remaining brothels by doing the Questa Casa tour.

But for more mainstream activities we enjoy calling in to the Western Australia Museum Kalgoorlie Boulder (Boulder is a nearby town that has almost joined up with Kalgoorlie, hence the correct, double-barrelled name of the district) for a history of goldmining in the region; drive to the lookout of the Super Pit, the impossibly sized, hard to comprehend 1.6km wide Alan Bond-instigated gold mine; and the tucked away Beaten Track Brewery, an outstanding bar-cum-local institution where owner/brewer Nick Galton-Fenzi treats us to such craft beer delights as Baroness of Boulder, old Geezer Brown, the Grand Cru Cookie Monster and a Baltic Port Barrel Porter.

Then the next day we are off, making tracks to see more of the Golden Quest Discovery Trail, passing ochre-red desert and a host of old mining towns.

Broad Arrow, Menzies and Kookynie all bear tales of the prosperity gold strikes brought, and the Niagara dam is a welcome oasis along the dusty trail.

We travel on the old Laverton Road past a poignant reminder of home, finding the final resting place of one John Aspinall, of Skippers Canyon.

Arriving in the goldfields as a prospector in 1895, he kept outstanding diaries of his adventures but was tragically killed by lightning in 1896.

An Australian prospector discovered his grave in 1980, looked for relatives and found the Aspinall family of Otago.

The grave is now a tidy, much-respected part of the Golden Quest Discovery Trail.

Once in Laverton we view some interesting and reasonably priced Aboriginal art at the Laverton Outback Gallery, established in 2002 on a co-operative basis by a not-for-profit organisation; artists receive up to 80% of the price of the artwork.

Laverton also houses the Great Beyond Explorers' Hall of Fame gallery.

Then it is the well-kept town of Leonora on the way to the nearby Gwalia, which provides one of the highlights of our trip.

The settlement of Gwalia grew up around the Sons of Gwalia Mine in the late 1890s and thrived until the final whistle blew on December 28, 1963, closing the mine and putting 250 men out of work.

Gwalia's 1200-strong population fell to just 40 in less than three weeks as miners and their families deserted the town.

Now an empty two-storeyed hotel and dozens of corrugated iron houses remain as a reminder of the once-thriving town and it is an incredible and surreal experience wandering through and around the creaking, empty buildings.

Further uphill is Hoover House, just a few hundred metres away from Gwalia ghost town and a magical stop people simply should not miss.

Built by a young (pre-American president) Herbert Hoover when he was manager of the Gwalia mine, the stately house has been extensively refurbished and is now both a breathtakingly beautiful bed and breakfast and part of the Gwalia Museum complex, a fascinating collection that sits incredibly beside the site of the old Sons of Gwalia Mine, now a 1km-wide open pit where modern miners have gone underground.

On the way back to Kalgoorlie we make one final detour, to ''Inside Australia: Antony Gormley Sculptures'', on the salt plain of Lake Ballard.

Fifty-one steel sculptures are spread over 10sq km of the open plain, creating an almost spiritual experience as one wanders or marches between them.

Climb the small hill to get a different perspective, take a water bottle and keep your bearings and enjoy the vast expanse of some of Western Australia's most remarkable desert.

The sculptures are world famous, but out there on your own it feels like the show has been put on just for you.

Pam Jones travelled with the assistance of Tourism Western Australia, Air New Zealand, Britz Campervans and Budget Rent a Car.

 


Getting there

Air New Zealand offers almost daily non-stop flights between Auckland and Perth on its new 787-9 Dreamliner. Seasonal non-stop flights are also available between Christchurch and Perth from December 13 until April 25. Flights can also be done with Air New Zealand's partner airline Virgin Australia via Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Perth. Go to airnewzealand.co.nz

 


For more information

www.westernaustralia.com

www.australiasgoldenoutback.com

www.goldfieldstourism.com.au

www.goldenquesttrail.com

westernaustralia.com/wildflowers


 

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