You see the ridges of tailings looming on the horizon well before you reach Kalgoorlie. A small mountain range, plateaus created by the ceaseless backwards and forwards of dump trucks and dozers. We had no idea what to expect from Kalgoorlie but, as it turned out, a mining town is always a mining town, dirt and history.
We had chosen our base at a sprawling camp ground at Lake Douglas just a few clicks outside Kalgoorlie. Our time frame was somewhat open ended so we took our time exploring the area. The first tourist day saw the local goldmine museum, the famous’super-pit’ open-cut mine and then the best steak sandwiches EVER at the Broad Arrow Tavern a short 50klm run up north.
Kalgoorlie seems to be at the southern end of what are known as ‘The Goldfields’, a 95,000 square kilometre chunk of WA. The history is fascinating and the gold extracted eye-watering. The super-pit has been growing since 1989 after Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) bought out all the smaller mines on the site and just kept digging. It’s now a popular tourist destination, complete with a lookout and blasting schedules posted daily.
The Goldfields Museum was fantastic, not just covering mining history, but also the social history as well. There were audio visual displays and even the drilling platform at the entrance doubled as an elevator to a view over the entire town. The union movement was, and still is, a powerful force on the goldfields. There’s a special section dedicated to displaying the huge banners of the early unions. Some of these are over 100 years old and the room is light protected to avoid fading.
Bearing in mind that this area has been mined for 125 years, finding an untouched patch of ground is a mere fantasy of the novices. Still, we had not yet been bludgeoned by reality and armed with an app and a map set off with van for a ‘claim pending’ patch of ground about 10 clicks west of Coolgardie – 48 hours allotted to make our fortune. Luckily a decent track led off the highway and we followed it through the scrub, eyes peeled for a camp-site. We were right smack in the middle of the claim but we would have had more luck at Bondi Beach. Still, it’s fun, even if it’s just a chain link or bolt.
Kalgoorlie has a sister town just a few minutes drive away called Boulder. Both grew up the same time, but the air-time belongs pretty much to Kalgoorlie. So I was really pleased to find the historic Boulder was just as well preserved as it’s more famous neighbour. The Town Hall was open and I wandered in on a tour underway in the main hall. Boulder has actually employed a curator come tour guide to this historic building that houses several exhibitions.
We found ourselves back at Lake Douglas for a few days and Tamika had not yet given up on finding at least a speck of gold somewhere. So we spent a few hours digging up bits of a creek bed near the van. The metal detector gives ya hope, but the signal seems to fade the more digging you do. Go figure. We have at least reached the conclusion that research needs a lot more of our attention.
I can’t leave the Kalgoorlie story without a rave about the Goldfields golf course. Carved out of the old gold fields, it’s rated in the top twenty public courses in Australia, and also the starting point for the longest golf course in the world challenge. This 18 hole course stretches from Kalgoorlie to Ceduna in South Australia, designed cleverly to break up a monotonous Nullabor crossing and give you an opportunity to spend even more money at the adjacent road-houses. The Goldfields course was no push-over and definitely one-of-a-kind.
All being equal, we leave Kalgoorlie in the morning and make our way back to Norseman. There, we’ll wait for a favourable westerly before making that big left-hand turn and head towards the Nullabor.
How excited I was to see The Broad Arrow Tavern or Pub as it was referred to in my youth. I grew up across the road from that Pub. The house no longer there, as no longer a Railway Station, a Town Hall, General Stone, school and tennis court, swallowed up by time.
A few railway houses and Pub all that is left of a once flourishing Gold Mine Town, consisting of many hotels, a hospital and a thriving community.
I loved my years on the Gold Fields. A very supportive and friendly community. Thank you for sharing your trip with us.