The Goldfields – 10 to 12 November 2009

Norseman, a gold mining town, is West Australia's gateway to the Nullabor Plain. In July 1894 Lawrence Sinclair, a prospector, tethered his horse ‘Norseman’ to a tree and woke to find the horse had unearthed a piece of gold bearing quartz with its hooves, making one very happy prospector.

The reef and the town were named after the horse. It was to become the second richest gold field in WA, producing over 5 million ounces of gold. [Value at today’s gold price over $5 billion]

As was usual in arid areas camels did most of the heavy work. Camel trains of up to 80 camels with four cameleers were common. The width of the main street was the width required for a camel train to turn around.

Beacon Hill lookout gives a panoramic view of the town, the operations of Central Norseman Gold Corporation, Lake Cowan to the north [this view]and Lake Dundas to the south.

Next stop was Kalgoorlie Boulder. Kalgoorlie’s famous Golden Mile is thought to be the richest gold field in the world. Kalgoorlie is derived from the Wangai word Karl Kurla, place of the silky pears. Boulder was originally a separate [and very competitive] town, but the two are now administered as one.

The Gold rush began in January 1893 when prospectors Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Dan O'Shea travelling through, stopped to re-shoe their horse, found gold [perhaps the horses had more gold sense than the prospectors] and stayed to peg a claim.

The goldfields are in a semi arid zone. Water was very scarce and at first was brought in by camel train and later distilled from saline water.Costs were high, and hygiene and sanitation were poor causing many epidemics. Timber was cleared for up to 400 miles to supply the furnaces for the distilling.

C.Y.O'Connor, Chief Engineer for the Western Australian Government was asked to submit a water scheme for the goldfields. His scheme proposed the construction of a reservoir on the Helena River, now called the Mundarring Reservoir, with eight pumping stations to carry five million gallons of water daily through 330 miles, (528km) of cast iron pipes to a reservoir near Coolgardie.

With the support of Sir John Forrest, then WA premier the scheme went forward. It was a huge project, pumping water uphill over that distance had never been done before. The papers and population of the day unable to understand either the concepts involved or the necessity for such a scheme ran a sustained and malicious campaign against C.Y. O'Connor accusing him of corruption and conceit and holding him and the pipeline up to ridicule. He was accused of taking kickbacks and it was suggested the dam would collapse flooding all of Perth.

Two Royal Commissions completely exonerated him but in the end unable to tolerate the personal attacks he committed suicide in March 1902 a year before the successful completion of the scheme. At the opening in 1903 Sir John Forrest quoting the Bible said, "We have made a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

It is still in operation today supplying water to Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie and Norseman.

The Mt. Charlotte Lookout on the top of the Mt. Charlotte Reservoir in Kalgoorlie has a nice fountain, which we hope does not flow back to the water supply, although Trish’s hands were clean!

Most mining now is done in the Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mine ‘Superpit’, an open cut mine developed as a result of Alan Bond’s vision to consolidate the over 100 underground mines to allow all the ore to be extracted.

We toured the pit with Finders Keepers tours. As the Superpit is mined remnants of the mines hand dug by the old timers emerge, often with machinery left behind. There are 3,000 kms of railway in the tunnels.These remnants go to what they call the Graveyard.

When the Superpit is fully mined the plan is to let it fill with water and rehabilitate the remainder of the site. There are many other mines in the region.

Like all wealthy gold field towns there is a lot of beautiful architecture. Hannans was the Gentleman’s club of the era, still operative today. The York Hotel has been maintained in its former magnificence.

The Ivanhoe Headframe is the gateway into the museum. The headframe allowed the miners and their ore and machinery to go up and down when mining was in underground tunnels.

Boulder and Kalgoorlie were highly competitive and had a race to see who could build the biggest and best town hall.

The Boulder Town Hall has the Bay of Naples curtain. This was painted by Phillip Goatcher who was known as ‘Satin and Velvet’ Goatcher and was the most highly paid scene painter of his day. This is thought to be the only surviving example of his curtains although some of his work is in other regional museums. His work was ephemeral and hasn't been kept.

Kalgoorlie - Boulder were very wealthy towns and many well known performers came here.

We did a day trip to Coolgardie, once a very large town now  almost a ghost town, although with fifty mines operating throughout the area locals are slowly moving back.

The town hall hosts a nice museum including a museum of pharmacy(drugstore) , very interesting as all the medications are in their original packets. It is sobering to think that nearly all of those medications were either useless or harmful. The children’s medications contained cocaine, alcohol and marijuana. There is a Dentists room in the back with a pedal drill and crude and unhygienic dental tools. They are keen on pharmacies and dentists rooms here and there is also one in the Kalgoorlie museum which is slightly more modern but reminds us of our childhood dental visits. It still smells the same.

The cemetery contains the grave of Ernest Giles who set out from Beltana Station[see earlier posting] to find a route to the West Coast. He became a municipal secretary in Coolgardie.

There are a lot of unnamed graves of people who died in the typhoid epidemic.It is said they died too fast to tell people their names but we think it is the miners code of don't ask , don't tell. People on mining fields such as these were then were often running away and preferred not to give their history. You could say they didn't have time to give their real names.

The towns folk have put up a memorial to the people who died on the track and were buried as unknowns in the pioneer cemetery.

During our stay Kalgoorlie had a number of tremendous electrical storms. We were lucky enough to watch one of them from the top of Mt Charlotte above the town.