Christmas – 3 December 2009 to 12 February 2010

On the 3rd of December we left Perth to visit our children for Christmas. We had a layover at Bondi an iconic Sydney surf beach and a great swim  before flying to San Francisco to visit Alex and Sophie. 

From there we flew to Los Angeles to visit a friend in Santa Monica and then connect with the Qantas flight to New York.  This was by far the best flight across the USA we have had in more than twenty years of flying the route.  Qantas certainly beats the US carriers by a long way on cabin cleanliness, service and comfort.  
In New York we visited more friends and saw the musical 'Wicked.'
Although New York was cold we were back in Virginia in time to enjoy “the Blizzard of 2009”, not really a blizzard but the press does hype things up. We enjoyed the blizzard thoroughly, feeling quite smug because we had done all our shopping.  We then spent a white Christmas with our daughters.   Chris, Monica and Jeremy came down for New Year. 
We left Washington on the 20th of January for the UK to visit relatives and friends. This meant we missed the two even larger snow storms in Washington, which the press, now struggling for  superlatives, named “Snowmageddon” and “Snowpocalypse”.
During this time John’s uncle died so our stay in the UK was extended.  We saw various abbeys [Tintern Abbey in Wales – shown left], churches and stately homes while we were  there. We also saw the SS Great Britain, a technological marvel for its day which subsequently transported a lot of migrants to Australia. Trish found two of her family names although we do not know if they were ancestors. 


We enjoyed Bristol in particular seeing how people live in a city where you can walk almost everywhere, a very pleasant way of living.  We returned to Perth on the 11th of February at 1.00a.m.
Our caravan was onsite courtesy of the staff at The Perth ITP and we fell asleep in clean sheets in our little pod.
We spent the next two days unpacking, washing and shopping before heading south to Margaret River.

Perth – 15 November to 2 December 2009

We arrived in Perth on and stayed at the Perth International Tourist Park at Forrestfield. This is a well run camping Park near the airport but still country. They will also store your caravan for you while you are away.
We had a bit of a holiday from sight seeing and just enjoyed ourselves visiting friends and swimming at Cottesloe. We saw the wineries in the Swan River Valley and one of the oldest hotels in Australia at Guilford.
We visited Fremantle with another Bushtracker Family and saw the shipwreck museum. Before navigation was an exact science ships from the Dutch East India Company used the roaring 40's as a route to the Dutch East Indies. This saved them from a long hot trip crossing the equator twice, which wasn't good for men or product. If they missed the turn they sometimes ended up wrecked on the coast of WA. They weren't very impressed with what they saw and declined to land and raise a flag. They did name some of the coast. The most gruesome wreck was the Batavia, where a mutinous crew went on a murder spree before being finally brought to justice. A portion of the stern is preserved.

We took the ferry out to Rottnest Island. This Dutch thought the native quokka's were rats, hence the name.
Rottnest was once a gaol but is now a popular destination for holidays and day trips from Perth.


   

The Wheatbelt – 13 & 14 November 2009

From Kalgoorlie we drove through the wheat belt. At this time of year the vista is of rolling golden fields.

We stopped at Merredin at the ‘Ave a Rest Campground’. It was very clean and attractive but the 94 is the main East West Highway and road trains kept rolling through the night so complete rest wasn't happening.

We went to Merredin the next day, a very attractive little town.

It was the home of The Kalgoorlie Brewing and Ice Company started by James Cummins. When he died his daughter Alice Mary Cummins became the major shareholder.

At this time the company was in dire straits due to competition from larger brewery's. Alice developed German Top Style Fermentation and had success with Hannans Lager.

We saw the Railway Museum. This has very good artefacts and also includes a very good museum of Pioneer Women.

We visited York for lunch. This is a town which no longer has a reason for being so it is filled with alternatives. We had a very good lunch at the Old Mill.

We travelled via Northam to see the famous white swans. This is a colony introduced from Britain and the only surviving colony of white swans in Australia. Australian swans are black.  Presumably the original white swans were stolen from the British Crown, the owner of all swans in Britain. 

 

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.

 

The Nullarbor Plain - 6 to 10 November 2009

Click on this text to view a more detailed map



Ceduna is the gateway to the Nullarbor Plain, named from the Latin Nullus Arbor - no trees.

Leaving Ceduna we detoured from the Eyre Highway to Point Sinclair for lunch, passing by Lake Macdonald - a pink salt lake.

After negotiating a steep sandy track to the beach we found Point Sinclair,  very attractive with the usual jetty, this time for exporting wheat, gypsum and salt, and as a consequence of a shark tragedy in 1975, a shark fence for swimmers. If you look closely you can see our caravan at the end of the pier. Here was a school group from Ceduna learning to snorkel.

They also had surf boards, for nearby Cactus Beach is said to be a "world famous" surfing beach. The surf wasn't large while we were there but had good waves at regular intervals with even breaks [three] and no dumpers.

The camping is on privately owned land, each site is separated from the others by bush. Caravans fit. BYO drinking water and food but bore water toilets and showers are available.

We camped at Point Fowler named by Matthew Flinders in honour of his first lieutenant, Robert Fowler.

The site was later used by Edward Eyre as a base camp for his overland journey to Albany and is also known as Port Eyre.

There is a lovely jetty and beautiful sand hills and some classic stone houses, a legacy of when the Port was an active centre for the whole region.

The Nullabor is to the north of the Great Australian Bight and the road, before turning inland after Eucla features stunning headlands and coastline.



We crossed the South Australia/Western Australia border shortly before Eucla, where we had a compulsory inspection for fruit, vegetables and honey, all forbidden entry to Western Australia.

We camped at the Roadhouse at Eucla, which had a remarkably sophisticated restaurant and outdoor garden, like an Italian or south of France resort.

Of course for those seeking culture there was also the Big Whale.



After Eucla the Eyre Highway moves away from the coast and from Caiguna to Balladonia has the longest stretch of straight highway in the world - 90 miles long.







It is a lonely road with the only outposts being the occasional roadhouse selling food and fuel, like this one at Mandarabilla or the one at Balladonia, featuring pieces of Skylab which crashed to earth nearby, earning a $400 littering fine from the local council.

Our crossing of the Nullabor Plain ended when we reached Norseman, a gold mining town and a part of the Western Goldfields.