Gold Fever!!!

Hi All from sunny Kalgoorlie!!!

Well we left Albany the other day and for some reason decided to give Esperance a miss and head straight for Kalgoorlie.

We've been to Wave Rock at Hyden, and seen the amazing shape in the rock, just like a wave and Hippo's yawn as well. These were both pretty cool, but I was particularly impressed with the retaining wall they built back in the 1920's to funnel the water from all sides of this huge rock over to one side to be collected into the dam. Pretty cool I reckon.

We have also been out to the SUPERPIT at Kalgoorlie and over to Boulder and of course Coolgardie where the "Coolgardie Safe" was invented. That's one for the school kids at home - What's a Coolgardie Safe?

The Superpit is Huge!! 3.5km's Long, 1.3Km's wide and 600 metres deep already and they're still digging. But there is also a rumour that the mine is buying up all the old claims from around Coolgardie and there is a chance that a 2nd Superpit may be sunk!! Remember, it's not far from Coolgardie that the richest gold seam ever was discovered. At one stage it was producing the same amount of gold from one mine shaft as all 90 mines in Bendigo were producing each day. Legend has it the the miners were literally picking out pure gold without any rock at one stage!!! Truly amazing. At the time,the mine sold to a British company for 48,000 Pounds. Not bad considering the average wage for an underground miner at the time was about 600 pounds a year.

The girls went to the Movies today which gave Donna and I the chance to go and check out the legend of Kalgoorlie, and it's illgotten reputation!! The tour through the house of illrepute was fascinating to say the least and some of the stories were very funny!! But I'm sure that none of us would want to be any of the working girls from back then. Some ended up making a fortune and leaving forever, but most just ended up leaving, normally with nothing and no real future prospects if anyone found out her previous trade. While in town they lived in clean houses, but were made to work up to 16 hours a day but were not allowed to leave the house to go shopping etc unless the madam was with them. When they decided to stop working they were made to leave town.

We also went to the museum and saw all about how the miners and their families lived back in those days. It was a pretty hard life back then, with hardly any water - Beer was cheaper!!! The wifes used to spend all day on Mondays just doing the washing, then all day Tuesday doing all the folding and ironing, she'd have a rest day on Wednesday where she would do darning and sewing and then on Thursday she would do the cleaning. Friday's would normally be spent baking and making jams, chutneys and preserves with whatever fresh groceries they could get or grow and Saturdays were spent at local sporting events. Sunday was the day of worship and of course the Sunday lunch which she had to prepare. Whilst this is only an indication of the work they did and the days might have changed a bit, it shows they had a tough life out here!! The Blokes did it tough too. They mostly worked 16 hour days as well, went straight to the Pub for a beer after work and then went home for tea and straight to bed!!

Today we went out to the Kalgoorlie - Miners Hall of Fame.This is an area which has been set up to pay tributeto all thew men and women of Australia who have had a significant influence on Mining. Whilst it is a bit WA centrick it an amazing list of people. They alsohave mine tours and displays of stuff from yesteryear which is really worth a look. For $80 for the family for the whole day and an underground mine tour, thatsa not bad value really.

Anyways - off over the Nullabour tomorrow.

Talk to you soon.

Steph, Jess, Doonna and MickyD