Sat. 13th Oct., 2012 - Esperance to Kalgoorlie

We got up at 6am & were actually ready to leave by 8am - pretty good for us!  We had 399km to go to Kalgoorlie.

Our Swiss friends had arrived & were waiting to be joined by some friends who had also had starter motor problems.

Inland from Esperance, the majority of the land was arable - huge fields of wheat covered the landscape & we saw some enormous silos where the grain would be stored.

We were on a roadtrain route (thank goodness it was Saturday!) & the railway line ran parallel to the road.

Large white areas cropped up in the landscape fairly frequently - we guessed that they were salt pans.

A black snake lay in the road, the first I'd seen, although Bob had noticed several.

Our route stretched ahead interminably, long & straight as far as the eye could see.  The railway was equally persistent & both road & rail would doubtless continue in this manner, all the way to Kalgoorlie.  Good preparation for the Nullarbor!

About 70km from Norseman, the farming finally petered out & we found ourselves in an area of mixed woodland & scrub.  Gone were the beautiful wildflowers, apart from a few flowering bushes & suddenly the railway line disappeared too.  So long as the road continued, we'd be OK!  The rail track did catch up with us later on, after its detour to who knows where.  A train passed during our coffee stop - it was definitely as long as the ones in Port Hedland & seemed to go on for ever!

Norseman looked an interesting place - an historic gold mining town with some attractive features, not least of which were the corrugated iron camels, made to commemorate the camel trains that once operated regularly in the town.

By about 1.30pm., we'd made it to Kalgoorlie, the town that I'd marked on my map of Australia as a schoolgirl, more years ago than I care to admit!  The sky was heavy with threatening grey clouds, a wild wind was blowing & the environment appeared grim & gritty!  After the beauty of Esperance, it was hard to settle into a spot that was dusty & totally devoid of any grass.



Kalgoorlie

   However, Bob was anxious to find the newly completed golf course (an 18 hole championship grass one, which is anticipated to become one of the world's top 10 desert courses) & so we set off in search of it.  What a contrast - unlike our caravan park, it was covered in lush, green grass that was lovingly tended & a professional competition was in progress.  It was here that Bob would play the first two holes of the Nullarbor Links Course, its epic journey covering the world's longest golf course - 1,365km!  He is due to start at 4pm tomorrow.

Having arranged the golf, we drove to two lookout points.  The first of these gave us a panoramic view all over the town & showed how water is brought approximately 600km uphill from Perth (an amazing feat of engineering that has ensured the town's life-line.)  From the second lookout, we were able to gaze down into the Super-Pit, a man-made wonder that can actually be seen from space!  It is a massive gouge out of the earth's surface, where trucks the size of houses move hundreds of tons of rock in the hope of extracting a few ounces of gold from each load.  It is the richest square mile of gold-bearing earth in the world & yet, water can be more precious!  The layers of rock, that have been exposed by the mining, are a wonder to behold - the patterns & colours show the geological complexity, not to mention the beauty, of our earth.  As we looked, a controlled explosion occurred at the base of the pit, giving the miners access to even more of the rock.  The wind threatened to blow us off our lookout point & so we returned to the car & made our way back to the caravan.  It had been an awe-inspiring experience that will cause me to regard my humble wedding ring with a little more wonder & respect.



Super Pit