2 August 2013 - Goldminer Tourist Caravan Park, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

If today’s weather is typical of Kalgoorlie, we should all settle here permanently. What a glorious day; one to exchange the winter caps for sunhats and peel off several of the layers worn to keep the cold out. Interestingly the morning started with a brisk 6.2 degrees and did not rise above 18 degrees, and yet it all felt quite summery.

I did a big load of washing and then once it was hung, we headed off into town, first to the Visitor Centre with questions and to buy our Nullarbor Golf Links cards. The charming girl behind the counter who was able to offer advice on all our queries including listening to our gripes about caravan parks tariffs, turned out to be from a country town an hour from our home town in New Zealand, and had spent some time residing in our home suburb. One of those strange coincidences, but then maybe Kalgoorlie is full of Kiwis. I just don’t wear Kiwi sign on my head to invite their attention.

There is an audio tour service offered at the centre where you hire an audio system, perhaps one of those iPods we borrowed at the Canberra Library to see the country’s treasures. Instead we took one of the pamphlets and did our own self-guided tour which I am sure was not even a patch on what the other offered; we kept getting distracted.

Hannan Street has many wonderful heritage buildings and is a vibrant business centre. Buildings that caught our attention were those built in 1895 – 1898, when the money was flowing into the town from gold mining. Serious renovation is being undertaken on some of these buildings; the owners and city fathers obviously recognise the value of these treasures.

We checked out the supermarkets and a charity shop for golf balls, finally finding some at Kmart, a pack of thirty six balls for $5, which did seem to me to be a bit of overkill, although Chris assured me that we may need them all.

It was nearing midday so we headed up to the Mt Charlotte Lookout.  After spending time enjoying the views over the town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, we settled on a bench in the sunshine and enjoyed this rarity coupled with our lunch. It would have been just perfect if others had not arrived to appreciate the excellent interpretative display, but then I guess it was our fault for selecting such a public spot to eat.

This spot celebrates the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, the pipeline that delivers water from Perth to Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, as well as other towns along the way. Mount Charlotte is the location for Kalgoorlie’s water terminus, because of its height at 419 metres ASL. This allows the water stored in the reservoir to gravitate downwards to homes, businesses and mines. The reservoir holds nine million litres and is nowadays covered to prevent evaporation.

The interpretative panels offer details the scheme, the plans, the changes and extensions over the years, and acknowledge the huge input by the engineers and politicians of the time. Today the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme is considered one of the three major engineering feats of Australia; the Snowy River Scheme, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and this.

We were quite interested in this project, firstly having seen the source of the supply in the Perth Hills and secondly, because a chap staying in the Advent Park in Perth whom we had become acquainted with, along with his son, were working out at Southern Cross doing repair and upgrade work on this Goldfields Water Pipe.

Right back in the planning, the Engineer-in-Chief, CY O’Connor had only one year’s rainfall records to work on when asked to find a permanent reliable water supply for the goldfields. In 1895, believed to be an exceptionally wet year; 172.5 mm fell in the Coolgardie district. Such low rainfall and high evaporation rates helped him decide against using storage dams in the goldfields. In determining a site in the Perth Hills for the scheme’s storage reservoir, he had to use evaporation rates for Perth, an average of 1379.7 mm a year during the previous ten years, because there were no actual records of rainfall and evaporation at the site of the proposed reservoirs. It is interesting to note that Kalgoorlie-Boulder has an average rainfall of 260 mm in contrast to Perth’s at 869 mm. O’Connor had his work cut out with his critics. They said water could not be pumped so far nor lifted so high. However he was confident it could be. In his design the first pump station pumped water to the next, and so on, through eight different pipelines. By 1970, electric stations had replaced all eight steam driven pumps. Now those electric stations are also being replaced. It is an on-going operation but the foundations were well laid and O’Connor is celebrated in this state and country wide for his work.

By 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash, 25% of the water leaving its Mundaring Weir source was lost due to leaks. During the Great Depression, unemployed men were engaged to lift the pipeline out of its original underground trench and re-lay it above ground. Lead joints were replaced and welded.  This continuously welded pipeline, resting on concrete collars to absorb stresses, was a world first. And of course leaks are far easier to detect in an above ground pipe, although the exposed pipeline is so much more exposed to the extremes of temperatures, which range from 15 to 50 degrees celsius. The pumping scheme operates to this day; water is lifted through a series of pumping stations and delivering on average, 90 million litres per day. It takes one to two weeks for water to reach the Mount Charlotte Reservoir from the Mundaring 

We drove over to the Super Pit Lookout from where the public are given the chance to see this manmade wonder, apparently visible from outer space.

We were particularly interested to learn the involvement of the famous (or infamous) Alan Bond in Kalgoorlie’s gold mining. Back in the 1980s, this Western Australian businessman, also well known for his involvement in the yacht racing scene, started to buy up the individual leases that made up the famous Golden Mile, planning to create one big company and one big pit from which gold could be extracted at a much reduced cost. Underground mining was becoming uneconomic and this appeared to be the only way forward.  Unfortunately Bond’s company was unsuccessful in a complete takeover, but in 1989, the entire area was combined and Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd or KCGM was formed to manage the assets and operations of joint venture partners.

The Super Pit will eventually stretch to a length of 3.8 kilometres, a width of 1.35 kilometres and to a depth of 500 metres, a far cry from anything those three Irishmen, Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Dan Shea could have imagined when they stumbled upon gold immediately west of Mount Charlotte in June 1893.

Kalgoorlie has evolved over the years. By 1900 the population had grown to 25,000 and as reflected by the wonderful old buildings we saw today, it was a very prosperous time for all involved. By 1905, Kalgoorlie-Boulder had six banks, three breweries, twenty six hotels, five hospitals, three daily newspapers and hundreds of shops.

However before 1920, many mines had amalgamated, ore recovery rates reduced and jobs melted away. Many diggers left to fight in World War I and the population shrank. There was a brief reprieve during the 1920s when gold prices rose, but this was short lived and by the time the Great Depression arrived, the Golden Mile was already struggling. Relief came yet again when the Australian Government devalued the pound by 25% in 1931 and gold returned to profitability, and wealth to the Golden Mile.

 
Throughout the 1930s, technology reduced the need for labour and in 1939, the Second World War took another lot of miners away. Mining was slow to recover, even after the war, and it was not until the British Government devalued their pound in 1949, that the gold price lifted by almost 50%. This monetary manipulation had yet again saved the day and was to yet again in 1954 when the Menzies’ government introduced a gold “bounty” which was effectively a bonus for production in excess of the average annual production.

All of this information was available for the interested tourist at the lookout, and for those more interested in the visual wonders, there was a blast at 1 pm which we missed by minutes, and the sight of the tiny trucks crawling like insects up the far side of the pit.

From here we tried to contact the Kalgoorlie Golf Club to book our game, but ended up with an answer machine. While we waited hopefully for our call to be returned, we drove down to the main street of Boulder, which once upon a time was a stand-alone town. Today most of the old buildings left are in poor repair, the shops still open lack the pizzazz of those in Kalgoorlie, and those folk about their business in the street were a poor lot. It would seem that Boulder is home to the unemployed, the new immigrants and the elderly who wear elastic topped pants, something that drives Trinny and Susannah to despair, however I imagine the likes of them are never likely to get over here to Kalgoorlie-Boulder anyway. I mean by this that fashion is not a high priority here in Boulder.

W
e had hoped to have a peek in Boulder’s Town Hall which is apparently beautifully restored, with pressed ceilings and wrought iron balustrades, opened way back in 1908. The stage curtain which depicts a scene of the Bay of Naples, is apparently a unique and priceless work of art, painted by one of the Victorian era’s greatest scenic painters, Englishman Phillip Goatcher. It is the world’s last surviving example of a working Goatcher curtain. However this is all academic because we are unlikely to see it before we leave. There was a sign on the door that invited us to come back next Tuesday; we will probably have moved on.

Boulder's Town Hall

The telephone had remained unsurprisingly silent so we decided to drive across town and sort our golf schedule out in person. At the club we were booked in for a 3.30 pm tee-off, more than an hour away, so we drove to the nearby Arboretum and went for a short walk around the well-formed paths through the lovely gums. Still too early, we then sat in the landcruiser and read the newspaper. Aware that the Club was particular with its dress code; no denim, collars and long pants a must and covered shoes which of course is a no-brainer, we had found clothes that should be acceptable to the code and expected to change before venturing out onto their fairways. However the young man behind the counter decided that we were quite tidy enough in our jeans and smart shirts, and explained that they didn’t worry too much about Nullarbor Links’ players. Actually the non-denim pants I had would not have looked out of place in the main street of Boulder, so this exemption saved everyone from a rather unfavourable sight.

We arrived before our scheduled time and were directed to the tee-off areas for the first two holes, those that are part of the Links course, and away we went. It is some years since I have held a club in my hand and I was never very skilled at this anyway. Today I was appalling; my ball spent most of the time in the rough and I spent most of my time rummaging around through the scrub hoping to find my errant ball before any snakes found me. When it was in flight, I managed to frighten a number of birds out of the bush.

Kalgoorlie's Golf Course

Chris lost his ball, I spied him bush beating in a group gums for some time before emerging and playing on. Just as well that we had a few spares! In the meantime the real golfers were gaining on us, every one of them in little carts and finally as we chased our delinquent balls around the second green, they started to toot their horns to hurry us up. Instead, this only caused to rattle my play and I finished with super healthy doubly digits to enter on my score card. I decided that the Nullarbor Links might be best played from the other end of the course, by which time, one might gain some skill and not simply be a pain in the bottom for the real players on the Kalgoorlie course. By the time I finished, I was quite out of breath, not from exhaustion but from laughing at our hopeless performance. It can only improve from here.

We came straight back to camp from there, in time to rescue the lines of laundry before the dew started to fall. While I was attending to that, the phone rang; it was Bryan from the land yachting club saying that Monday was looking good for Lake Lefroy. We had in the meantime decided that it was too expensive, especially since we had to drive one hundred kilometres there and another back. However if conditions are indeed perfect on Monday, we will leave here that morning, play the next set of holes at Kambalda fifty six kilometres south and then squeeze in a bit of madness on the salt lake forty something kilometres further south again before heading on down to Norseman. This does now give us certainty about our departure date because up until then we had been prevaricating. It is obviously all meant to be after all.