We were super organised this morning, early out the door having prepared lunch last night. We topped up with diesel and then were off, heading north up the Goldfields Highway passing through lovely bushlands, past numerous mine entrances and past the KCGM Gidji Roaster. From the tall chimney here, a long and spreading plume of smoke poured northwards in a favourable wind. I wondered what it was like in Kalgoorlie when the winds were coming from the opposite direction, which they surely do and will hopefully when we are set to cross the Nullarbor.
It is here in the Roaster that the concentrates delivered from the Super Pit are remixed with slurry, pumped into two large roasters to be converted into a red calcine. This is done by heating the concentrate to over 600 degrees centigrade. The water from the slurry and sulphur dioxide gas from the concentrates rises through the 178 metre high stack and is emitted into the atmosphere, on a good day.
Wikipedia tells me that sulphur dioxide is a toxic gas with an irritating smell, that it is released by volcanoes and in various industrial processes. Perhaps I will retract my comment made yesterday about Kalgoorlie being such a good place to live.
We passed the Mt Pleasant, Paddington, Daveyhurst and Bardoc gold mines, the ghost town of Broadarrow and a group of emus. We drove through mist that seemed out of place and wondered if it was pollution from mining operations. The wonderful salmon gums gave way to more stunted eucalypt scrubby trees and blue bushes, punty bushes and the like.
After one hundred and thirty kilometres on an excellent sealed road, we pulled into the Visitors Centre at Menzies and checked out the road conditions across to Lake Ballard. The attendant with a very heavy middle European accent was most helpful and in response to our question about the mist, which also enveloped this incredibly pristine township (if a place of only about fifty inhabitants can be labelled such) expressed concern about illegal fires and health concerns. Later we decided she was wrong and it was simply a combination of climatic conditions, the season and the vegetation about.
There was a long list of must-dos before proceeding onto Lake Ballard, most more appropriate for the heat of mid-summer, however erring on the side of caution, we heeded the instruction to take extra water. The instructions said five litres per person; we already had a couple of litre bottles so added another five litres to our provision.
The fifty five kilometres into the ”Inside Australia” exhibition is mainly along gravel, and that which is not, is on red dirt, most of this through birridas or clay pans such as we had driven up in Shark Bay. Apart from a few dodgy spots on the road which we hit far too fast, the road is very good. In half an hour, we were up at the Snake Hill Lookout, from where we could view the extent of this massive salt lake, which covers 4,900 hectares, fifty kilometres at it longest and twenty kilometres at its widest. Our destination was the south western corner of the lake, and so the route in follows the base of the lake westwards.
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| The thin and not so thin |
In 2003, to celebrate fifty years of the Perth International Arts Festival, Antony Gormley, an English sculptor who has created other famous works, including The Angel of the North which stands in Gateshead, England, was commissioned to create this now world famous cultural display spread over ten square kilometres of this lake. The sculptures, titled, “Inside Australia” are a collection of fifty one steel human forms, presumably derived from laser scans of the inhabitants of Menzies. The artist, to quote, “translated them by scans which map the body in three dimensions with half a million digital co-ordinates. The cross sections are then taken throughout the body, reduced by two thirds and the contours connected finishing with what the brilliant sculptor refers to as an “insider”.
If he really did do all this, he was wasting his time, because there were probably only about half a dozen templates used; they are all more or less the same with variations for child or adult, male or female.
Further, the sculptor explains his work: “The insider reveals an attitude in a taut abstract shape formed by the passage of the person’s life. Out on the salt lake they become antennae in space in relationship with each other but also with the land and the limit of our perception: the horizon”.
What a load of crap these artists speak! However, to walk out on the lake amongst these metal figures is quite surreal and each will think and feel what he or she wants without such artifice from Gormley. We did wonder what will happen when the elements have corroded these carbonised steel figures to a point where they are little but scrap metal.
Chris had not been convinced of the wisdom of travelling all the way up here to see these celebrated figures, but once here, he was, as I, most impressed. We spent the better part of an hour and a half wandering across the damp surface of the lake, from one to another, each spaced at some distance from the next. The promotional material suggest you will need between one and two hours to enjoy the exhibition, and another suggests between five and six hours. I suggest that it all depends what you like to do. We enjoy walking and art; the hour and a half suited us well.
Apparently the sculptures were
manufactured in a foundry in Perth and it took a team of eighteen volunteers
four days to install all fifty one sculptures. During the installation process,
temperatures reached 46 degrees Celsius, hence the instruction to come armed
with plenty of drinking water.
We lunched in the picnic area beside the salt lake, noting there were half a dozen other parties who had made the journey as we had, however three of those were camped up for the duration. Hopefully they will have enjoyed wandering out amongst these extra-terrestrial androids during sunset; that would indeed be a wonderful experience.
After consuming one litre of water between us as well as the thermos of coffee, we returned to Menzies and took time to wander about and soak up the history. Menzies is yet another of the towns that rose up in the gold rush years of the 1890s but today relies on tourism, gold mining in regions further afield and pastoral farming. The latter does seem a little dubious, because the land we saw was good for little but emus and kangaroos however we did see a dozen cattle on our way out to Lake Ballard; two at a ten kilometre interval and a small herd with a couple of young calves at some distance further on. Perhaps cattle farming is carried out a little more intensively north of Menzies?
Gold was discovered in 1894 and the town gazetted one year later, becoming a municipality a year after that. The town hall which still stands grandly in the main street, was completed in 1898 and the tower remained without a clock for one hundred years because the original clock was reportedly lost in a shipwreck off Perth. More recent thinking suggests the clock was never ordered and the story of the shipwreck, which did happen, was used to excuse the omission. However in 2000, a clock was added for the cost of $16,000 when the population of the entire shire was little over four hundred.
In the boom years, all ten of them, Menzies had a population of about 10,000, but by 1905, most had moved on to better pastures, and by 1910, there were less than 1,000 people left.
There were two brief reprieves for the town, the first during the depression years when there was a renewal of interest in mining which brought life back to the original Lady Shenton mine, and resulted in the discovery of the First Hit Mine. Then in the 1980s and ‘90s, the advent of modern “open cut” mining methods saw many of the old mines reworked on a scale that the early prospectors could never have imagined.
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| Menzies' Town Hall |
There are several fine heritage buildings up and down the main street, and unlike Coolgardie, Menzies councillors have great pride in their town’s history and do their best to present their treasure to the travelling public. Today the unpretentious café, the pub, and unmanned fuel pumps were open for business, as well as the Information Centre. On reflection, I have to say I saw no store at all, so I can only surmise that folk travel down to Kalgoorlie or 105 kilometres up to Leonora. I should also mention that there is a well-appointed caravan park here; similar to that we stayed in in Kulin, although this is marginally superior, having a perimeter fence.
After wandering around this immaculate settlement, we returned to the landcruiser and headed for home, stopping briefly at the remnants of the railway settlement of Goongarrie, where we learned that back in the day, up to 1,000 Kalgoorlie folk would board the train and trundle up to this isolated spot to enjoy the wild flowers for the day. What a delightful thought!
Back in Kalgoorlie, we found the sun shining as brilliantly as it had further north. I sat outside under the awning reading the weekend papers while Chris prepared the dinner. This evening he is following the third Ashes Cricket match, hoping against hope that Australia might yet have a chance. Personally I find the advertisements for forklifts, free range milk and fencing materials every time there is the slightest break in play, incredibly annoying. Outside the sky is clear, the stars are out and tomorrow promises to be another fine day.
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