After a 900km day we finally made it to WA and rolled into the outskirts of Norseman for the night. From here we visited Coolgardie that was a beautiful little town with WIDE streets and nice old buildings. I think the population was around 1000 and we thought that Kalgoorlie would be similar, only a bit bigger and full of miners and prostitutes! Well you could imagine our shock when we read driving into town that there were 30,000 people and it appeared to have every shop and business you could think of. How naive we were. In a nutshell:
- The Superpit is just HUGE! The picture you can see (in our photo album) is only half of it and those gigantic trucks really look like match-box cars down at the bottom.
- The streets have some majestic old buildings from the gold rush days, quite similar to Ballarat.
- It all started in Kalgoorlie when an Irishman called Paddy Hannan found gold along a dried-up creek bed; it was just sitting there, everywhere (so they say).
- Our caravan park was half-full of locals, many miners (who all wear the fluoro orange work tops and white hardhats, and are covered in red dust) who can't find/afford housing in town. Sort of took away the holiday feel of the park.
- Went to this park in the middle of town (Hammond Park) and it was like an oasis with the greenest grass, Peacocks walking around, all sorts of birds in avaries and a fenced off paddock with emus and kangaroos. The kids found some Peacock tail feathers but Rory didn't approve of me trying to get my own by chasing the Peacocks to pull one out.
- The town's people aren't the friendliest, tourism doesn't seem a big focus in Kalgoorlie, they are too focused on money we think (which is part of the reason I think that us folk in the East still think Kalgoorlie is a small place full of miners and prostitutes).
- Yes there are lots of miners but we only saw a few prostitutes!
- Yes I did get out of the car in Hay St (Red light area), but Sharyn & the kids were there and I was at the Auto Elecs...
- This didn't happen in Kalgoorlie but Rory needed a hair cut and after some ridiculous prices being asked for a kids haircut, I decided to do it myself, much to the amusement of fellow holidayers seeing this poor kid being attacked by his father with scissors! Sharyn didn't want to look, fearing the worst, but in the end it turned out OK (In our photo album, check the Nullarbor & Groovy Puppies photos). Yeah, yeah, the fringe might be crooked...There you go Meg, maybe this is my calling!
- We came to the realisation that our evening meals were getting very late when Rory made the comment one evening, "Why are those people having their tea, it isn't dark yet?". Considering it's daylight savings you get an idea of the times we have been having our tea!
Listen now! New music from the Rogue Traders.
