DATE: | 05-07/06/2017 | |
LOCATION: | Kalgoorie [via Southern Cross] (Western Australia) | |
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: | 748 km | |
TEMPERATURE: | Min: | 0.5 |
Max: | 16.3 | |
massive holes in the ground | 1 | |
With our one-night stopover in Cervantes done, we had very little packing up to do and were able to hit the road pretty quickly. The next two days were fairly mundane, as we simply had a lot of driving to do in order to cover the vast distance between Cervantes and Kalgoorlie. With nearly 750 kilometres remaining, we needed to break up the journey into two parts. So, we set our sights on the little truck stop village of Southern Cross. The journey to Southern Cross was spent staring out the window, watching the rain fall in intermittent showers, and followed the Golden Pipeline for hours all the way to Southern Cross.
The campsite itself was nice and tidy, lacking many other
people at this time of year. However, the boys did make friends with a young
lady who was nursing a wallaby joey, whose mother-roo had been killed on the
road. The first glimpse the boys had of this was watching the lady walk past
our campsite, closely followed by the Joey, which hopped along in a cumbersome way behind her. At one point the joey stopped to stare back at the boys, until the
lady chirped out to her young charge, saying “Come on then”. To which the joey
hopped off after her (closely followed by the boys). We found them 20 minutes
later sitting outside one of the cabins with the joey wrapped in a blanket,
feeding it a bottle.
The other noteworthy thing from this part of the journey
was the sudden plummet in temperature – particularly overnight. We woke the
next morning to find a layer of ice covering the car. Fortunately, our little
heater had worked like a champ the previous evening and we stayed nice and
toasty, snuggled up in our trailer.
Waking up the next morning, we packed up, had breakfast
and hit the road. If our calculations were correct, we should be pulling into
Kalgoorlie by early afternoon.
The kilometres passed by like the day before. However,
today, the sun came out again and things didn’t feel quite so miserable.
We arrived at Kalgoorlie right on schedule – all exhausted
from the three long days in the car. With all those kilometres under our belt,
we really couldn’t face sitting on a tour bus and heading down to the Big Pit
for a mine tour. So, we decided to extend out our time in Kalgoorlie and spend
an extra night. We had washing to do and legs to stretch, so that plan suited
everyone just fine. While I set up the trailer, Nat went to battle it out with
the other travellers who were lined up with their dirty clothes to use the
washing machines. It seemed that everyone was using this day of fine weather to
get all of their stinky travelling clothes washed before heading on the next
leg of their journey. Not one to spend her day queueing up for something as
mundane as laundry, Nat managed to wrangle a secret code to a separate laundry
usually reserved for permanent guests. Having bypassed the queues and availing
herself of the multiple machines that were on offer for the rarefied few,
within the hour every piece of clothing had been washed and hung up.
We took a wander into town to pick up some supplies for
dinner and booked ourselves onto a mine tour for the morning. The rest of the
day was spent wandering the streets, cleaning the trailer and cooking dinner.
Kalgoorlie - info sheet
The next morning was COLD! More Ice had appeared on the
car and a nippy wind blew through the campsite. Donning our warmest clothing,
we drove to the visitor’s centre in the middle of town. Here we met the ‘Super
Pit Tour Company’ to begin our exploration of Australia’s biggest open cast
mine. Safety specs and high viz vests were handed out and a briefing given by
the driver. Then, soon enough, we hopped aboard a nice warm tour bus and
rattled off towards the mine site.
Super Pit Tour Van and the High-Vis family
At the entrance to the mine site there was a billboard proclaiming “Too FLAT out to think about safety? Think Again”, with a very squashed ute hauled up underneath. This was a reminder of the sheer scale of the machines that were used in this mine site, with tyres fatter and taller than the bus we were travelling in.
Dump Truck crushes ute in Kalgoorlie - [YouTube]
The tour took us on an informative and interesting
meandering journey through this enormous mine site. From the mechanics shed
(the size of an aircraft hangar) and clean down area, to the deep cut of the
big pit, passing by the gold processing plant on the way out (“sorry, no free
samples…” giggled the tour guide with a jocular, yet slightly menacing tone).
The scale of the operation was astronomical! Like a town itself, the mine site
was a living, breathing machine; with a very complicated system of traffic
management to avoid collisions between the gargantuan trucks, bull dozers and
diggers.
The highlight of the tour was visiting the ‘Big Pit’. Stretching over a kilometre from one end to the other, this massive canyon was hundreds of meters deep. From our safe vantage point at the top of the pit, the earth moving machines really did look like toy Tonka Trucks. It was only when one emerged from the snaking road that led out of the mine site and drove passed us, that we were reminded of their true scale.
More of the BIG pit
With our trip around the site done, we headed back to
town. With the majority of the day still to go, we decided to take in the
Kalgoorlie Museum to learn a little about the history of this place. The museum
itself was a curious mix of mining memorabilia, nick knacks and curiosities,
and Egyptian archaeology. All in all, we passed a pleasant afternoon fossicking
through the various rooms and riding the lift to the top of a reconstructed
drill platform that towered over the town, providing spectacular views of the
surrounding area.
The Kalgoorlie Museum... more than you'd expect
Heading back to trailer for the night, we rugged up warm, popped on our heater (best purchase ever!) and got ready for the next leg of our homewards journey.
Bye ‘d bye,
Gregg
