Day 103: Esperance to Kalgoorlie

Today we drove 386km from Esperance to Kalgoorlie. We expected the countryside to dry out a lot quicker than it did but there were still green paddocks for at least 100km inland. These paddocks were gradually replaced by the mallee gum trees which are quite attractive when grouped together along the sides of the road.

We arrived at Norseman at 10:45am where we stopped in the Information Centre for morning tea. Again, Norseman was a surprise - it was a hive of activity with caravans everywhere - it is the first major town you hit when heading east to west across the Nullabor so I suppose a lot a caravanners stop there for a break, refuel, etc. We will be passing through therfe again when we start our trip across in a few days time.

It was then another 180km into Kalgoorlie - we were amazed with the amount of litter along the sides of the road for the 50km or so before Kalgoorlie - it was quite disgusting.

We arrived at 1:30, set up the vans and then went exploring. There are actually three towns in the area - Kalgoorlie, Boulder and Coolgardie. Boulder is like a suburb of Kalgoorlie and we haven't been to Coolgardie so I don't know about it yet. We were amazed to see how many buildings in Boulder were covered in scaffolding - there was an earthquake here late last year which caused quite a bit of damage to the historic buildings in the town.

We also visited the SUPERPIT - back in the 1980s, Alan Bond started buying up all the smaller mining leases. He didn't finish ..... this was then continued by some big companies who basically bought out the lot which allowed them to open-cut the whole area and replace all the previous underground and open mines - it is massive. The photo doesn't do it justice but it is the best I could do.

We also visited the Charlotte Reservoir which was the original water storage for Kalgoorlie - it is still used today but supplemented by other storage sites - the water to Kalgoorlie is still actually pumped over 500km from just west of Perth.

The drive up the main street of Kalgoorlie (Hannan Street) was interesting - Kalgoorlie is a big place and has all the stores you would expect in a city - we were amazed with the huge pubs on the street corners - they were massive with incredible architecture. Tomorrow we will do some serious sight-seeing.