Eastward Bound

Matt finally returned to Perth after a two week shift in the mines, so we managed to catch up with him before beginning the long trek back "over east". A request for help gives us one more night in beautiful Kondinin, and selects our route to Kalgoorlie. As we head east from Hyden, we cross the Vermin Fence. It was once the Rabbit Proof Fence, but it didn't stop them, just slowed them down a bit. Now it marks the edge of the agricultural zone, and keeps most of the emus and goats away from the crops.

Just beyond the fence, we turn northwest onto the Holland Track. Holland forged a route through the scrub in the 1890's to provide an alternate route to the newly discovered goldfields. It was a popular track for a few years, until the train line from Perth made it obsolete. It's a relatively easy track to drive in an air-conditioned cruiser, but it must have been a hard slog pushing all your possessions on a wheelbarrow to the goldfields. There are plenty of dry mud holes in the track, highlighting the need to avoid travelling after rain. We also passed through patches of severe dieback, presumably spread by more recent travellers.

Over the length of the track the land changes from mallee to woodland, but there are many other vegetation communities in a patchwork as the land underneath them changes. In places it crowds the narrow track, twigs scraping the sides of the cruiser. One driver (who shall remain nameless) was heard to say "I know I'm driving because of all the trees I'm running into". We passed through many burnt patches. The first was still smouldering, and we made the effort to clear a few newly fallen trees to avoid off track diversions. As we came to older burnt patches, there were well used diversions around large numbers of trees down across the track. One driver (who shall remain nameless) was heard to say "I told you we should have packed the chainsaw". In places the fire was enough to kill the leaves but not burn them, subsequent winds creating a carpet of leaves among burnt mallee stumps.

Eventually we reached Kalgoorlie. Along with several nearby towns, it was the site of Australia's third major gold rush. Extracting the gold here was made easier by the surrounding woodland, which provided building materials and fuel for the boilers. The major factor limiting production was water, and that was solved surprisingly early on by a pipeline from Perth. Indeed, the last sections of wooden pipe in this still used pipeline were replaced in our lifetime.

There are plenty of fine old stone buildings as evidence of that early wealth, although the area itself is not booming in line with its status as Australia's largest gold production area. Now it's all big business. Most of the early mineshafts are now the Super Pit, one very large hole in the ground. From it emerges a procession of multi-million dollar dump trucks the size of a house. The few mining families that remain live mostly in larger cities, working "fly in fly out" as Matt does, and taking their spending money with them.

It is WA's third largest town, or second largest if you accept that Freemantle is really part of Perth. It is more a tourist town than a mining town (the caravan parks are among Australia's most expensive). We took a tour of the RFDS base, poking our heads into their planes and hearing stories of their adventures. We visited the local museum, brushing up on local history. There are a variety of free attractions, like the superpit lookout, the pharmacy museum, the pub with a mineshaft in the front bar, and the local town halls. We even visited one of the local brothels (the working one, not the theme park). Although they were and still are illegal, they have been actively kept in one street by the police for over a hundred years.

After a couple of days in the heat, we headed south to Norseman, past the gypsum and nickel mines at Kambalda. Norseman is named after a horse that found gold, but unlike further north, the ore here is the "difficult" one making extraction hard work. It's an interesting little town, and with the right planning we might even be able to work here, but not this time. When we topped up with fuel at the local Shell, we had the unique experience of being refused a tax invoice. The only rational explanation is that the business is dirty - we will not go there again! We took in the few sights the town has on offer, and began the trek along the Eyre Highway.

Unlike other similar highways, we landed very little work. As we'd seen most of the major sights on our last pass, we traversed the bight in only three days. Along the way, the weather changed from hot and dry to cold and wet. Taking advantage of the change in weather, we turned north at Ceduna onto the Googs Track. (Our apologies to customers on the Eyre Peninsula, who consequently miss out on a return visit.)

Googs track begins at the northern edge of the Eyre sheep/wheat region, and passes through the Yellabinna and Yumbarra reserves. 150 km or so over a succession of sand dunes that become taller and drier as they get further from the coast. The vegetation is predominantly mallee with the occasional area of cypress pine. There is a fine campground on the edge of Googs Lake (which actually had a miniscule amount of water in it from the rain). We spotted major mitchell's, ringnecks, and mulga parrots, and a brown falcon being tormented by a bunch of honeyeaters.

Although sandy, the track presents no difficulty for competent, properly prepared travellers. Like other dune country it is slow going, but that provides the opportunity to see more of the wildlife. Eventually the dunes give way to flat rangelands, and we're into arid sheep country. Continuing north for another few hundred kilometres we reach Coober Pedy, once again in Australia's opal capital.

Sheri & Pete made us welcome, their new dugout providing comfortable shelter from the desert heat. Living underground is certainly a unique experience, dark and an oppressive feeling of weight overhead. (It also shields mobile signal, so we had to move one of the CDMA aerials from the cruiser to the house.) January is always a difficult month for work, with so many people on holidays and/or drained of funds by ritualised gift giving. Since we're here anyway we did some advertising, and managed to recoup the cost, but not much more.

That gave us a chance to catch up on our reading. We discovered the story of Arrhenius. He came up with what thought was a really good idea, and made it the core component of his Phd study (in 1884). His examiners could not accept his proposals, and he barely passed - "not without merit" Around 20 years later, he was awarded a Nobel Prize for that same idea.

We recently discovered a web page that really has us puzzled. We've known about Community Builders for ages, and it's a fine concept, but our inclusion there has us wondering. How exactly do they choose which businesses they are going to promote? They certainly didn't consult us. What efforts do they put into verifying the reputations of businesses before they endorse them? Not that we mind. After all, the freedom to publish whatever you choose is one of the true beauties of the Internet.

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