The end is near

We’re both starting to feel a bit melancholy about the end of our adventure.  We only have a few days left before the loooong trip home.  The weather up til now has been wonderful but boy are we paying for it.  We’re being battered by a storm that’s come from the west and who knows when it’ll let up.  The news that we did catch showed roofs being torn off houses in Perth and we’re still 600 km east of there. Gail swears she saw white caps on the puddles along the road today. 

There's gold in there

We’ve spent the last 3 nights in Kalgoorlie in hopes of seeing the worlds largest “Open Pit Gold Mine”.  Due to the storms and rain the viewing platform into the pit has been closed.  We finally got to see it today on our way out of town and it is even more impressive than the big Iron Ore pit up in Newman!  The information says that they extract 800,000 oz of gold per year.  (We calculated it out to 25 Tons)  At the price of gold I guess they’re making enough money to keep drilling, blasting and moving rock with the Mega Machines they use.  

Kalgoorlie is quite an interesting place.  It is just what I would expect a turn of the century (20th century that is) boom town to look like.  Hollywood has the look down pat!  There are ornate hotels and buildings in the main downtown area and they have been kept up or refurbished to the original look.  We mostly just had an easy few days there except when we were being buffeted around by the winds.  Oh, well I shouldn’t complain cuz it’s all been good til now.

It’s Thursday and we’ve given ourselves 2 nights and 2 full days of driving to get back to Perth.  (We still have 3 bottles of wine to finish)  Once in Perth on Saturday we’ll spend the weekend with Bob and Heather, who we met and became friends with on the cruise.    They are a wonderful couple, our trivia partners, and have been MORE than good to us.  We’ll get the little motorhome cleaned up and ready to turn in on Monday.  As an aside, I would NOT recommend “Around Australia Motorhomes” to anyone.   More on that in a later blog.

This will stop wabbits!

The great eastern highway, the road to Perth, had all sort of interesting tidbits. We followed the great water pipeline. Back when gold was discovered, someone thought up building a pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie, 634 km, to supply water. They built it and it pretty much follows the highway, Pump stations are signposted, history plaques along the away and in Kalgoorlie. I think it still supplies water today. Then there is the rabbit proof fence, (on one map it’s called the vermin fence).  At the turn of the 20th century, this fence was built from the south coast of WA, to 1139 kilometers to the northwest of WA  at Port Hedland, to keep the rabbits from destroying the farmland. Some guy in Victoria brought 24 wabbits over for his own yard and so he and friends could hunt them, and guess what???   They acted like rabbits and also escaped, eating themselves westward. (Can’t ya just see Elmer Fudd with an Australian accent?)  The fence was completed in 1907 and there are actually 3 sections. Just when they thought the rabbits were under control, droughts forced the emus to seek nice agricultural areas. At one point there were more than 100,000 lined up along the fence. The grass is always greener on the other side. With the exception of the wheat belt, there really isn’t much for anything to eat out there!

We’re spending a couple of nights ins the town of Merridan which bills itself as the Central Wheatbelt.  It’s actually the boundary between the wheatbelt and the goldfields.  We’ll have a look around town today and maybe take a little hike through the bush.  Hopefully we’ll find wifi in town so we can publish this, which will probably be our final blog from Australia.  Our 2 1/2 months here have been a lot of fun and a great adventure!  We’ve been fortunate to meet many interesting and friendly people, and it’s always the people who make a trip truly memorable.  So at this point we wish you all a g’day and thanks for following our ramblings here about.