Moving On

Monty's - a restaurant in Kal. This was unusual as it was open all sorts of hours
- probably to cater for the miners working shift.

The "Outback": But not really in their terms as they consider that part as the very arid desert regions well outside the sealed roads.

After the Pinnacles we drove inland to the mining town of Kalgoorie (the second biggest city in W.A. - called Kal by the locals) which is basically a twin inter-linked city with Boulder as they overlap one another.

Quakeland:On the way we learnt that the State has earthquakes. Lots of earthquakes. Last April they had a 5.0 in Kalgoorie-Boulder which didn't greatly affect Kal but in Boulder about 40% of the shops and building including the Town Hall are closed and cordoned off by scaffolding.

On the way we went through Meckering which had a 6.9 in April 2010 and we took these photos.

On the way to Kal we went past an RAAF base and a F111 did a pass over our heads as we drove along.



Kalgoorie - Boulder: We spent 2 days in Kal, including taking a tour of the Super Pit - the largest in the world. We went up to the lookout during both day and night. We thought it was all lit up at night but this was a fallacy and you can only see the lights of the trucks etc working away getting the gold.

On today's prices about US$1 billion worth per year.

The trucks as you can see are unbelievable with each tyre worth about US$250,000 each - and they soon wear out.



A photo (not taken by us) of the aftermath in Boulder.

Some days of the week they have a blast to loosen up the rock at the bottom of the pit and we saw what the locals called a large one. Bit of a let down. No real noise and just a big movement of tonnes of dirt and rock with lots of dust which probably took 45 minutes to clkclear. The point is that the mine is so deep and the explosives are geared downward so any blast if quite muffled. However a worthwhile event.

Night Cricket: Going for a drive one night we saw some lights on at a huge park. It was several teams of boys playing night cricket. You just drove in and watched from your car - a bit like a Drive In Movie.

Esperance: After that we drove down (a long drive) to the southern coast and stayed at Esperance. Very pretty town with a great scenic drive. Temperatures were similar to home. It was named after a French ship which had as one of its commanders a Kermadec. So I learnt who our islands of the same name was named after.

Talking about leaning something - somewhere I saw a plaque acknowledging that the first camel brought into Australia was in 1840 from the Canary Islands - he was called Harry and was the only one of 5 that survived. Also I learnt that the so called Afghans who looked after the camels in Oz were actually from Peshawar in India and that the term Afghan was really a racial slur.

Then we headed north to Hyden to see the Wave.