The Great Western Woodlands
The woodlands start just after Lake Goongarrie, on the way to Kalgoorlie. Karlkurla Park in Kal’s North is a nod to these forests and I am excited that we are sitting in the thick of it. The woods look like nothing I have seen before. Experts would call it an open forest. The crowns are not very thick or interlocked, allowing a lot of sun through. Charming tall trees that look curiously like the ones in my old kids book “Ein lustiges Hundeleben”, with dogs of all colours sitting on top of umbrella shaped trees - as they do. And it's a marvel to walk through with wild flowers popping up everywhere. I am catching whiffs of scents that are oddly familiar. Some of which remind me of my childhood, of days gone by. Can't exactly place them, but I know them, like an old aquaintant. Larger than England, the great western woodlands is the planets largest temperate forest, hugging the Nullarbor Plains, the Western Australian Wheatbelt, and the deserts to the North. And it is one of the earths biodiversity hot spots with new species of fauna and flora still being discovered every day. Amazing!
And this is where we will be living and working for next few weeks. We are getting a tad nervous. Approaching a brand new set of keys. The tension is rising. Deliberately not looking at our future work place across from the real estate agent. Our abode is really cute, a bit like a ginger bread house. But oh so cold. Going through the handover list while trying to get some heat into our new home. There are two wood fire places, none of which we as renters are allowed to use. And a gas radiator which is not enough to heat that cute old brick home.
The suburb of Piccadilly is stunning with so many old houses. And the laneways. And the murals. And friendly people. Can't wait to explore. Commpare to what we are used to, its a shopping wonderland! Wow! And only two blocks away. Did I mention that our house has a cute bathtub? Fold in the body expertly, and one can even fit a couple of litres of hot water. Great to combat the expected -2 degrees.
Finishing off the day with pizza, home delivered, finally washed down with some local brandy. Aaah, the simple life!
Shit Towns of Australia
Here is an interesting piece of trivia: In 2021 Kalgoorlie was voted the "Shittest Town" in Western Australia by Shit Towns of Australia readers - for a third year in a row!
An unflattering review on its website described Kalgoorlie as a “notorious desert dump” which was populated by youths “getting wrecked on goon sacks” and “huffing solvents outside Kmart”.
Not even the skimpies ("bikini-clad barmaids serving overpriced beer to male miners”, according to Shit Towns of Australia) and the Super Pit were spared in the scathing assessment of the city: “Aside from sitting on the precipice of a big stonking hole, Kalgoorlie’s main attraction is a tin shack called the Two-Up School, which teaches Kalgoorlites how to throw a couple of coins in the air. Due to the average intelligence of the local populace, courses last several years,” the reviewers wrote.
Shit Towns of Australia co-founder Geoff Rissole told PerthNow newspaper that Kalgoorlie was helped towards its third title by a group of determined locals who wanted the recognition of the city being the best at something: “The only thing worse than being the shittest town is being the second shittest town, right?”
That's seriously worth a giggle. What a publicity stunt!!! I see Kalgoorlie as an old hag. Her wrinkles witnesses to a colorful, long life. A life of ritches and poverty, of love and loss. She still puts on her make up every day. Then dresses in that expensive black coat that has seen better days. Chafed and blank at the elbows. The lacework with more holes than anything. Patches skillfully keeping together the frail fabric. Just. She holds herself straight with astonishing authority, given that she is living in an empty apartment, repossessed by loan sharks after the commodities market crashed. Her late husband was a self made man when gold was unearthed. And of a somewhat questionable reputation. She was young and pretty when she caught his eye. The wedding was lavish and her family happy to have one less mouth to feed. She learned fast. Beat him at his game and then sacked the bastard for his unfaithfulness. At a time when men ruled the world.
Proud but alone, she used her part of the settlement to buy her first hotel. And then another one. She worked hard. Made the rules. And enforced them. Who drank and who did not. Her success was lavish, and so was the spite when gold prices dropped and mining came to a grinding halt.
And here she is now. In the middle of this godforsaken place. Smoking chains, fossicked from leftover butts. And a stiff drink when the dole check allows. She is not a gentle lady. It is impossible to keep a conversations with her clipped, scathing remarks. It is difficult to like her, but respect I do have for her. Will she ever die? I doubt it. She will probably fossilize. At a public place. Most inconvenient for traffic, passers-by and developers. As if to say: “I ain’t going nowhere. Better suck it up!”
Eventually she will end up as the patron saint for everyone who have big dreams, who give all they have. The magnates, the disenchanted, the broken, the flotsam.
The more I get to know her, roaming the streets, submerging myself, the more I am captivated by the trash and the treasure. As so often, it may take an outsiders view to point out what makes this place special.
The Architecture
Kalgoorlie-Boulder is made up of lots of whimsical buildings. Some grand old ones too. There is money in the air. Efforts are made to keep her heritage alive. I like how residential and commercial precincts are interwoven. The old avenues, originally wide enough to allow road trains and heavy mining machinery to pass , have been charmed up with islands of green, flower beds, park benches and trees. Yes, there are a few new, large buildings, but the are either tucked away or disguised. Massive murals allowing them to blend in effortlessly with the existing.
Our old workers cottage, that has been extended over the decades. Curious footprint, stretching the building to the shape of a beach towel. Never more than one and a half rooms wide, but one after the other. Plus a similar shaped garden. It sits beside the meeting place of the Caledonian Society. I am hoping for some hunky, hairy, kilted men with bagpipes. Unfortunately, these days, the hall is mostly used for kiddy dance classes.
Across the road is St Mary’s Catholic Church. She looks like she has seen rough times. Her beautiful windows are boarded up or heavily armoured. More like a bunker on a bare concrete patch. A place of welcome it ain't. At least not from the outside.
Kal’s Lane Ways - Trash & Treasures
Our cottage borders onto one of many narrow laneways, an alternative network of property accesses, parallel to the main roads. They are what make this city sing. Great to get away from noisy traffic and throngs of people. Through the gaps, between fences and buildings, you may catch a glimpse of Town Hall and its bell tower shining golden against the heavy sky. A shining beacon of days gone by.
Originally, the laneways were used to supply dwellings with heating material and provided a less offensive way to remove human waste. Old thunder boxes are lining back fences, their tell tale flaps yawning at passersby. I really, really like the mix of ramshackle and new, of the run-down, rusted-out existing side-by-side with the restored and repurposed. It’s any creative’s dream. Mind you, what is inspiring these days would have been quite something before sewage lines were installed.
Kal's Street Art
fits so nicely in this picture. In 2018/19, the city created the Heart Walk in an effort to invigorate the CBD. An ever growing number of murals has and still is taking over blank walls. Some of them spanning whole blocks, others tiny, more like a signature! You wouldn’t think that this fits in with the grand old architecture, but it does!!! The recommended times to take them all in is three hours with a number of stops in the local cafés. Or take the old tram, a converted truck that pretends to be one but does away with the rails. We have covered quite a number of the paintings, still discovering new ones on our endless town strolls.
Art goes so well with cafés and there are a number of them. My absolute fav’s, and that’s based on atmosphere, coffee quality and service are Queen B (stick to the one in Boulder's Burt Street), Relish in Hannan Street, and Just A Little Café in Piccadilly. The best views are available from the York Hotel - what a great historic gem! And for reasonable cakes, check out the Vienna Coffee Lounge.
Kal and its Whores
Our little home is at the end of the what used to be Kalgoorlie’s infamous Red Light district, Hay Street. For quite some time prostitution was seen as a suitable outlet for cashed up, sexually frustrated miners. An uneasy truce, tolerated at best, and highly legislated was struck. To keep moral and other disruptions to a minimum, a special district was created. Easy to contain and patrol. Which kept whores in and trouble out. Ladies of Leisure were not allowed into the rest of town. Only accompanied by their madam. If they wantd to see something else than the confines of their district, they would need to leave town. Business flourished with an astonishing number of brothels lining the street. Today, Questa Casa or the Pink House is the only one left. The Internet and an easing of restrictions ultimately led to their demise. Even Mary-Anne Kenworthy, aka Carmel, respected owner and last madam of Kalgoorlie changed her business model, now making a living with guided tours.
So here we are. Perched on velvet chairs. Avoiding eye contact. Little coughs thicken the air. Until Madam arrives. She is ancient. What a lovely old lady I think, while she easily navigates the world of paid-for intercourse and penis hygiene. She tells us how her girls were encouraged to evaluate their clients before letting them on to the premises. Rejecting guest if they appeared to be intoxicated or otherwise uncouth was acceptable. Each girl had her own room to decorate and to keep neat and tidy with a big bed and a fridge. One turned her working place into a S&M parlour. A big teddy in a kinky leather harness recounts that lady's special skill.
Generally gentlemen would be washed (sanitised) in a metal trough before the act. Of course, the girls would follow suit. Madam played this out quite erotically despite her age. More uneasy coughs. Well, if she is not blushing, why should I.
Once, she said, they ended up with a “stiffy”, a guest who died on site. When the coroner arrived, the guest jerked up wondering why all the people were staring at him. Oh dear!
What a great tour. And it goes so well with the brilliant novel “The Trauma Cleaner” depicting the life of Sandra Pankhurst, who made quite a living here in the 90’s.
Todays watered down version of the brothels are skimpy bars, where scantily clad ladies with fake eyelashes, surgically enhanced lips and a make up that would make the Phantom of the Opera blush serve a jolly crowd. It’s all prim and proper though. And no pimps. At least not officially.
Engineering Marvels
Climbing Charlotte Hill Lookout, at the end of Hay Street, is a Must. For one as it offers a great view of the town and secondly it is the end of the 530 km of freshwater pipeline, coming all the way from the outskirts of Perth. It is an astonishing engineering feat, commissioned in 1896 and finished in 1903. Made from US and German steel. The water takes two days to move from the weir at Mundaring Mt Charlotte reservoir. These days Mundering does not provide enough water for the sprawling city and the adjacent agricultural lands. It gets topped up from surrounding dams and at times from coastal desalination plants.
The construction of the pipeline and later the supply of fuel to the eight pumping stations that lift the water 400 meters up the Perth Ranges, means that the pipeline was closely aligned with the railway tracks and with what would later turn into the Great Eastern Highway. The pumping stations are now part of a heritage trail celebrating this engineering marvel.
Cy O’Connor who developed and oversaw the construction of the scheme never saw it finished. He was ridiculed by the public for his vision and the expense affiliated which ultimately resulted in his suicide.
Why would water be so important for a region, this far away from any civilisation? Geologically speaking, the region has a series of intrusions running parallel to the Earth's surface, known as the greenstone belts. These formations house large quantities of gold and nickel, the base of the regions mining boom. Glaciers flattened the area millions of years ago resulting in spectacular granite outcrops and salt lakes, leftover ancient drainage systems, dotting the landscape. Spectacular gold nuggets such as the Golden Eagle caused a manic pilgrimage to an area which is void of any surface water. What is available underground is not palatable. Typhus and other water borne illnesses went rampant amongst early settlers turning this part of the world into a living hell.
Gold was originally mined underground in deep shafts, dug by hand. Shaft collapses were common, toxic gas emissions too, the mortality in the fields astronomical. As gold prices slumped due to less demand and cheaper imports, mining nearly ceased in the 60s.
And then the miracle happened. Greater demand combined with mechanisation made reopening of the mines viable again. The result is the Super Pit a massive big hole at the edge of the city where remote controlled trucks lazily cart ore infused rocks to processing plants and then across the globe. Every now and then the earth shivers when a new blast rips rocks apart or an old shaft under the town collapses. A number of buildings in town bear scars of shifts in the earths crust. Long term locals are able to tell you what causes the different tremors by the type of rumble, its duration and the sound your wine glasses make in the cupboards. Our house rumbles every day. At least once.
Kambalda & Lake Lefroy
Kambalda, about an hour south of Kalgoorlie is another mining town. It sits on the northern shore of Lake Lefroy, roughly a 510 square kilometres large (the size of Lake Constance). It is ephemeral, meaning most of the time it is a shallow clay pan covered with a crust of salt supporting very little vegetation. Episodically it fills with rain which dries up rapidly. Surface water may only last a few months. The solid looking salt crust covers a soft slushy mud. Easy to break in and getting bogged. Regardless, Lake Lefroy is used for land sailing, perfect due to its size and the texture of its surface. It even has been used for Australian land speed record attempts and hosted the 2007 Pacrim Land Sailing Event with competitors from all over the world.
Kambalda's determination to keep as much native flora as possible separates it from other mining towns. Makes Red Hill, on the edge of town, a great place for views of the salt pans.
Menzies & Lake Ballard
Menzies is 90 minutes north of Kal with another 51 kilometres to Lake Ballard, with its art installation "Inside Australia". Internationally renown sculptor Antony Gormley placed 51 human figures on the salt lake. First I thought "what's special about naked, misinformed figures". The artist is obsessed with the human body. So he scanned some of Menzies residents, manipulated the data digitally and created a copy of each. The shapes were cast in an alloy containing materials found in the Achaean rock formations of Western Australia. The nude figures are quite something with tiny male bits protruding comically from their bodies. Female breasts turn into rocket shells (or injections, or crayons?) that cannot be ignored. Luckily, none of them point at us, the intruders into a world that is ultimately not ours. I wonder, if visitors, drop their pants and pose with the natives. I'd rather lend them my jacket and hat. For some modesty...
It is amazing to see people hiking across the virgin surface lake, living footprints, connecting the statues. We climb an island island rising from the salt pan. Each figure is now a synapsis, the end of a neuron, created by the paths, the visitors make. A network. Some paths are used more than others. Just like a brain! Where broader pathways connect frequently used information and skinny ones lead to obscurity. Each visitor spreads their message, and wonder, and civilisatory debris.
I wonder if anyone ever visits all of the sculptures. They are scattered far and wide, some just a spec on the horizon. In the distance it is hard to discern what is statue and what spectator. And so we become part of this art installation. One could even see the sculptures as communication devices, like antennae, communicating with the horizon and space. What if they point the way. But to what???
An extension to the installation is that the island is a giant egg, waiting for its insamination. Visitors create words and phrases around its base. Like barriers or receptors. Fending off wrong sperms. Only allowing the right ones to filter through.
Esperance & Southern Goldfields
For the locals, neither Menzies, nor Kambalda are seen as worthy places for R&R. Kalgoorlites make their way either to the state capital Perth (600km) or escape to Esperance on the southern coast, a four hour trip. Getting there is simple: follow the Goldfields Highway to Norseman and beyond until you hit the water. We got ourselves a cosy B&B on the western edge of town. Off Twilight Beach. Overlooking the Southern Ocean. Across the road is a neat walk and bike trail that leads into town via Chapman's Point or the other way to Salmon Beach and the wilderness beyond. Checked it out and took O for a morning stroll to later call Paul from Cloud11 café in town ready to be picked up. Another great place is the Breakaway Café. Actually, for such a small town, Esperance has a lot of cute shops, eateries and cafés...
In the afternoon we hiked the other way, thinking I could call in another pick-up favour. Too bad we walked out of reception and got back in the dark to a very concerned couple of eyes. But it was worth it! The wind was off-shore. The enormous swell like wild horses rushing towards us. With the wind ripping the top of the waves into long silver manes! In my minds I saw the horses continuing inland, up the dunes, turning into the odd shaped bushes that fringe the coast. Creating wild overhangs and sheltered paths to follow. For smaller animals this must me like a jungle. For us mortals it is an impenetrable thicket. Every now and then my head is breaching the canopy to incredible views of the ocean and distant bays. This hike certainly cleared my head. What a spectacular place! Well worth a couple of days off!
Oh, and don't forget to drop into Esperance Distillery Co for some locally made fennel gin. It's remarkable!!!
Track Notes
Distances to/from Kalgoorlie
To Leonora - 143 km
To Menzies & Lake Ballard - 130km / 180km
To Kambalda & Lake Lefroy - 65km
To Esperance - 390km
To Perth - 600km
Links worth noting
Kalgoorlie (https://www.kalgoorlietourism.com), Great Eastern Woodlands (https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/off-reserve-conservation/the-great-western-woodlands/77-visiting-the-great-western-woodlands?showall=1), The Pink House (https://www.questacasa.com/kalgoorlie-historical-brothel), Heart Walk (https://www.artgold.net.au/heartwalk), Lake Ballard andInside Australia (http://lakeballard.com), Esperance (https://www.visitesperance.com), History of the Goldfields in WA (https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/wa-goldfields), The Golden Pipeline and Cy O’Connor (https://www.goldenpipeline.com.au/, https://www.goldenpipeline.com.au/the-people/cy-oconnor/), Menzies (https://www.menzies.wa.gov.au/visit-menzies.aspx), Lake Lefroy and Kambalda (https://www.aussietowns.com.au/town/kambalda-wa#visitor_information), Indian-Pacific Railway (https://www.journeybeyondrail.com.au/journeys/indian-pacific/), The Prospector Train (https://transwa.wa.gov.au/plan-your-journey/train-lines/prospector)
Cool music and reads to keep you occupied
“The Trauma Cleaner - One woman’s extraordinary life in death, decay and disaster” a novel by Sarah Krasnostein
“Shit Towns of Australia”, book by Geoff Rissole and Rick Furphy. The online version is available via https://shittownsofaustralia.substack.com
Best time to visit
The best time to visit the Goldfields and WA’s Southeast are probably autumn and spring. Winters can be bitterly cold with winter rains. Days can be in their low tens. Expect frost as the sun sets. Summers can be hot like a furnace, temperatures past the 40 degrees are not rare.
The southern coast is great to escape the heat of the Goldfields between November and March.
Getting there
Kalgoorlie is easily accessible via the well established Great Eastern and the Goldfields Highway. The Prospector train connects the town with the western suburbs of Perth and the transcontinental Indian-Pacific with Adelaide and Sydney. Daily flights are available to Perth at reasonable rates.
Organising your trip
Hema Australian Road & 4WD Atlas - If driving is your thing then nothing beats good old paper maps (no power or batteries required).
FuelMap Australia App - Looking for the cheapest fuel in town
GoogleMaps App - Organise your trip. When available, satellite views are superb to find that little private track to venture further into the woods.
MainroadsWA App (https://mrw-aue-tvlmp--appsrv-prd.azurewebsites.net/Home/Map) - This is a great helper that will keep you up to date with any road closures be it for road works or severe weather events. Seriously handy for travelling outback.
BOM App - Weather App issued by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology - always go to the source!
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