Kalgoorlie Day 2

Have a look at the last Kalgoorlie blog post to see some new photos!

The second day in Kalgoorlie consisted of visits to the Mining Hall of Fame, WA Museum and the Super Pit. Although I was keen to take a tour of one of Kalgoorlie's seven active brothels, we were really there to see the mining and it took priority. We first went to the WA mining museum and I spent loads on souvenirs before we even had a look around! Basically, it was a tall steel mining structure built as a town lookout and to commemorate the mining pioneers.

We walked around the town a little while longer and found the statue of Paddy Hannan, the Irishman who first found the gold in Kalgoorlie in 1893 which sparked a gold rush and mining industry that is still going strong.

Here Debbie is getting a drink from the water fountain coming out of his watering can.

At the Mining Hall of Fame which looks like a mining ghost town and was Kalgoorlie's first gold mine we panned for gold as we waited to go on an underground tour of a real mine shaft. The shorts I was wearing were sliding down and my butt-crack was exposed, but I didn't care, I was going to strike it rich! This bit of butt-crack exposure may actually have helped get me some gold. Two older men that were working on the site were standing nearby as I was panning and saw me (with my plumber's crack) struggling with my panning technique. One of them came over and took over my efforts to show me how it was done. He then found me two tiny pieces of gold and explained to us the different forms of gold there are.

Actually, flecks of gold are brought down from the Super Pit each day and emptied into the three water holes where we were panning so tourists can have a try panning for gold, so there really wasn't a chance I would score a big nugget. Instead I bought my unrefined gold nuggets in earring form at the souvenir shop.

We also took a tour of the underground mine shafts that were used to mine the area for gold. The tour guide was a rough looking older man, years younger than my dad, but who looked years older. He had worked in these very mines for several years and had obviously been doing the tour guide job several times a day for quite some time. Although he was a wealth of knowledge, he seemed weary of retelling the story so many times. He spoke really fast and in a monotone so it was unfortunately hard to glean any information from the diatribe that spilled from his thickly-accented words.

We rode 20 feet down into the mine shaft packed into this little metal box elevator like a can of sardines. Only about five adults could fit snugly into the elevator. The tour lasted about 45 minutes and showed the hardships of working in such conditions.

Walls were propped up with wooden support posts that would buckle under the weight of the shifting rock and the slightest slip of the mining tools could bring one of these "hanging" walls crashing in on the men mining between them.

The machines used to mine the walls were also extremely loud. They were basically jack hammers on supports so they can sit sideways drilling into the wall. When the tour guide turned one on to show us what it sounded like the noise was almost excruciating to listen to in such an enclosed space. It's a wonder anyone who worked there for a long period of time would still have their hearing left!

So far Kalgoorlie had proved far more interesting and lively a place to visit than both Debbie and I had anticipated and I could have stayed to do another day of site-seeing and visit a brothel, but we had more places to go. Our last stop in on our way out of Kalgoorlie was the Super Pit gold mine.

Wonders of WA's Southwest (Sow-west)

Aussie word of the day: dunny = toilet; therefore dunny paper = toilet paper.

Monday, November 3rd, 2008: I submitted my thesis. I was happy to have it submitted, but now am anxiously awaiting my mark. It felt so good to have it done after a whole year of study and research on blogging.

Friday, November 7th, 2008: Debbie submitted her thesis and we rolled out of ECU's car park at about 10:30am. In the style of Thelma & Louise (except without the convertible), we hightailed it outta there and headed straight for the hills - the Perth Hills! Beyond the Perth Hills is the beginning of the great abyss of the Wheatbelt and beyond that - where we were headed - the scrub-filled Goldfields, home of the world's largest gold mining pit or Super Pit, the most alcohol consumed in WA, and seven brothels - two of which offer tours.

Kalgoorlie (Kal by the locals): After a quick 600 km (360 mile) stretch of a drive we rolled into Kalgoorlie at about 5:30 Friday night on our black steeds - I mean in our rented black Hyundai i30 - looking for a few cold ones and a place to rest our heads for the night. Debbie was determined to get there in less time than the 7 hours and 50 minutes Google Maps had estimated it would take and we managed to make it in about 7. Debbie likened Kalgoorlie to the old mining town at Paris's Disneyland... in other words it was surreal. You could just imagine the whistle of the old west as a tumble weed rolled across the road and two cowboy's got ready to shoot it out in the main street. The streets were orginally made extra wide for the long-ago used camel trains to be able to turn around in and they were once also paved in fool's gold before locals found out real gold could be extracted from fool's gold and feverishly tore the streets up to get in on the riches. Kalgoorlie is one of two prolific telluride (fool's gold) sites in the world, the other being Boulder, Colorado.

We checked out a few of the local hostels for acommodation. They were filled with fly-in, fly-out mine workers. Shoe racks near the lobby entrance lined with mud-caked work boots gave this away. At another hostel we walked into the lounge/ dining area in search of the receptionist and found ourselves the objects of much wonderment. The young men in their early to mid-twenties slowly averted their gazes from the television show they were glued to and gaped at us with forks poised over their dinner plates with looks of bewilderment as we asked where the receptionist was. Either they didn't understand English or they hadn't seen such clean, wholesome-looking young women in a long time... my guess was the latter. After that entertaining search, we landed at the York Hotel, a lovely old-timey hotel in the heart of the town... and with no trace of mine workers or their work boots.

The York Hotel ran a lively pub scene in the evenings, but had a charming alley courtyard and served free continental breakfast in the stately dining room in the morning. Debbie and I shared a tidy little twin room - a room with two twin beds - with a shared bathroom down the hall. There was also a slightly slanting balcony above the hotels covered entrance which overlooked the main street. Here we relaxed with a few Coronas after our long drive and watched the sun go down over the Spinifex and salt bushes of the scrub-filled horizon. For an old historic hotel, it had everything we were looking for in budget acommodation.

After getting settled in and toasting over a few beers on the hotel's balcony, our night began with dinner and drinks at a nice restaurant down the main street from our hotel called The Blue Monkey. It was on the pricier side, but had a nice atmosphere and good food. Then we stopped into Judd's on the way back to our hotel. There was live music, a young crowd and a massive men to women ratio! There was probably 5 guys to every girl and didn't the ladies know it. We sipped our beers and people watched for a while as the band played one enjoyable cover song after another. Debbie observed that the club style of dress that the people wore in Kal was much more casual than the type of dress you see at the clubs in Perth, noting that the girls looked like they were trying too hard and not quite getting it. What can you say? They're bogans (white trash Aussies)! At least they tried to look nice.

After Judd's we went in search of a "skimpy" bar where the barmaids wear next to nothing, but to no avail. A recent magazine article about the women who work in the mines said that Kalgoorlie is trying to clean up it's "skimpy" act and regulating the skimpies to have the women wear less revealing clothing such as sexy nighties instead of just bra and panties. This was what we found - nothing like the skimpy I went to with SM in Dampier. We settled on returning to the nightlife in the York Hotel, where it would be easiest to crawl off to bed should we become inebriated. Back at the York a glorified kareoke duo - guy on guitar and girl singer with pre-recorded music playing in the background - attempted to entertain the drunken crowd. We met a local miner who "lived" at the hotel on his time off from the mine. I thought it was really sad, a perfectly attractive guy making a good living but litereally living in a hotel in his downtime. What kind of lifestyle is that? The life of a mine worker.

The next day we set off to explore the Mining Hall of Fame and Museum's.

Three cheers for Obama!!!

Hip-hip-horray, hip-hip-horray, hip-hip-horray!!!!!!

Thought you would all like to share in my excitement of the winner of the election. I was watching the tallies updating every two minutes on MSN for a while this morning, not to mention the election was being followed by the Australian news channels as well, so it was safe to step away to get some books at the library for a few hours. It was on the TV in the library lobby when I arrived there too! When I came back the majority of votes were in. I might actually celebrate with some bubbly tonight.

How do you guys feel about the new president?

Pix of the hair

Here it is - the blog you have all been waiting for. The one with my hair pictures! Now that I've had my hair cut a week and have seen these photos, I think I liked the way my long hair looked better. *Sniff* Oh well, it grows back, but I'm not going to color it for a while and let the natural color grow out, so hopefully it will get a lot healthier. It's actually stacked in shorter layers in the back and longer at the sides and front, but it's hard to tell in these photos. I also think the color has started to fade a bit as I spent the day at the beach on Sunday.

P.S. I also felt better as a blonde.