We are long overdue putting more photos on this thing, so here’s a brief pictorial record of what we’ve been up to in the last few weeks:

This is the view from Mt Charlotte (where all the water is stored after it’s piped from Perth). That’s mines on the left, town on the right. We live just down the road from the headframe on the left, and at about 5pm everyday the whole house shakes from the underground blasting that probably goes on beneath our feet.

 

 

We went out to Kanowna, about 20km from Kal where pretty much all that remains is a cemetary marking what used to be the biggest town in the Goldfields. This is the area where the town was in the early 1900’s. The flies are ferocious out here, even in the middle of winter.

 

Any tourist’s visit to Kal wouldn’t be complete without a photo next to a dump truck tyre - this one was at the Mining and Prospector’s Hall of Fame. It was a really excellent day - they have tours of an old underground mine shaft (with an old ex-miner as tour guide), old head frames and various other bits of mining paraphernalia.

 

 

This is the Hall of Fame as well - a lot of these headframes were moved here in the early 90’s when they were decommissioned - this is an original wooden one. 

 

 

 Another photo from the Hall of Fame. Clinton took this one - I reckon it’s a ripper.

 

 

Speaking of good things, we went gold panning and actually found some! Yep, 3 tiny specks of it - I would post a photo, but they’re so small you probably wouldn’t be able to see them. We felt rich, nonetheless. I’m sure it would have been enough to buy us a couple of jelly frogs, at least.

 

 

We also went on a tour of the Super Pit - Australia’s largest open-cut gold mine. It’s pretty hard to comprehend just how big this hole in the ground is, until you see the vehicles driving around in it. Here is part of the pit (there is more to it than what’s in the photo) - those tiny little cars on the bottom right are full-sized Land Cruisers.

 

 

They use pretty big dump trucks too - that’s a Land Cruiser on the left. They get 2 grams of gold from every tonne of rock they dig out of the ground.

 

 

 Toodles!