Beth and Mark's Gap Year 2014: The Wild West 28 Oct to 3 Nov

We say farewell to the ocean for a little while to make our way inland to Mullewa, but first a detour to Geraldton to get our fridge fixed. Our fridge has never quite worked consistently. It is a 3 way thing which is meant to intelligently decide the most suitable and efficient power source (240v, 12v or gas). In my experience intelligent things also have temperaments, and so seems to be the case with this fridge. One day it will behave perfectly and then the next day it will chuck a hissy fit and flash its fault indicator light seemingly without any provocation. And like any decent temperamental child, it sits in the corner and cries but doesn't actually tell you what is wrong. The manual is very helpful and tells us something like "this light indicates that there is a fault with the fridge". The fridge may be intelligent, but whoever wrote the handbook is not. Anyway, we have grown accustomed to these little tantrums, and the old trick of switch off and back on again (I am from IT so I know this one well) seems to work. Well now our fridge has learnt a new trick. It doesn't sulk and flash its fault lamp any more, but neither does it cool things, even after a reboot, which is a bit of a problem.

Remember our grumpy man who did some running repairs for us at Copley? Well it seems that all caravan repair folk are cut from the same cloth. The signs indicating that standard labour rates are $100ph, or $110 if you watch, should have warned us. First we were interrogated ruthlessly regarding the fault and had our answers dismissed as fabrications. When eventually they deigned to accept our story, our trailer's design was ridiculed as impractical, and we as the enemy at hand were held personally responsible. Prior to our visit we had consulted Dr Google, and had a pretty good idea that the problem was a failed 240v heating element (yes, refrigeration does require heat), but we weren't brave enough to offer a prognosis (the rate card indicated $150ph if you wanted to offer advice). Thankfully after much testing and head scratching they also arrived at the failed element theory. By this stage our repairers demeanour had improved immensely, and we even managed a bit of friendly banter and philosophical discussion. After nearly three hours of two repairmen almost fully engaged on our fridge, the fault was fixed and our time of reckoning drew nigh. We held our breath as the account was tallied, then audibly sighed when we were only charged 2 hours labour for one person and were sent on our way with a friendly smile. The moral of this tale I guess is that if you weather the initial storm of disagreement and confrontation in a relationship, often you will eventually find common ground and achieve happy outcomes. These were innately decent people conditioned by many years of dealing with know-it-alls. And our fridge? Well, I think that as well as replacing the element, our repairmen also performed a lobotomy, because the fridge is no longer intelligent, just automatic and predictable - hurrah!!

Mullewa is an outback town on the fringes of the Wheatbelt, best known for the mass of wildflowers which bloom there in spring. It is nothing fancy, but it is amazing how much work has been done by the locals to encourage tourism. There are several walking trails and a heap of signs describing points of interest and historical sites. Unfortunately we were about two weeks too late for the wildflowers, but we still took the local wildflower walk to look at the remains of what we missed. We also took a couple of their historical trails and a nature trail. All up about 12 kilometres of quite interesting trail, which is not bad for one night in a small town. One of the more interesting walks took us to the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church designed and largely built by Monsignor Hawes, who was parish priest at Mullewa for many years in the early 20th Century, but he was also a gifted architect who was responsible for the design of many churches in Western Australia (and indeed around the world). His crowning achievement was probably the Geraldton Cathedral (which unfortunately we missed visiting all three times that we were there), but the Our Lady of Mount Carmel in humble Mullewa is quite splendid, and given that he physically built most of it himself, it must surely have been one of his proudest achievements.

From Mullewa we head for the mining towns of the wild wild west. Our first stop is Mt Magnet, which our tourist information lady at Mullewa assures us is a lovely town. I guess lovely is a relative term. Interesting, not really untidy, and not exactly unpleasant are terms which I would be more likely to use. Again, fair effort seems to have been expended to encourage tourists, but Mt Magnet has a little less to work with than Mullewa. We manage a bit of a walk around town, and were even brave enough to stroll along the same side of the street occupied by several members of the Rebels bikie club. Pleasantries were exchanged as we passed (but no smiles, that would be bad form). Beth's pace increased somewhat until we were out of range of their slings and arrows. Interestingly there were six bikies and six bikes ( $40,000 Harley Davidsons - ownership of which is a prerequisite for becoming a Rebels member), but 3 were on a trailer being towed by a $120,000 top of the range Land Cruiser (I wanted to ask why - but I am not that brave). Clearly cashed up Rebels, but far be it for me to cast aspersions. I am sure, no certain (just in case I acquire some Rebels readers), that this money was hard earned through honest toil.

Next stop Leonora via the towns of Sandstone and Leinster, both mining towns, but incredibly different to each other. Sandstone is a gold mining town, which in its heyday had a population of about 8,000, but now has something like 100 (And most of them were in hiding when we passed through). Not exactly a ghost town, but getting there. We had intended lunching at sandstone, but the only eatery was the pub, and it was 30 minutes from opening, so we moved on. We did however visit London Bridge, a natural stone arch near Sandstone, which on the tourist brochures looked roughly the size of Sydney Harbour Bridge, but in reality is more the size of a footbridge in a Japanese garden. Still interesting and impressive though and well worth the visit. Leinster, unlike Sandstone, is a modern mining town established in the 1970s, and it is quite vibrant and well ordered, and clearly subsidised heavily by the mining company (nickel I think). Obviously it is in their interest to make sure they provide good living conditions to attract and retain employees. The bonus for us was a relatively cheap lunch, the down side was that the cafe menu catered significantly to the taste of the miners. No quinoa salads here.

Beth decides that we need 2 nights at Leonora. Whilst I don't argue, I am not so sure. Little outback mining towns are quite interesting I guess, but the novelty value had diminished somewhat over the last couple of days. As often seems to happen though, Beth was quite right. Leonora was a nice little town, and staying two nights allowed us time to visit the Great Beyond Explorers Hall of Fame in Laverton about 120km east of Leonora, a small but really well presented museum with a focus on Laverton and the explorers who opened up thIs part of the world in the late 19th century (Forrest, Giles, Eyre, Carnegie etc...). It also did a pretty good cappuccino, which is a fair effort for way out here. Laverton is pretty much the edge of the vast nothingness of Central Australia and the start of the Anne Beadell highway and the Outback Way which completes an overland road link between Perth and Cairns. At the height of its gold rush days this was considered the toughest town in Western Australia. Of all the interments at its cemetery, only one, a young child, had died of natural causes. Here we are in the wild, wild west.

Once back in Leonora we decided to pay a visit to the Gwalia ghost town (mining of course) just a couple of kilometres away. It is fair to say that I was quite blown away by this. Enormous effort has been spent (as well as quite a few mining dollars I think) on preserving and restoring this remarkable old town (which went from a bustling town of 800 or so to zero overnight when the Sons of Gwalia gold mine closed in the 1960s) and establishing a fantastic museum where we lingered for quite some time. A little while ago I lamented my poor understanding of European history. Well it seems that my Australian and American history are also a bit scratchy. I was quite surprised to find that during the 1920s, a young engineer named Herbert Hoover was plucked from small town American obscurity and sent by his bosses to Australia to manage their mining affairs. Hoover acquired for his bosses the Sons of Gwalia mine where he installed himself as manager and set about making it extremely efficient and profitable (needless to say he upset a few people along the way). He then went on to amass a fortune and of course became president of the US just in time for it to slide into depression. He only lasted one term and history has (probably unfairly) not looked upon that term favourably.

From Leonora we head for the (relatively) big smoke of Kalgoorlie for 3 nights. Another mining town, but not a little one this time. On the way we make a short (100km or so) detour to Lake Ballard near Menzies to see an art installation By Antony Gormley called Inside Australia. This installation comprises 51 steel human(ish) sculptures representing each of the inhabitants of the town of Menzies which have been placed by the artist, seemingly randomly, over a wide expanse of Lake Ballard, a dry and stark, but quite beautiful salt lake. The only way to see all 51 of these characters is to walk out onto the salt lake and visit them individually. I took the approach of seen one seen them all and was quite happy to walk out to the closest of these chaps, say hello then head back to the car. Beth on the other hand felt that each of them deserved a personal visit, so over the salt lake we traipsed for miles and miles and miles. From the car park the lake's surface looked quite solid, but once out there we found this not to be the case. Beneath the crunchy salt crust was black gooey muck of varying viscosity levels. At times the top was solid and going was easy, but at others we were collecting goop on our boots and it was a trudge. I of course never betrayed my negative feelings towards salt lake walking to Beth at these times of trudgery, but somehow she sensed my discomfort and offered to continue on without me if I wanted to return to the car. The car actually didn't sound like a fun place to be either, so I continued on and cursed Antony Gormley under my breath. Why couldn't he have done a smaller town than Menzies? The furthest flung of these sculptures took us forever to get to over the boggiest of ground, and when we finally got close enough to make out its shape it became apparent that it was just a stick poked into the ground. My curses momentarily shifted from Antony to the larrikins who placed this stick just to trick fervent sculpture hunters into an unnecessary and gluggy walk. After 2 hours or so we had met a loose approximation of every man, woman and child of Menzies (thankfully pets seem to have been excluded), and we returned to climb a little mountain on a small island on the lake to survey the whole landscape. This bit was quite fun. You know how sometimes you look back fondly on situations which at the time were unpleasant, generally because they helped to build character or they were a necessary part of a bigger achievement. Perhaps in time, chasing malformed sculptures over Lake Ballard will be so for me.

Kalgoorlie was very pleasant. We did a walking tour of our own invention covering most of Kalgoorlie and its neighbouring town Boulder. Gorgeous old buildings, reinstated 19th century facades in Burt St. Boulder, Hay St brothels, gardens and an arboretum all fell under our gaze as we tramped around town putting lots of kilometres under our belts. We also went to Hannan's Goldmine museum, named for Paddy Hannan, who registered the first mining claim on the famous golden mile after stumbling over a nugget as big as a man's fist. This was a fantastic museum, and whilst the mining artefacts and stories from the gold rush days were most enjoyable, the 250 tonne ore trucks on display really stole the show. After climbing up into one of these monsters, Beth decided that driving one may be a new career for her. Upon reflection though, she decided that the living near a mine part of that deal might cause her a problem. Evidently the mining companies prefer women driving these machines because they are gentler with them than men, so I am sure if Beth chose to, she could be captain of a CAT ore truck in no time.

Given that we had been excited by the ore trucks in a static display, we thought that we should also see them in action, which you can do from the lookout at the Big Pit gold mine which is basically a void where once was the golden mile just beside Kalgoorlie. As holes in the ground go, this is quite impressive, and evidently we have Alan Bond to thank for it. The golden mile was made up of quite a few mines, which because of the diminishing yield of gold over the years were becoming unprofitable. Alan Bond started buying up these mines in the 80s with a view that more efficient extraction would make low yielding ore profitable. His way of making extraction more efficient was to consolidate all the mines into one giant hole and just keep digging.

Our last night in the caravan park at Kalgoorlie, I was cooking up potato chips on the barbecue, when our newly arrived neighbour poked his head around the corner and asked me whether I liked fish. Without thinking I answered that I love fish. Hang on a second, I've got something for you, said the neighbour. As he walked away I began to wonder just what sort of fish this character could have caught within cooee of Kalgoorlie, then I started to worry about what state these fish may be in - scaling and gutting fish is not my forte. By the time the fisherman returned I was in a state of torment regarding my unqualified acceptance of fish. Happily my mind was set at ease. It transpires that my neighbour was not the fisherman, but the friend of a Geraldton fisherman, who had been overly generous with some beautiful whiting fillets, and he was keen to share this bounty rather than see it go to waste. The fish went on the barbecue (a perfect complement for the chips which were already cooking). There was too much for Beth and I, so we shared fish and chips with a young Swiss couple who we had just struck up a conversation with. Isn't life wonderful?

From Kalgoorlie we will head down to Hyden and Wave Rock, then to Stirling Ranges and Fitzgerald River National Parks for a bit of a back to nature fix. Til then.....