Norseman
The
end of the highway is a simple ‘T’ intersection at a place called Norseman, I
was expecting this place to be big. You know, you are either starting the big
trek or finishing it either way Norseman is this little broken down town with
many of the old shops closed. Little narrow streets lead you down to the
information centre and the cheapest fuel in town, no don’t like the look of it
I am sure we can get to Kalgoorlie.
Off we depart
for Kalgoorlie after having a bit of a wander around and talking to a few
travellers and locals. I have plenty of fuel.What
is happening,? the gauge is dropping a lot quicker than I expected, even the
computer that was telling me that I had heaps, is now giving me warnings, the
fuel light just came on, where are we? We come across a little town and spot a
service station, my blood pressure is starting to drop. I look at the pump and
it shows diesel at 1.23, gee that’s cheap as I had paid 1.53 at the last
station. The pump is not working so Trice wanders off to the front door, it is
derelict – panic again. We go around the corner to the police station who
direct us to the service station just out of town, won’t do that again!
We
pull into Kalgoorlie and I like this town, nice feel and the caravan park is
tidy and friendly. We had been told about the Pink House on our trip and headed
off the next day for a tour.
Here we are standing outside this brothel waiting for the tour when out
comes the madam to see our tickets and leads us in. She is dressed in blue
jeans and an I Love New York tea shirt and is late 60’s. Joining us are a
husband and wife, the mother and 2 guys who I am sure got mixed up with the
times for what they were after. It was very quiet as nobody other than me was
saying anything, I think the husband wasn’t going to say anything and these 2
guys just sat there with this strange look on their faces. Finally the Madam
decided to get everyone to introduce themselves to try and break the ice and
when these guys were addressed, neither could speak English which threw the
madam as she did not know what to do. Anyway we can say we were in the brothel
if that is all. Interestingly the number of males outnumbering the females made
it necessary to run brothels to provide a service. 
These days the numbers have
pretty well equalled out and a large percentage of the population are now
employed outside the mines. The town is very dry but we are getting used to
seeing red dirt and gravel. The next day we did the city tour where you are
given a pair of headphones, a map and off you go. We walked and walked and
walked and saw every little corner of this town, this was a very wealthy town
in its hey day and was well represented by the odd hotel on every corner, we
did try a few. Half way through the audio tour we had to leave to do our tour
of the mine or “Super Pit” as it is called. A huge open cut mine where they mine
for gold, a massive operation around 3.5klm by 1.5klm and some 600 mtrs deep.
Monster trucks and diggers are everywhere, 2 double fuel takers come in twice a
week just to top of their fuel reserves.
The site is enormous,
standing on the viewing deck massive dump trucks looked like ants winding their
way down the sides of the giant pit. We were shown the extracted gold and
instead of being a lustrous, is it this dull grey and about the same
consistency as wet sand being dropped. As gold has alwayon s been the basis for
Kalgoorlie, the ‘Superpit’ has tried to embrace the community. It has done this
by painting one of these huge trucks Pink for Breast Cancer, one Blue for
Prostate Cancer also had the local school children cover one with their
hand prints. 
We
were very fortunate to witness a triple blast at the mine – this only happens 3
times a year. Instead of just 1 large explosion, when the time is right they
load it with 3 large charges. The whole of the East face of the mine just
erupted and poured down like a giant brown waterfall. Spectacular – viewing –
thanks Wil for finding out about this.
We
went for a drive north to find the ghost town of Goongarrie – there are lots of
these so called ghost towns along the highways of the gold fields. What was once a thriving little town was now
just 3 buildings along side the railway & not 1 resident. We then went to
find the Goongarrie Station, which we did, but all that was there , were two
graves. On the way back we stopped in at another small (I mean real small) town
– Broad Arrow – only a pub here. This town used to have a population of 16,000
in 1901 by 1903 it had dropped to a mere 1,000 – now it has a population
of 4, the family that run the pub – The Broad Arrow Tavern. A unique little place, it is very hard to
find a bit wall, fixture or even furniture that doesn’t have a signature or
message written on it – so yep, Trice & I left our mark too. When you visit
mine is on the door frame coming in and Trice’s is on the footrest at the main
bar. 
A bit closer to Kalgoorlie we find the Bush Two Up.. Another interesting
sight! Especially the toilets.. `
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