Our Camping Trip To The Gold Fields Of Wa
Entry posted by Desertrose
1,920 views
Our most recent (and first camping trip in Western Australia) took us 2777km to complete in a week exploring many of the old gold mining ghost towns North East and East of Perth that sprung up in the late 1900's when people came from all over the country, and overseas, in their quest to find gold.
It didn't take long, a mere 100 km or so before we reached the town of New Norcia and began to be plagued by thousands of annoying bush flies even though the temperatures were still quite pleasant at that stage although the sky kept clouding over and we got the occasional rain spats along the way.
There is nothing worse than these little buggers!
Absolutely NO kind of insect repellant works except if you actually wave the can around to shoo them away...
Unlike normal flies, the bush flies are much smaller, quicker, there are millions of them and they seem to like burrowing into your eyelids!
When you prepare any kind of food they swarm the place making eating a hurried and rather unpleasant experience, and if the flies don't spoil your appetite then the dryness of the heat, turning your nice fresh bread into toast before you've even eaten half the sandwich, does!
They especially like sugared tea too and yet again I spent the trip scooping them out of my mug and anticipating the ingestion or inhalation of the odd one or two.
New Norcia is Western Australia's only monastic town where Spanish Monks originally arrived in 1846 establishing their mission to the local Aborigines.
It's rather mediteranian style of buildings seem somewhat out of place there among the Australian bush but somehow there is a sense of peace and solitude which is rather alluring.
While sitting outside the towns art gallery I noticed a dozen or so swallow looking like birds flying in and out of a little storage room and thought how nice it was that the birds could nest undisturbed in such a place.
It seemed kind of fitting that they should be there.
We didn't see any monks as we wandered around the town but had a bit of a chuckle when I remarked that "The monks had been there for over 150 years!" to which Jackson with big round eyes asked "How did they live to be THAT old!"
Our first nights camp was at a place called Paynes Find.
What did Payne find? Gold of course.
What did WE find? One very dismal looking caravan park come service station and that was it!
That was also when we found that Richard had forgotten to pack the gas hose fitting that would allow us to cook on the gas cooker ! (the second time he has done this!)
Having prepared a delicious beef stroganoff the night before we were all ravenous and really looking forward to a quick meal heated on the stove.
After much stressing out I sent Richard to go and speak to the people who ran the park, hoping they might be able to tell us where we could buy this fitting, but things didn't look promising as by now we were REALLY out in the sticks!
The old guy at the front desk was SO very helpful. He took us off into his back sheds and spent a considerable amount of time rummaging around trying to find "something" that would get us out of the fix we were in.
I eventually grew tired of all the technical talk and so returned with the kids to photograph a beautiful rainbow that had appeared over the outback horizon.
"It's so pretty!" the kids said
"Yes, if you look there will always be a rainbow!" I said somewhat hopefully.
And there was.......in the form of a battered old gas bottle that hadn't been inspected for more than 6 years but this was dug up and kindly donated by the caravan park owner on loan with a promise by us to return it to his brother in law who lives a few suburbs away from us when we got home.
We now had the means to cook for the entire trip and though it looked a little dodgy it got us through the entire trip with no explosions, leaks or any other hassles.
What a great guy! The caravan park may have been a little unappealing asthetically, the toilets blocked and frogs living in the sinks....
...but the hospitality was amazing.
The next day took us on a long drive passing through Mount Magnet which is supposed to be famous for it's wildflowers but unfortunately it was a little late in the season and according to the locals it had not been a good one anyway. All we saw were some feral goats and the occasional emu and of course morning tea and lunch stops brought the plagues of flies.
The weather had fined up though and was pleasantly sunny with no more threat of rain.
We drove on and decided to camp at a town called Sandstone - another caravan park but this time the amenities were pristine and no frogs jumped out of the sink whilst brushing our teeth.
The owner of the park warned us that the rooster next door would start crowing at dawn so advised us not to set up too close to the fence.
After we set up we took a drive around the tiny town and went off onto the dirt track to explore a natural rock formation called "London Bridge" which at one point was wide enough for transport vehicles to pass across. Now it has eroded away but still remains a bridge though signs warned tourists not to walk across it.
It was here that we saw a cave that had once been the towns brewery ...
...and further on the remains of an old crusher where there were the ruins of a couple of old cottages nearby.
I kept finding pieces of what looked like old pottery. Later on I discovered ( when looking through a mining museum) that these clay pots were what they poured the core samples, perhaps containing gold into and in the museum you could actually see little tiny specs of gold stuck in the sides of the pots.
If only I had known what they were I would have looked at them a little more closely!
I awoke the next morning hearing the rooster crowing and figuring it must be nearly time to get up I decided not to let myself doze and have Richards phone alarm wake me.
He likes to be on the road by 8 am when we travel so it means early starts in order to fit breakfast in.
I went off to the toilets and freshened up, got dressed even though it was still dark and wanting a cup of tea, yet being wary of this loaned gas bottle, I decided to wake Richard up so he could take care of it.
"It's bloody 4:20 in the morning! Are you insane?" he said to me looking at the time on his phone.
"Well, I'm awake now." I said.
I recieved very dirty looks for the rest of the day and will not be allowed to forget this incident.
We headed off (early) towards Kookynie which I was really looking forward to as I had read other peoples trip reports saying that they had done some fossicking around the area and found broken bits of pottery, old horse shoes etc.
I was really looking forward to spending some time fossicking and metal detecting on this trip but with the distance we had to cover time didn't allow me to do this kind of thing at my leisure.
You really need to spend at least a couple of days camped in each place as it's time consuming to search and dig so it was a matter of having a quick scout around at each place we stopped at.
While it was very interesting reading what information we could at these town sites it was also very frustrating to me to see the lack of importance given to preserving what little history Australia DOES have.
Australia is such a relatively young country so I don't understand why we can't protect and preserve what little there IS of our history, after all it's not so old that it SHOULD have disappeared by now.
Most of the sites we visited along the way were mere patches of dirt with a few old bricks, maybe an old chimney left standing and the glitter of broken glass marking the spot where these little towns once were.
What was very disheartening to me was to see evidence of people having vandalised what little was left of these "ghost towns" as all over the ground were broken bottles in those lovely shades of lavender and pale blue that had obviously been picked up and smashed where they had once lain complete.
It makes me wonder at the mentality of some people to destroy something that is so irreplaceable from a historical point of veiw.
It may just be an old bottle to some but to me it is part of an era, and a way of life, that is incomprehensible more than a hundred years later.
We camped at Niagra dam for two nights which is very close to what is left of Kookynie.
A nice spot but there was a problem with the chemical toilets there and it was much to our revulsion that we discovered that "what lies at the bottom" had almost reached the top and along with that there were maggots..........Aghhhhhhhhhh!
It was at this camp site that the kids were entertained by another camper who was very nice and showed them how to catch yabbies ...
... of which were dropped into boiling water and eaten, much to the dismay of Shai who gave us all dirty looks and threatened to set all the "poor yabbies" free the next day.
I didn't eat any. They look gross to me and smell too strong but Richard enjoyed them.
We spent a LONG day exploring many of the old town sites around the area the next day and fossicked around in the heat, driven mad by the flies but we did find some interesting old bits and pieces along the way.
As we explored I wondered at the conditions in which people had to survive, in some of the harshest country in Australia all because they had been lured by the promise of great fortune to be made.
You only had to wander through many of the towns cemetaries to get a glimpse of the reality of what their lives must have been like.
To see the grave stones of not one but sometimes two and three children buried by their parents, sometimes within months of each other as diseases such as typhoid swept through the town made me wonder just how a mother could live with the knowledge that it was quite possible she might have to bury her own child.
The gravestones telling of accidents, fires, drownings, mining accidents, death from something as simple as exhaustion or diahorreah, or those that took their own lives, and of course the tiny gravesites where infants lay buried are sobering reminders of just how much we take for granted today.
It perplexed me to see many of these graves decorated with old sea shells....there, miles away from the ocean.
Some of the grave stones were imported from other countries. One we noted was all the way from Scotland. Imagine how much that would have cost to transport all the way to the middle of ...nowhere!
As we walked over the broken glass in the heat with a million flies buzzing around our faces and nothing but a dry desert full of prickles surrounding us with next to no shade for relief, I tried to imagine how these people could have willingly come here, with all the risks involved and hardships faced, all for the promise of gold?
I can't imagine what "gold fever" really must have been like but standing in a shop later on in the trip at Coolgardie overhearing the store owner telling some passing tourists of recent gold finds in the area gave me SOME idea.
For a brief moment I wished we had WAY more time, and a much better metal detector.
We read signs explaining how quickly these towns sprung up, only to be abandoned as little as ten or twenty years later when people gave up and left, literally taking what they could carry and leaving the rest behind.
One cemetary we visited marked with only three grave sites, said that people were leaving that particular town faster than they were dying.
Of course water was scarce in these places so a pipeline from Mundaring Weir ( near where we live) that stretches the 650 km route out to these gold rich areas had been built in the early 1900's to service the areas along the way reaching all the way to Kalgoorlie. (We followed the pipeline all the way home) Before that had been built however towns relied on desalination for their drinking water and had to buy water in many instances.
The amazing thing to me was reading that more often than not there was more alcohol available back in those days than water!
They either had it brought in by camel or else built their own breweries on site.
At Coolgardie we read out a list of buildings that had once lined the streets...a butcher, a drapery, a laundry, post office and about twenty five hotels!
It's obvious to see where their priorities lay.
We did come across one little town called Gualia, just before reaching Kookynie, where residents had gone to great lengths to preserve what was left of the old town site and it was absolutely fantastic and FREE!
A whole bunch of crudely constructed huts thrown together consisting of wood, wire and sheets of corrugated iron stood as they once had, complete with old furnishings, some of it the original furniture, old iron beds etc. In fact it was noted in a travel brochure that the residents have gone to great lengths fitting out the remains of these homes with as much of the original bric a brack as possible making them seem just as "homely" as they once were.
It really was an amazing experience exploring all the ramshackle cottages and imagining life in those much simpler times.
We traveled on to Kalgoorlie for another two night stay in a Caravan park which was depressing.......not just the overcrowded park but the whole town itself.
We had expected there to be more things to see and do in Kalgoorlie but there was only really the super pit (huge active open cut gold mine) with all of it's ENORMOUS mining trucks and another mining museum which we didn't bother looking at as we'd seen enough museums by that time.
Here is a picture of one of the mining scoops they use to dig out the rock.
Out of every truck they fill, which takes about six of these scoopfulls they are lucky to get out two drawing pins worth of gold.
Adding to our dismal experience there our only full day of rest in Kalgoorlie we had temperatures of 37 - 38 and the hot wind was blowing a gale!
We headed off OUT of Kalgoorlie ( just to kill time and get some respite in the air conditioned car) and found it to be a MUCH nicer little place with a tonne more information placed on boards around the town. It was still too hot to be walking around though so we drove around aimlessly for a bit before heading back to Kalgoorlie to go and sit in Burger King to escape the heat.
It was entertaining at least with one customer losing her cool with one of the teenagers serving, announcing to the whole restaurant in her anger at not recieving adequite service, that there were "Flies in the red fanta!"
It took about 45 minutes for us to get served....the resturant was poorly managed, the staff were heard swearing from the kitchen and the tables and floors were filthy, and yes there WERE flies inside...Not sure about in the red fanta though.
We went back to the caravan park at around 3 pm and Richard took the kids for a swim in the parks pool.
He returned very shortly thereafter with the kids most upset at only being allowed a quick dip to cool off but as Richard had been sitting there watching them a woman ( resident of the park) warned him that the little girl Shai was swimming with was "not all there" and had recently tried to drown another child in the pool.
She said she had practically had to save this poor child from being drowned as the girl "likes to hold other children underwater".
Nice!
I wouldn't go back to Kalgoorlie again. The super pit was interesting and worth a look but on the whole it's a dry dusty place with very little character or appeal except for the dozens of old pubs lining the streets.
Instead of heading down to Wave Rock for our last nights camp we decided to travel straight through back to Perth, stopping at a campsite along the way which boasts a rock (Kockobin Rock) that is Australias third largest Monolith. Uluru being the second largest.
The flies were GHASTLY there and we were completely exhausted by now but it was a pleasant little spot set among some quite pretty farm like countryside.
Too tired to even cook a proper meal we baked some potato's in foil over the campfire and had them with butter, toasted a few marshmallows then had to put the fire out as it was too windy.
We went to bed at about 8:30 pm and were entertained by the kids telling US bedtime stories for a change.
It was highly amusing listening to Jacksons rendition of "the three little wolves and the big bad pig!"
The next morning before heading home we explored what looked like a dumping ground for rubbish we had seen on the way in and were very excited to find quite a few old-ish bottles that were still intact. Even Richard was getting right into "fossicking mode" but it was so hot and the flies were just unbearable so we didn't spend long there.
Some of the "treasures" we found.
All in all a rather whirlwind trip ( they always are) but it was enjoyable getting back "out there".
One thing about Perth compared to Sydney is that you need only travel a day or so before you hit the red dirt ( and the flies!) and really feel as though you are in the middle of nowhere.
I much prefer the "outback" to the coast ( too many other campers on the coast) so I have a feeling we will be out that way again, armed with fly nets of course!
3 Comments
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now