We left beautiful Esperance, and made our way to Kalgoorlie, leaving our Tassie friends Maree, Nev, Hann and Jess to get back to Geelong to catch the ferry back to the Apple Isle. Kalgoorlie is inland and is technically the start of the Nullarbor.
Kalgoorlie is famous for its gold, which was discovered in 1893 and has been mined in the town ever since. There is a “Super Pit” right next to town, this is an open-cut gold mine about 3.6km long, 1.6km wide and over 600m deep. It originally consisted of a large number of seperate underground mines but these were bought in the 1980’s by none other than Alan Bond. He consolidated them into a single open pit mine in 1989.
The mine operates 24/7 and every day at 1:00pm there is a blast in the mine, unless it is determined that the dust of the blast will blow over the town. Diggers scoop up the blasted rock and load onto each of the massive trucks which carriy 225 tonnes of rock and the round trip takes about 35 minutes, most of that time being the slow uphill haul. Employees must live in Kalgoorlie; there’s no fly-in, fly-out operation. Kal (as the locals call it) also has a nickel mine operated by BHP.
Kal also had thriving brothels to “service” all of the miners. Nowadays apparently girls advertise only online so they have gone out of business. We did a tour of the last brothel that survived until 2 years ago. Interesting to say the least.
There is also a 2-up school in Kal, and this is the only place in Australia that allows 2-up to be played once a week all year round. The rest of us can only play on Anzac Day. We went to have a look, I had no idea what was going on. All I know is that there were more 50 and 100 dollar notes being exchanged than I have seen in a very long time. Another fun fact is that water supply in this town is piped in from near Perth (560 km!!!) so it’s important not to use too much!
After a few days in Kalgoorlie, we made our way to Norseman, which is where the trip across the Nullarbor starts. It took us 3 days to travel around 1,200km with a few stops along the way. As the word Nullarbor comes from the latin Null Arbor – no trees – we weren’t expecting much. Well we were wrong. We saw lots – some tiny helicopters refuelling at petrol bowsers, a giant kangaroo, cyclists, huge trucks with massive loads, a museum dedicated to when Skylab crashed to the Earth at Belladonia Roadhouse, Australia’s longest stretch of straight road and a Crusader caravan like ours that had no windows as they had all fallen out! Of course we made friends with the owners Shaz and Jaz from Bendigo.
The most impressive part of the Nullarbor is the Great Australian Bight. Spectacular from the land and air, and we had a bonus of seeing a couple of Southern Right Whales with their calves.
And lastly – there is an 18 hole golf course along the Nullarbor! It’s the longest golf course in the world at 1,365km from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to Ceduna in South Australia.
Our video is here –> https://youtu.be/j1MEUwnXnyk
The map is here, enjoy!
