18^th January 2017 – Perth to Singapore/Kuala Lumpur

We were sad to leave Phil and Becks and Australia and said our final farewells before they both departed for work. 

By the time we had arrived at the airport we had driven 531 km in the Northern Territory, 2424 km in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland and 3928 km in Western Australia a total of 6883 km (4302 miles) and enjoyed the journey, culture, scenery and climate, the hospitality of my relatives and the friendliness of Australians in general.

Sheila on route to Kuala Lumpur

However, the Australian experience is certainly not over and there is plenty more to see and enjoy. “We’ll be back”.

On the flight to Singapore we both watched “Queen of Katwa”, a true and moving story about a girl from the Ugandan Katwa slum who becomes a chess Grand Master.

As I finished this blog Sheila caught up with the final part of “The Lost World of Joseph Banks” the naturalist, explorer, collector, patron and President of the Royal Society and who funded and accompanied Cook on his expedition to Australia.  Although I haven’t seen the full documentary yet I now know what a Banksia flower looks like, named after Sir Joseph Banks.

Banksia

"Room with a view"

January 17^th 2017 Perth

Sheila and I headed into Perth to check out the Perth Mint and find out what happens to the gold that comes from Kalgoorlie.

To get into Perth we cycled along the coast into Fremantle and then caught the train. In Perth we took the Red CAT free bus to the Mint.  The Mint offer tours and we bought a snack first in their café and awaited the start of the tour.

Perth Mint

It turns out that the Perth Mint is no longer taking the bulk of the gold from Kalgoorlie and the other gold mining areas in Australia to create the gold bullions. This is now undertaken at a facility at Perth airport. The Mint in Perth manufactures special coins for various occasions as well as buying and selling gold and acting as a depository for people investing in gold.

The building houses a number of gold exhibits including the largest gold coin in the world, which weighs in at 1 tonne (1012 kgs) and is 80cm diameter and 12 cm thick. The current value is around $57 million.

Two sides of the 1 tonne coin

We also took the opportunity to measure our weights in terms of gold value. Mine and Sheila’s weight equivalents in gold value was around $4M and $3M respectively – definitely undervalued!

The tour also included a demonstration of a gold ingot being poured from a crucible of molten gold.

Crucible full of gold

Resulting gold ingot

From the Mint we strolled down to the waterfront and along to the Bell Tower.   

#

Bell Tower

We spotted a few brown and moon jelly fish in the water as we had done two years previously, although not so many.

Moon Jelly Fish (side view)

Brown Jelly Fish

We were surprised to see building work still being undertaken on the waterfront north of the tower. We learnt later that we should have walked around these works to see the new Elizabeth Quay, although I noted later that both Google Maps and the Bing Maps still show the area as under change.

We headed back to the apartment and did a spot of ironing and packing in preparation for our flights the following day as well as emptying the car of Phil and Becks’ windsurfing kit.

In the evening we had our final meal with Phil and Becks at the Char Char Bull Restaurant in Fremantle.

January 12^th to 16^th 2017 – North Coogee/Lancelin

January 12^th

We played 9 holes of golf at Walter Point Golf Course and after a spot of lunch headed down to Lucky Bay on the Swan River so that I could go windsurfing. The wind wasn’t quite as good as on Christmas Eve but good enough to get planing at times.

Mike at Lucky Bay

January 13^th

Sheila and I took the bikes and cycled south along the beach in search of a statue of C Y O’Conner.

C Y O'Connor is best known for his work on the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, also known as the Goldfields Pipeline. This pipeline carries water 330 miles (530 km) from Perth to Kalgoorlie. The construction of Fremantle Harbour is quoted as O'Connor's greatest personal triumph, as his proposal to build the harbour within the entrance to the Swan River was contrary to previous expert advice that this was impracticable and that the construction would require constant dredging. Over 100 years of continued use of Fremantle Harbour by heavy shipping has erased all doubt concerning O'Connor's technical judgement. However, on both these programmes O’Conner suffered significant criticism and alleged corruption and this may have led to his suicide.  The sculpture of O’Conner 20 metres off the beach in the water depicts him on his horse riding into the water at the place where he shot himself on 10 March 1902.  The statue was erected in 1999 and today it is not easy to recognise it as a man on a horse from the distance of the water’s edge.

C. Y. O'Connor's Statue

In the afternoon Sheila and I drove up to Lancelin, a trip of around 2 hours, where we were staying with Phil and Becks for the weekend’s Lancelin Ocean Classic event. When we arrived we took a stroll along the beach from where one could still see the wave sailing event taking place out on the reef.

North Coogee to Lancelin

The water was too inviting so I rigged my sail and headed down to the beach for a session on the water.

January 14^th

We all had breakfast in the local café, a few yards from the chalet. Phil and Becks then headed off to Ledge Point some 12 km south for the start of the Lancelin Ocean Classic 25 km marathon event. A course had been set along the coast to Lancelin with 8 legs finishing just opposite the Endeavour Tavern in Lancelin, with the last run entering the bay through a break in the reef.

The marathon is quite a spectacular event with over a hundred competitors, men and women, taking part. Just before the event was about to be kicked off two dolphins swam past.

Sheila at Ledge Point as competitors arrive

Phil (plus chest buoyancy aid and flares under shirt) gets checked out by Mum!

The start is initiated by a tannoy count down and then the 100 plus competitors run to the water’s edge with sails and boards in hand to launch them into the water. There were three lines of competitors, with the separation determined by application entry date but with the front line occupied by the elite windsurfer category.

Phil waits for the start (behind elite windsurfers)

The race included both windsurfers and kite surfers but their start was separated by a few hundred metres to avoid more chaos than usual.

The rush for the water

Immediately after the start there is a mad rush by the spectators back to Lancelin for the finish.  

Phil in the centre distance with sail 788

To see the finish one needs to strategically position ones car for a quick getaway at Ledge Point.  Fortunately the police were on the case and had stopped the traffic on the main road to allow Ledge Point traffic to drive straight onto the main road without needing to stop.

Sheila and I arrived in Lancelin , parked the car and within a minute or so the first competitor was over the line, an incredible feat having travelled the 25km in only 27 minutes, clearly one of the elite windsurfing group. 

Spectators arrive on Lancelin Beach (a few kites visible far right)

The organisers have a “sweep-up” exercise and will ensure that any stranded competitors are picked up by one of the support craft. A helicopter is also used in the event.

Phil arriving at the finishing line

Phil came in 32^nd in his class and a reasonable time of just under 48 minutes.

Becks & Sheila at the prize giving event

The prize giving was late afternoon on the beach, where food and drinks were available, followed by fireworks after sunset at 9.10pm and a party with live band in the Endeavour Tavern to midnight.  

Sun grows ears at sunset! 

Sheila and I decided to buy fish and chips, drive onto the beach to eat the fish and chips in the comfort of the car until the fireworks had started. Phil and Becks headed to the party after the fireworks.

January 15^th

After a relatively slow start and breakfast, we headed down to the beach area where a few of Phil and Beck’s friends from Windsurfing Western Australia (WWA) had gathered, partly to give the children windsurfing lessons. One of the children had spotted a stingray in the water while windsurfing.

Phil checks out the conditions

Eventually the wind kicked in and the rest of us got on the water in what was a great afternoons sailing. Phil and Becks left late afternoon to head back to Perth while Sheila and I headed off to the Dunes Restaurant at the Lancelin Hotel had a meal and watch the sun set.

Sunset from Dunes Restaurant 

January 16^th

We had to check out of the chalet so had breakfast and packed everything into the car. It had been a windy night and I wondered whether anyone was down on the beach but at 8am there was hardly a soul around, many having gone back home. In fact we were in the only occupied chalet, the rest having left on the Sunday.

After packing the car and handing in the key we took a last look at the beach. A small number of people had started to come down. There was even one windsurfer heading out to the reef to catch the waves.

South side of Lancelin Beach

The conditions looked great but I was nursing a pulled calf muscle, probably a result of too much driving over the preceding weeks, shortening the muscle followed by more than the usual exercise the day before. It would have also meant Sheila spending the day on the grass above the beach getting chilled again by the wind.  We headed south to Perth and back to Phil and Becks’ abode in North Coogee, stopping off on the way to catch up with Ben Severne from Severne sails to sort out a problem with one of his booms.

Apart from a spot of shopping the rest of the day was spent applying cold packs to my leg and catching up with the blog.

January 11^th 2017 – Merredin to North Coogee (near South Fremantle)

Merredin to North Coogee

Rather than continue the trip back to North Coogee, via the Great Eastern Highway, we took a detour into the heartland of the Central Wheat Belt, along a route that the early prospectors took to the goldfields, known as the Pioneers' Pathway. Thus from Merredin we went north to Nungarin and then west through Trayning, Wyalkatchem, Dowerin, Goomalling and Toodyay, all along sealed roads.  The traffic was much lighter than along the main highway, seeing only a handful of vehicles and passing through communities with barely 300 inhabitants at most.

Sheila in Wyalkatchem

The world of wheat

As we approached the west coast we started to see cloud starting to appear, as seen in the image above.

Competing for road space

Goomalling's hi-tech silos

When eventually we got back to Phil and Becks place we dumped our bags, made a cup of tea and headed for the beach to cool off since the temperature was in the upper 30s.

Strolling back from the beach

January 10^th 2017 – Kalgoorlie - Merredin

Kalgoorlie to Merredin

There is not much to comment on this route along the Great Eastern Highway. The road is relatively straight and accompanied by the pipe (the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme) that transfers water to Kalgoorlie from Perth, a distance of 530km in a 30 inch (760mm) diameter pipe. There are pumping stations along the length of the pipe.

Straight roads & pipe line

Goldfields Water Supply Scheme

I checked out on Google Maps and one can just resolve the image of the pipe between Perth and Kalgoorlie. The road trains being so long are also easily visible.

Road trains easily visible on Google Maps 

(pipe can just be discerned on south side of highway)

At Southern Cross the scrub land changes to large fields of harvested wheat and this continues west.

We crossed the north-south line of the Rabbit Proof Fence at Burracoppin that originally went from Port Hedland on the north coast to Esperance on the south coast, a distance 3256 km., and completed in 1907.  The fence was constructed to stop the spread of rabbits into Western Australia from the eastern states. Today it is known as the State Barrier Fence and extends 1,170km from the Zuytdorp cliffs north of Kalbarri in the State’s north through to Jerdacuttup east of Ravensthorpe in the State’s south. The threat from rabbits has diminished but the barrier is important in minimising the impact of invasive species, such as wild dogs and emus and protecting the State’s agricultural industries. 

Original Rabbit Proof Fence (red line)

Merredin, where we are staying the night, has a population of around 3000 and is the largest regional centre in the Central Wheatbelt. Wheat is grown within a 100 km radius of the town as is clearly evident. We had dinner in "The Shed" and were fortunate to arrive early since the rest of Merredin also turned up for a party.

9^th January 2017 Kalgoorlie

Our main reason to come all the way up from Esperance to Kalgoorlie was to see the Super-Pit, a massive open surface gold mine and one of the biggest in the world covering 35,000 hectares. The Kalgoorlie Goldfield is one of the richest gold deposits in the world.

Super Pit

The first gold was mined in 1893 and eventually resulted in over 200 leases. Alan Bond played a significant part in consolidating and establishing a single large scale operation, which eventually became the Super-Pit operation under the management of KCMG on behalf of the two owners

.

The Kalgoorlie Goldfield is part of the Norseman-Wiluna Belt, a greenstone belt consisting of volcanic and sedimentary rocks and surrounded by extensive granite. Tremors are frequently felt in the area.

Currently the pit is 500m deep and the plan is to dig down to 750m, although the water table is around 650m. Operations are planned to continue until 2035.

Each of the larger haul trucks bringing the rocks out of the mine carries 250 tonnes and will typically provide a golf ball size of gold per truck load. Their round time up and down is just over an hour and there are 40 on site. This is a 24/7 operation, although blasting only takes place in the day time. While there we saw a couple of areas blasted. The blast areas had been drilled in a matrix of approx. 10 holes along each side and two metres apart and 16m deep.

What is hard to judge is the size of the vehicles but when they are next to small pick-up trucks or small lorries; the scale is more obvious.

Face Shove (4020 bhp) plus service vehicle on pit flour dwarfing pick-up and lorry

Sheila shows size of Face Shovel's bucket (holds 68.5 tonnes)

Haul truck carrying 250 tonnes of rocks (2300 bhp)

The plant includes a significant level of post processing to extract the gold, which is transported to the Perth Mint on commercial passenger planes.

Haul trucks ascend and descend the pit 

Overall I estimated that the turnover is around $1.2 billion (AUS$) with a profit margin of approximately 38%.

Sheila & Mike kitted up to see the operations

Mike demonstrates size of truck tyres

After the trip we visited the Museum of Goldfields, which is well worth a visit,

8^th January 2017 Esperance to Kalgoorlie

Esperance to Kalgoorie

The trip from Esperance is long and straight with few attractions on the route but with more vegetation on either side of the road than we would have guessed.

Long straight roads

The distractions are the salt lakes, the odd railway line crossings, road trains and the occasional road kills. 

Road train (53.5 m long)

On this occasion we spotted an emu crossing the road, which was quite an unexpected treat. At Norseman one can pick up the road east to Adelaide, only 2200 km, and now all on a sealed road.

The Lefroy salt lake at Kambalda is absolutely huge with an area of 57,000 hectares. 

Lefroy Salt Lake

At various times of the year they undertake land yachting on the lake and last year one sailor reached a new world land sailing record of 110 kph (68.75 mph).

Land Yachting

6^th – 8^th January 2017 Esperance

We stayed three nights in Esperance and managed to see many of the attractions. Esperance is in the western region of the “Recherche Archipelago”, also known as the Bay of Isles. 

Esperance  and the Archipelago 

The numerous small uninhabited islands off the Esperance coast add to its beauty in the evening sunsets.

Twilight Beach

From our day of arrival the temperature dropped from 45C down to mid-20Cs, quite a change and largely due to a change in wind direction from the northern interior to the WSW.

If there was a chance to go windsurfing then the first morning was my only one since the wind was up to 18 knots and dropping over the next few days. The wind direction was the main problem since it had too much of a westerly in it. Nevertheless, we had an early breakfast and headed out east along the Twilight Beach Road. There are a number of beaches going east, West Beach, Fourth Beach, Twilight Beach, Nine Mile Beach, Ten Mile Lagoon and Eleven Mile Beach. Unfortunately the first three beaches as well as the Esperance main beach all face too SE since they get shadowed by the land. The ones with the best directions are the last three. However, they have a slab reef all along the beach without any obvious gap, which would make it difficult to get back in, never mind launching.  With no other windsurfer in sight I decided to skip the idea and continue around the Great Ocean Drive, a 40 km circular trip. 

At Observation Point between the Twilight and Nine Mile Beaches we spotted 3 dolphins circulating the rocks on the sheltered side, quite an early morning treat.  Further around from the coast we came across the Pink Lake, a large expanse of inland water that looked largely white but with a tinge of pink. The colour is attributed to high concentrations of salt tolerant algae, Dunalella Sailina.

Great Ocean Drive

As windsurfing was not possible we decided to try our luck at golf at the Esperance Golf Club. We were greeted by a young Irish lad on his last day at the club before he moves to the Royal Perth as general manager.  The course had lots of salt lakes to avoid, but no kangaroos this time. It wasn't until we finished that we discovered that one can take relief for a poor ball lie up to 1 metre. In the UK the winter rules allow only 6 inches - showing how much the terrain gets hammered in the Australian summers. 

Sheila at Esperance Golf Course

We took a trip east along the coastline but before arriving at the coast we came across the Oz version of Stonehenge, which had been erected by a local farmer. This was a complete life size version aligned to the summer solstice in Esperance with an appropriate lay-line  of stones.

The Magic of Stonehenge

From the Stonehenge replica we headed out to Lucky Bay within the Cape Arid National Park. This was just one of a number of scenic bays along the coast and fortunately accessed via a sealed road. Others included Hellfire Bay, Thistle Cove and Arid Bay, all protected from any westerly and south westerly winds. 

Lucky Bay

On route we spotted a couple of lizards slowly waddling across the road in their awkward fashion.

Lizard

Esperance has a museum, which like many of its type are filled with artifacts from the late 1800s to the 1950s. One unique addition was a fuel tank from NASA’s Spacelab that fell to Earth in 1979 along a NE-SW track aligned with Esperance.

While in Esperance we had three evening meals: the Season’s Restaurant, Eljay’s Restaurant and The Pier Hotel all quite acceptable and the last quite surprisingly good. The one we failed to try was the Loose Goose, which has a good reputation.