Kalgoorlie

We ended our stay in Tom Price with another visit back to Karijini NP, this time to walk through Dales Gorge.  Dales Gorge has to be one of the best gorges to visit anywhere.  It is a bit of a climb into it down some very steep steps; hundreds of them, but when you get to the bottom it is well worth it.  Crossing over a lovely waterfall you then walk a couple of km’s along the river bed to the end of the gorge where there is yet another steep climb out.  But it is all well worth it, the rock formations of the gorge have to be seen to be believed, so many different strata layers and all of different colours and over the millennia the wind has sculptured the rocks into some fantastic shapes.  In one part there is a beautiful rock pool where we sat and had a bite to eat.

From Tom Price we hit the road again, heading out through Newman, which has the biggest iron ore open cut mine in the world, we didn’t stop long there, just long enough for a subway lunch, and then off we went again.  Newman was nowhere near as nice as Tom Price so we were glad not to hang about.

We ended up staying the night in a roadhouse at Kumarina, a place best forgotten and it about here that we moved out of the Pilbara into the Goldfields region of WA.  From Kumarina we headed through some mighty boring territory before arriving in the town of Sandstone.  A very pretty little place which is beautifully maintained by their local council, every building was in pristine condition.

Next morning we were off down the road again with Kalgoorlie firmly in our sights.  After setting ourselves up in the local caravan park we headed to the Info Office and booked a tour of The Superpit.  The Superpit came about because of Alan Bond, who bought up all the old mining leases in the area with the aim of joining them all together to form one super open cut mine.  Well he went broke before then but the dream did become a reality and now all the leases form one huge open cut mine.

That night it rained and rained.  There was a huge storm, lightning and thunder crashing; the rain came down as did the hail.  A bit nasty.  Next day was bright and sunny so we went to the lookout over the Superpit and did a couple of other things around the area.

Last night the rains came down again and the tour we have waited for which was to take us down into the Superpit was cancelled.  We were very disappointed as we had been so looking forward to it. We are not having much luck with actually getting to do some of the things we planned.  We can do the tour on Monday they tell us, but hey, we will probably be in South Australia by then.

Tomorrow we take off again, heading south to Norseman then hanging left to begin the trek across the Nullarbor.  Not sure where our stops will be.  Our aim is to head to Port Augusta, then over to Broken Hill then on to home.  We had planned on doing the Eyre Peninsular in SA and also getting into Victoria but we need a lot more time for that, so it will have to wait till next time.

I guess the next message will be from Port Augusta, till then…