The outbound journey, represented by the yellow arrows in the map below, followed the coast from Warrnambool to Pardoo which was the northern most point reached. 
​
The return journey followed the red arrows.

​in previous trips this honour has generally been hard to decide, often resulting in a two-way or three-way shared victory. This time the winner was unanimous and very clear. The winner of the 2019 most beautiful place award goes to Lucky Bay in Cape Le Grand, just out of Esperance.

​The choice of favourite caravan park was probably either Ocean Beach Holiday Park at Denmark, Western Australia which was very peaceful and quiet with a million kangaroos for company, or, our old favourite, Islands Caravan Park at Streaky Bay, South Australia.

​We played the course with a start in Ceduna and then all the holes across to, and including Norseman. As we headed south from Norseman, we had to complete the two holes at Kalgoorlie and one at nearby Kambalda on the return journey. 
 
Like Kalgoorlie and Kambalda, the Ceduna holes are played on the town's golf course. So, armed with my trusty No 2 wood, No 5 iron, sand wedge and putter - sourced from an op shop in Melbourne - the course began at the Oyster Beds and Denial Bay holes at Ceduna Golf Course.

​It was necessary to pair up with another punter to play the Ceduna holes. I was hoping to avoid the embarrassment of playing in front of witnesses.

​I won't go through every hole individually but the next few pics cover some of my favourite holes.
 
The Windmills Hole is named after the small towns claim to fame, a comprehensive windmill museum.

​The Wombat Hole is named after the fact that the area claim to have the highest population of wombats per square metre anywhere in Australia (and I suppose therefore, the world). 
 
One has to be careful not to get one's ball lost under one of the abandoned cars. This was a punishing hole at 520m.

​At 538m Par 5, the Dingo’s Den was the longest hole on the course. I scored 13 and Myrna scored 15 on this draining hole.
 
You need to be on constant guard against the resident crow, he will take off with your balls. It's recommended that punters try spraying smelly stuff on the balls to dissuade the crow. We had Louis as a deterrent but as it happened, he was worst than the crow.

​If the crows don't get you, the snakes will.

​This is the half way mark, the first nine holes. Despite the adverse effect it was having on my shoulder and knee, the end was now in sight.
 
Half way through the Par 72 course, I was sitting on 85 points and Myrna was sitting on a cool 101 points.

​Despite our inability to play golf and despite the ruggedness of the terrain we had to play in, this was the first time we lost a ball.
 
Despite searching high and low and despite the fact there were no large holes or furrows to hide a ball it couldn't be found.
 
I dropped another ball and played it towards the green, or what ever it was that served the purpose of a green.

​It wasn't until we were walking back to the tee from the green that we saw the ball lodged firmly in the foliage of a small plant. Such was the brittleness of the foliage.

Well it was hard work completing the course. It had its share of painful moments, some funny times and a little bit of strange satisfaction to have completed the course.
 
On the second nine holes, I was sitting on 82 points and Myrna was sitting on a pretty average 103 points.
 
At the end of the course, the final score on the Par 72 course was:
 
Myrna  204
Colin    167
 
The scores aren't much to right home about I admit.

 
 
 
 
Next stop home.

​Just behind Bob the Railway Dog is The Town Carriage Museum which depicts what trains meant to the area in days long gone. 
 
They even have a couple of authentically restored berths where one can sit and watch the countryside go by, thanks to the video screens that replace the windows.

​At The Old Goods Shed is a Papier Mache and Wireworks display.

​The Steamtown Heritage Rail Centre is a static railway museum based in the former railway workshops located in town.
 
Peterborough was the administrative and service centre for the Peterborough Division of the South Australian Railways, employing up to 1,500 people in the workshops during its heyday. 
 
The railway workshops covered an extensive area mainly to the west of the township, and it is in these original buildings that the exhibits are displayed.
 
The turntable and roundhouse are two of the main features of the exhibit. Having said that the museum is very extensive and well presented.

​A funny thing happened while we were in Peterborough that is so typical of how things work out.
 
The lady at Steamtown said that the Indian-Pacific (the train which travels from Sydney to Perth) was due to pass though at 2pm the next day. She added that it might be a few minutes early or late.
 
We arrived at the Peterborough Station with picnic and camera at about 12:30pm to await the passing of the famous train. We finished lunch and read our books for a while, while the dog winged his usual lament of boredom.
 
2pm approached and we set aside the books and readied the camera. At 1.50pm we heard a train and within seconds a large good train called Pacific National abounding with double decker shipping containers sped through the station.
 
2pm came. 2pm went. 3pm went and I said the woman must have meant the Pacific National and not the Indian Pacific. Of course, I was over-ruled. 3:15pm came and went. 3:30pm came and went and it was decided (now unanimously) that we should leave.
 
We pulled around the corner and Myrna took the camera and went into The Burg, a newsagency boasting a giant teddy bear.
 
Of course no sooner had the camera disappeared through the newsagencies door and the Indian-Pacific burst through town. Hence, no photo.

 

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Next stop home via Renmark, Mildura, Wycheproof and Castlemaine.

​Norseman is located a couple of hundred kilometres south of Kalgoorlie-Boulder on the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway. It has a population of about 1,000 fine people.
 
Norseman in the west and Ceduna in the east are the staging points at which the crossing of the Nullarbor begins and ends.

​According to local legend the town of Norseman was named after a horse. It is said that in 1894 a horse named "Hardy Norseman" was tethered to a tree for the night by its owner, Laurie Sinclair. 
 
Upon returning to his horse, Sinclair had the good fortune to discover that "Norseman" had unearthed a gold nugget. Since then a statue has been erected in honour of Norseman - but not surprisingly it is only cast in bronze!

​The Tin Camels in Norseman are a tribute to the early camel trains that carried freight to and from the town.
 
Camel teams were a common sight in and around Norseman at the turn of the century. Not only were they favoured by prospectors but they were also much involved with the installation and upkeep of the East-West telegraph line, undertaking maintenance patrols well into the 1920s. 
 
Camels also transported household goods and mining equipment, and played a major role in the fledgling wool industry on the Nullarbor Plain hauling wagon loads from inland stations to the coast of Israelite Bay or to the rail-head in Norseman.

 
 
 
 
Next stop to be blogged is Peterborough, South Australia. Meanwhile we will be returning to Streaky Bay in South Australia as directly as possible. 
 
We propose to spend a week of R&R in Streaky before heading home via Peterborough, Renmark, Mildura, Ouyen and Bendigo.

​We timed our visit to Coolgardie to coincide with the annual even known as "Coolgardie Day".
 
Coolgardie Day is the celebration of Arthur Bayley registering his claim for himself and William Ford, know thereafter as "Bayley’s Reward", on the 17 September 1892 at Southern Cross. It was the beginning of the Eastern (of WA) Goldfields and was to spark  arguably the greatest gold rush in Australian history.
 
In recent years, Coolgardie Day has attracted crowds of 10,000 plus people from the surrounding area.

​ 
 
 
 
Next stop, Norseman, Western Australia.

​I mentioned once before, a novel by Judy Nunn entitled "Maralinga", well she also wrote a novel entitled "Kal" centred on as you would expect, the town of Kalgoorlie. The book is based in the late 1800s and explores the lives of the migrants that flooded  to the world's richest vein of gold to strike it rich. It's well worth a read.

​The city was founded in 1889 by the amalgamation of the towns of Kalgoorlie and Boulder, which developed during the Coolgardie gold rush, on Western Australia's "Golden Mile". 
 
I've heard it said that there are 35 hotels in Kal-Boulder. If that's true, I'm surprised, I thought it would have been higher. There seems to be one on the every street corner.

​The estimated population of Kalgoorlie-Boulder is about 30,000 folks but the town has declined over the past few years and some blame the fly-in fly-out (FIFO) system of employment used by the large gold miners.

I'm not sure how true that is as we were told that FIFO is minimal in Kalgoorlie, especially when compared with the northern mines like Tom Price and Newman.

​The centre of Kal and Boulder are 3km or 4 km apart but both retain their main streets and town halls. The main street of Boulder is Burt Street.

When one goes the Visitor Information Centre to ask for a map of town and a list of must see sights, one does not expect to be invited to a brothel. That's Kal for you. 
 
Yes, one of the recommendations (for over 18 year olds) is a visit to the working brothel known as Questa Casa. I don't know the precise translation but it amounts to the house where you pay.
 
There are two tours per day 3.00pm and 4.30pm and the host is the madame who owns and operates the venue and has done for, if memory serves, about 27 years. She takes visitors through the workings of the bordello and explains the historic origins of this legal brothel which has been operating for over 100 years.
 
Photos were permitted inside but the madame requested that they not be posted online. She said outside photos are fine.
 
The tour went for about 75min and delved into all the parts of the venue. As the venue doesn't open for business until 6pm or 7pm there were no embarrassing interruptions.
 
Each tour is well patronised, there were 18 punters on my tour and more queued outside for the next tour as we departed the premises. I must say it was an interesting 75min. As you would expect a long experienced madame had an endless supply of stories, some interesting, some fascinating, some hilarious and some down right unbelievable.

​A total change of scenery may be found at the two hectare Hammond Park, "a lush green oasis in the middle of the outback". It has a native bird and animal collection with kangaroos, emus, peacocks and fish. 
 
There is a miniature Bavarian Castle which reputedly is decorated with some 40,000 local gemstones, a huge band rotunda, a duck pond, playground and picnic facilities.

​Just outside the boundaries of Boulder is a chap who builds wooden furniture and other items for scrap, local wood. Much is thrown in a pile from locals who know that Chunky will make good use of it.

​There is a lot to see and do in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, we extended our stay from 4 days to 8 days to try and fit as much as possible. We still didn't see it all.

​Now to the serious business of gold mining.
 
One of the most popular attraction in Kalgoorlie-Boulder is the Super Pit Lookout. It is a lookout over a huge hole in the ground which, when it is completed will be 3.8km long, 1.35km wide and 500m deep. 
 
It was originally known as the Golden Mile. It then became the Fimiston Open Pit and eventually became known simply as the Super Pit.

The story is very interesting so hang in. Where small operations had once controlled the famous Golden Mile, WA businessman Alan Bond started buying up the individual leases to create one big company and one big pit, from which gold could be extracted at far less cost.

Bond's company failed to complete the takeover but, in 1989 the entire area was combined. Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd (KCMG) was formed to manage the assets and operations of joint venture partners.

For the first time, all leases and infrastructure of the Golden Mile, Mt Charlotte and Mount Percy to the north, had been brought together. Significant changes occurred.

There is a great historic photograph which shows how the Super Pit was once 22 separate gold mining companies all with their own shafts.

​The following photo shows a 32 cubic metre bucket from a Komatsu PC8000 Face Shovel. KCGM uses 4 of these face shovels at a cost of $18.5M each. The weight of the bucket alone is 68 tonnes. Each bucket holds about 70 tonnes of ore and it takes four buckets to fill a haul truck.

​We travelled through the large machine grave yard where these giants sit waiting for someone to remove parts for spares.

​You can see in some of the above photos that the northeast side of the pit had experienced a cave in recently. The follow photo shows the point at which it began and the large pot hole in the road renders that particular access road unusable.

​Located 1.5km north of the top of Hannan Street is the Hannans North Tourist Mine. A visit to Hannans North Tourist Mine provides a glimpse of the gold mining history of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, from Paddy Hannan to the Super Pit. 
 
The tour begin in the Super Pit Shop, housed in the historic Chaffers Change Room building where you learn about Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM), view a scale model of the Super Pit, and watch footage of blasting and operations.

There's an opportunity to climb onto a giant 793C haul truck, stand in the shovel of a 994 loader or go inside a modern underground refuge chamber.

​A safety demonstration was intended to show what would happen if a haul truck was driven over a normal ute. I guess they made their point.

​Next stop, Coolgardie, Western Australia.

​Your guess is as good as mine as to what is the function of the item in the next photo.

​Gwalia is a former gold-mining town located a couple of kilometres south of Leonora in Western Australia's Great Victoria Desert. Today, Gwalia is essentially a ghost town, having been largely deserted since the main source of employment, the Sons of Gwalia gold mine, closed in 1963.

​The Wongatha people are the traditional owners and inhabitants of Gwalia. Unfortunately, the vast amount of information available concerning Gwalia relates to mining, rather than sovereignty.

​Underground mining at the Sons of Gwalia mine began in 1897 and continued until 1963. During this time it produced 2.644M ounces (82.24 tonnes) of gold down to a depth of 1,080m via an incline shaft. 
 
Sons of Gwalia grew to become the largest Western Australian gold mine outside Kalgoorlie, and the deepest of its kind in Australia. The 2.644M ounces recovered, amounts to a value to A$4.55B at 2012 prices.

​The 1980s saw the Sons of Gwalia reopen under a new scheme to tap underground resources using more modern and efficient extraction methods. A superpit cut into the original workings, requiring the headframe and winder building be moved. 

​The new operation, which promised an additional 1.6M ounces of gold, was traded on the Australian Stock Exchange and saw significant growth. The new mine eventually produced 2.4M ounces of gold at an average of 5.2 grams per ton, the same amount as the old mine but in a third of the time.

​In the museum is a restored mine manager's cottage (now a cafe and overnight accommodation as well as a museum item), an assay office and various other buildings.
 
George Hall, who bought the mine from the original Sons of Gwalia was looking for additional capital and began negotiations with a London firm, Bewick, Moreing & Co. They in turn sent a young American geologist to the area to develop the find into a working concern. That geologist was Herbert Hoover, who would later become President of the United States.
 
Hoover arrived in Albany, Western Australia in May 1897, travelled by train to Coolgardie, then eventually to the Gwalia area by camel. He suggested himself as manager of the new mine. Among his suggestions for cutting labour costs was to hire mostly Italian labourers. As a result, the town's population was made up mostly of Italian immigrants, as well as other Europeans, who sought riches in Australia's newest gold rush.
 
The mine manager's cottage is named Hoover House.

 
 

​
 
Next stop, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.

​The landscape of Sandstone becomes continual fields of purple, pink, white and yellow, with its wreath flower, purple vetch and red grevilleas. 

​The Brewery was constructed in 1907 by Irishman J V Kearney, to provide for the demands of the many miners then working in the area. It was built on top of a breakaway, close to where the cliff drops some 10m - 12m. 
 
From the top-most storey, where water was pumped from a well, the product found its way by gravitation to the coolers then to two large vats on the main floor.
 
From there it went to the cellar, which was an immense tunnel driven into the face of the breakaway and pipes conveyed the beer to the receptacles provided. 
 
The cellar was originally cut out with dynamite and the material out of it was made into a loading ramp so that the wagons could drive up to the door to load the beer.
 
Sandstone Brewery cellar could be kept remarkably cool in the hottest weather by means of a connecting rise or winze which is a hole bored through the ceiling of the cellar up to the top of the breakaway. 
 
The liquor from the Sandstone brewery was sold to the surrounding hotels. However with the opening of the railway line, regular supplies of beer from breweries elsewhere became available and the Sandstone brewery closed for business.

​London Bridge is part of a larger formation about 800m long, varying in height from around 3m to 10m. It is formed of weathered basalt and the rock is believed to be about 350 million years old.It is estimated the rocks of the Sandstone belt are close to 2 billion years old.
 
For over 100 years London Bridge has been a popular lookout spot in Sandstone. In the 1900's it was frequented as a spectacular town picnic site and still is today. Unfortunately with time the bridge is getting thinner and thinner and will eventually fall. 

​Contradiction Well was the first town water supply and in fact predates the establishment of the Sandstone township. It was located on Menzies Road for prospectors, Cobb & Co coaches and travellers in the area to use for horses and livestock.
 
Latrines were installed in 1904 (two years before Sandstone was established) by the board of health who were appointed by the Black Range Progress Association. Little else is known about the well.

​ 
 
 
 
Next stop Leinster (not blogged) then Leonora, Western Australia.

​The country is marginal and desert-like with an annual rainfall of only about 220 mm. Today the town has little to remind the traveller of its importance around the end of the 19th century. Perhaps the clearest evidence that it was once an important centre is the extraordinary width of the main street. 

​In recent times, with the increased price of gold, a number of huge open cut mines have been established.

​The next few photos give a surprisingly good feel of the town of Mt Magnet.  Rather different to Collins Street in Melbourne.

​They have a good little museum there that has thousands of exhibits. I've only included a couple showing rock and mineral ones from the local area. Maybe one or two others.

 

​
 
Next stop, Sandstone, Western Australia.