ON THE ROAD: In the lead up to the annual Diggers & Dealers Forum in Kalgoorlie, Mr and Mrs Roadhouse took the opportunity to take a road trip through the Golden Outback of Western Australia.
All aboard The Prospector! Our tour of the Golden Outback began in East Perth as we boarded The Prospector train that would deliver us to the regional gold mining hub of Kalgoorlie.
Jump on the TransWA web page for some info about your upcoming journey and you will be told that the “state-of-the-art high-speed train departs from Perth and Kalgoorlie stations once a day, twice on Monday and Friday”.
This is followed by some interesting history – “The Perth to Kalgoorlie standard gauge train line first opened in 1971, replacing the overnight sleeper service and cutting the 653 kilometres journey from fourteen hours to only eight—making it the fastest service in Australia at the time.”
Since then, there has not been much improvement in time saving, except nowadays the trip takes just seven hours.
Claiming its “modern Prospector” to have left the 70s far behind, TransWA tells us the updated version now boasts, “air-conditioning, power points for charging your electronic devices, full buffet service and on-demand personal entertainment systems, complete with new release movies”.
There are many positives to riding The Prospector: it is affordable for all travellers, provides a necessary connection between Kal and the state’s capital of Perth, and allows passengers the advantage of being able to stand up to walk around and stretch during the seven-hour trip, as opposed to bus or car passengers that may not share that privilege.
One advantage said car and bus passengers hold over those on the train, however, is to be connected to WiFi for a healthy percentage of the trip.
Not so a trip on The Prospector, which would be greatly enhanced by the ability of those aboard to get some work done, perhaps just answer emails, or stream some better viewing options than what is available in the seat back before them.
It would also save the difficulties some passengers had trying to pay for food and drink at the buffet using their electronic credit cards with some having to wait until the train turned certain corners for coverage to penetrate.
Arriving in Kalgoorlie was seamless enough, although the fact the train arrived on time seemed to take the town’s limited taxi fleet by surprise and there were none waiting to meet us.
Luckily, we had booked a car through the local AVIS franchise and they kindly drove around the corner to pick us up. Soon enough we were in our car zooming up the Goldfields Highway to the gold mining ghost town of Gwalia.
Gold was discovered at Gwalia in 1896, quickly after which a syndicate formed to develop a mine, registered by Thomas Tobias and others who named it Sons of Gwalia in honour of Tobias’ Welsh heritage – Gwalia being an old name for Wales.
Sons of Gwalia Ltd, was established and by 1898 the nearby town of Leonora boasted three hotels, two banks, a telegraph office and many shops and businesses.
Even back then the commute to work was a high priority for workers and many of the mine workers opted living closer to the mine rather than in Leonora.
This led to the construction of timber and iron cottages lined with canvas, many of which line the road to the Gwalia Museum as a reminder of the conditions, both living and working these early pioneers endured.
Whenever you say you have been to Gwalia, the first question from people who know the area is, ‘Did you stay at the Herbert Hoover B&B?’, to which we can now respond in the affirmative.
The house was designed in 1897 by the Sons of Gwalia mine’s then manager, Herbert Hoover, who later became the 31st President of the United States of America.
Hoover never got to actually live in the house due to his taking up a job in China before its completion; however, he was fortunate enough to get to stay there when he returned for a visit.
The manager who had replaced him kindly vacated the main bedroom for Hoover and his wife and the room has since been known as the Hoover Room and is the flashiest of the three rooms available.
Source: Gwalia Ghost Town & Museum www.gwalia.org.au
A continental breakfast is available and although shelves in the fridge are allocated for each room, guests should be wary of leaving any foodstuffs on said shelves, especially if hungry pensioners are also staying, as you may very well wake the next morning to find both them and your home-made comestibles long gone.
Hoover House shares it grounds with the Gwalia Museum, which combined with the Gwalia Ghost Town that lines the street as you drive to the Historical Precinct gives you two to three hours, at least, to explore the history of the region.
In the afternoon we drove down to Kookynie to the Grand Hotel, where we greeted by Willie the grumpy former trotting horse who now spends his day as the pub’s doorperson and being highly selective as to whom he may or may not allow to cross the threshold.
Pub owner Margaret came to our rescue and shooed Willie away so we could sneak through to the bar where she duly poured us an icy coldie liquid goldie, which she then told us we had to finish quickly as it was 2pm and she was about to close for her afternoon nap – something none of the Golden Outback web pages tell you about.
Margaret is a legend, and it is worth the drive out to the town just to meet her and hear her stories.
We had read about the famous Kookynie burgers that Margaret makes for hungry travellers, but alas, at present these are off the menu due to staff shortages, although she did run us through the recipe, which left us salivating and feeling a touch disappointed.
Another useful tip to know about Kookynie is that it is the only place between Kalgoorlie and Leonora that you are able to purchase petrol – only diesel fuel is available at the interim town of Menzies, which probably explains why people drive through without stopping, only slowing down to take the turn out to Lake Ballard.
This is what we did after our second, and last night at the Hoover B&B.
The drive out to Lake Ballard is, these days, bituminised with only a small fraction, about ten kilometres as you approach the Lake still a dirt road.
At the end of the drive, you are standing on the perimeter of the Inside Australia art installation of UK artist Antony Gormley, an exhibition that was commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Perth International Arts Festival in 2003.
Gormley planted 51 sculptures over 10 square kilometres of the Lake Ballard salt lake all based on inhabitants of Menzies.
You can spend anywhere from 10 minutes to four hours investigating the exhibition, depending on how far you want to walk and how much mud you are prepared to carry on the bottom of your shoes.
It had been sporadically raining leading up to our visit, which meant the surface of the lake was fairly muddy, but others I know who have been when it is dry say it is much easier to trek around.
Other times when rain has been heavier, water provides a reflective element to the many photographs you will no doubt take of these statues.
The statues are deceptively close to each other which makes the walk to the next, then the next almost addictive, but be warned: when you stop to take stock of how far out on the lake you are, you will be surprised to find that you have quite a lengthy stroll back.
Fear not, there are plenty of statues left to make the walk back as varied as the walk in.
Our last stop before heading to Kalgoorlie was the Broad Arrow Tavern. Again, we felt a touch misled by official tourist pages that had said you could write your name on the pub’s walls with reckless abandon.
Not true and hasn’t been since 2020 when the pub was told by the licensing heavyweights that the rude comments some folk had written put the establishment’s license at risk.
Still, we received a warm welcome and a cold beer and joyed scoping the bar and its paraphernalia.
That signalled the end of the first half of our Golden Outback adventure, so it was back in the car and off to the big smoke of Kalgoorlie to see what awaited us there.
