GWALIA and LAKE BALLARD

3^rd March, 2012

We hitch up the van and head north out of Kalgoorlie.  Mitzi is booked in for its 15,000 km service at Esperance in a few days time.  The service is overdue by 1,500 kilometres but Mitsubishi dealers are non-existent on the Nullabor and the Kalgoorlie dealership was too busy and couldn’t fit us in until the following week.  So we have a couple of days to explore the more remote areas before making our way south to Esperance.  At the small township of Menzies 132 km from Kalgoorlie we check in at the council caravan park.  The once thriving gold mining town of Menzies now has a few houses, a pub, a council chambers, a service station/general store (only open on certain days) and a caravan park.  There is really nothing to see (tourist wise) in Menzies but it makes an ideal place for us to leave the van while we explore the surrounding area.  We have an early lunch and then pile into Mitzi and drive further north along the highway until we see the turnoff for Niagara Dam.  At least the road is tarred and surprisingly the dam is a pleasant picnic spot with family groups camping for the holiday weekend (Labour Day holiday in WA).

Niagara Dam

A few kilometres away lies the town of Kookynie.

Loved this corrugated iron cut out sign at Kookynie

Again this once bustling gold mining town has all but gone.  There are a few homes being lived in and the hotel still supplies pints and beds.  As we drive around the deserted streets, plaques with drawings of the buildings which once stood tell us the history of the town and its people.  Instead of backtracking to the highway we do a loop around on a dirt road until we arrive at the town of Leonora which is the largest service centre for mining and the pastoral industry in the area.  We fill up with diesel and drive 4 km southwest to the historic site of Gwalia.  The ‘Sons of Gwalia’ reef was discovered in 1896.  Gwalia is an archaic name for Wales.  Seeking to invest in the area a London based firm sent a young American mining engineer to Gwalia to evaluate its prospects.  That young man was Herbert Hoover – later to become the 31^st President of the USA.  Hoover designed and had built the Mine Managers House, the Mine Office and Assay Office in 1898 and designed the angled headframe, the only remaining wooden incline headframe left in the country.  On Friday 13^th December, 1963 the mine closed and almost overnight the town was deserted.  Trains were organised to transport the miners and their families out of the area.  People were only allowed to bring what they could carry, so homes were left fully furnished, with nik-naks, photographs and books still on the shelves.  A town of 1,000 people became a small commune of around 40 and the large government owned State Hotel finally closed its doors in 1964.  Today the mine is operational again.  With new mining techniques the old underground mine became a large open cut pit and now new mining methods are once again hunting underground for the elusive gold.  As we drive through the town it is quite easy to spot the State Hotel.

State Hotel in Gwalia

The two storey brick hotel is now privately owned and being used as office space.  Many of the miners’ houses have gone but some remain and a few of these are occupied by today’s mine workers.  Art’s place (named after a local who repaired the structure in 1980 after it had been damaged by strong winds) is typical of the cottages with its gabled construction, timber frames, corrugated galvanised iron cladding and cloth lined interior walls.

Art's Place

Inside, the kitchen is as the family left it with table and chairs, cooking utensils on the wood burner stove and faded plastic yellow daisies.

Kitchen in Art's Place

Another example of the resourcefulness of the mine workers is Little Pink Camp.

Little Pink Camp

Constructed out of whatever materials were available the tiny dwelling was built of timber and corrugated iron, hessian and newspaper walls and had the added bonus of a wooden plank floor instead of compacted dirt.  On the top of a hill overlooking the town stands ‘Hoover House’.

Hoover House

This substantial brick home is now operated as a Bed & Breakfast but the rooms are open for viewing when guests are not in residence.  Some of the original furniture from Hoover’s era survives to this day and other furniture has been left behind by Mine Managers in the decades following.  The dining/living room has a wonderful olde world charm

Dining/Living room in Hoover House

and Wok has trouble lifting the replica gold bar lying on the table.  

OK Wok - we know it weighs only 9 kg and not 25 kg

The bar weighs 9 kg.  If it had been ‘real’ gold it would have weighed 25 kg and Wok would never have been able to lift it in one hand.  When the mine was in full swing the equivalent of four of these bars (100 kg) was being produced every month.  The main bedroom was to have been Herbert Hoover’s, but the house was still being built when Hoover was sent by the mining company to evaluate prospects in China.

Main Bedroom in Hoover House

He did however manage to stay in the house on numerous visits to Gwalia after his return from China in 1902.  Today the house and grounds teeter on the edge of the mammoth open cut mine.

The Sons of Gwalia mine

The open cut is almost 300 metres deep and 1 km across and follows around the original shaft.  Together they have produced over 5 million ounces of gold.  The view would have been a lot different when Herbert Hoover was here.  No huge hole in the ground - just piles of rubble, the pit top maintenance and steam winder sheds and the massive timber incline headframe.

Timber incline headframe at Gwalia

Transport was difficult and expensive in the goldfields so the Sons of Gwalia mine constructed a woodline rail service to gather and transport the enormous amount of mulga timber needed to fuel the mine’s steam and gas producer engines.  The rail line ran west and south of Gwalia for up to 112 km covering an area of 1,280 square kilometres.  ‘KEN’ was named after three directors of the company and was one of four engines used on the woodline.

KEN

Built in 1934 ‘KEN’ ran until the mine closed in 1963.  It is starting to get late and we have 100 km to drive back to Menzies, so we leave Gwalia and her ghostly memories behind.  We could have spent ages in the Assay and Mine Office which were filled with photos and memorabilia of a bygone era.

After a quiet night in Menzies we are off to an early start.  On a dirt road 51 km to the west lies Lake Ballard and something a bit out of the ordinary.  As we round a bend we see the dazzling white surface of the lake shimmering in the sun.  

Lake Ballard

Lake Ballard is a salt lake which in itself is not unusual out here.  What is unusual are the 51 cast iron sculptures placed on the lake.  Renowned English sculptor Antony Gormley was commissioned to make the figures and a team of volunteers placed them on the lake in spots selected by him.  We pull up in the car park, don our sneakers and hats and set out onto the lake.  We walk towards the first sculpture.

Sculptures on Lake Ballard

In the background we can see more sculptures along with a small hill of trees and rocks, looking very much like an island in the sea of salt.  

Visiting the sculptures on our walk around the island

We walk from sculpture to sculpture around the island.  Each sculpture is slightly different.  Some are female, some are of children

This sculpture looks more like a small alien than a human child

and some are obviously male.

Male sculpture on Lake Ballard

Antony Gormley supposedly modelled his sculptures on the 51 (at the time) residents of Menzies.  We wonder what they thought of the completed product as we were less than impressed.  The sculptures seemed to be poorly finished off with the lugs used for casting the iron still attached.  Left to the elements out here we also wondered as to their longevity.  Like this fence the sculptures may not survive the harsh environment.

Remnants of a fence line on Lake Ballard

Apart from us walking on the salt lake there seemed to be no other living animal.  No other animal but lots and lots and lots of flies.  The old ‘aussie wave’ was really getting a work out and Wok decided to let everyone know that he along with 10,000 flies had been here.

Mother nature will soon take care of this message in the salt

Actually I think he was being pretty conservative with his fly stocktake.  There were millions in my book.  We left Lake Ballard and the stark lonely sculptures and drove back to Menzies.  After picking up the van we headed south and stopped for a free camp at Dundas Rocks (another deserted gold mining ghost town) just south of Norseman.  It looked as if we would finally be camped out alone for the night but just on dark a campervan pulled up and snuggled in beside us.  We are beginning to think we attract ‘whiz bangs’ as they are like bees around a honey pot.  Us being the honey pot.  We call campervans ‘whiz bangs’ as this is the sound their sliding door makes when they open and close it.  If the campervan manufacturers ever come up with a silent closing sliding door they will get a standing ovation from us and every other caravan, 5^th wheeler and motorhome owner out there.

We’d had a great couple of days touring the hot and dusty goldfields.  Gwalia is a gem – a nugget of gold in the hot red earth.  Lake Ballard is a brilliant glistening white salt lake that doesn’t need any human embellishments.  Sometimes memories of the past and mother nature are more than enough.