KALGOORLIE TO ESPERANCE

Ben and Bridgie on "Norseman", the horse that discovered gold at Norseman!

Tessie on Norseman

Beth on Norseman

In front of piece of Skylab which crashed to earth on farms near Esperance

DAY 89 – KALGOORLIE – ESPERANCE                       Thursday, 29^th September

A beautiful sunny morning in Kalgoorlie!  Packed up and headed south through Boulder and Kambalda to Norseman where gold was originally found (as legend would have it, by a horse called Norseman pawing the ground!).  We had lunch in the park and a photo opportunity with ‘Norseman’, considered leaving the children stranded on the statue of the horse and driving away without them, then contemplated the difficult issue of Department of Human Services applications and decided to remove the children from the horse and put them in the car.

Drove down to Esperance through some fantastic wheat fields, but also encountered a lot of dieback, a fungal disease, in the Gum Trees which is a pity because there were acres and acres of dead Gum Trees.

Esperance is such a pretty town – I could see immediately why people rave about it so much!  The water is so blue and the beaches so white.  We went to the tourist information centre and the Museum Village walk before reaching the caravan park.  The Museum was very “old world”, smelt very musty, and had clearly been set up by the locals as a tribute to the history of their town.  It is run by volunteers and only opens for three hours in the afternoon.  It was beautiful to see how proud these people are of their town and how hard they have worked to retain important historical artefacts.  There is a great deal on the maritime history of the town, and the kids found all the old cars, telephones and typewriters really interesting.  (It is a worry that the exact electronic typewriter I used for my school assignments is now being found in a Museum!!!!  Oh and the looks on the kids’ faces when I showed them how we used to dial a telephone was priceless!  “That’s just weird, Mum.”)  But David was especially interested in the information on the Skylab space station which crashed to earth in 1979, after six years in space.  It entered the atmosphere and broke up, distributing pieces of space junk all over this region.  The actual crash site was Balladonia (more on that on Saturday!!).  The museum housed the water tank and gas tanks, among other things which were found on farms around Esperance.  David remembers the hype surrounding the crash, but of course I was just a babe in arms!

Met up with Kevin and Alanna at the caravan park so the kids were in heaven with Tess and Caleb back in their lives!!!  A lovely night of wine and cheese (yes, again) albeit with a lot more clothes on than the “old days of Broome”!  We did a bed swap with Tess coming into the “girlie tent” and Ben enjoying Caleb’s bed in the Paterson van!