Kalgoorlie - Part 1

Our first stop on our trip to Kalgoorlie was Meckering. A place I remember from my childhood because of a devastating earthquake in October 1968.

I remember being at home in Perth when it struck and not really knowing what was happening just that our kitchen was swaying from side to side. We ran outside and luckily had no damage.

The photos that are here are of a house that was flattened and has been left as a reminder. The one above shows where a baby's cot was situated in the house but luckily the child was uninjured. 

No more music plays here.....

.....or cooking being done

There's a cache hidden in there somewhere!!

Next stop Cunderdin.....Replica of the Ettamogah Pub

Stephens family are from Kellerberrin so we stopped in on the way through and visited the cemetery where his grandparents are buried. Also, there was another LKA (Last Known Address) cache to find. These photos will be added to Ancestry.com and we are going to start making an effort to fill in more gaps in the family tree.

Stephens grandparents on his dads side....

....and his grandparents on his mothers side...bit hard to read.

Stephen showed me where is grandfather, Frank Mather had his White House Farm and Engineering works, Electweld Steel.

It's on Mather Road...

...but has seen better days

Frank Mather, Stephens grandfather was a very talented man who could turn his hand to anything. He was renowned in the area for his ingenuity and forward thinking. The Mundaring/Goldfields water pipeline ran right passed his property and he noticed that the pipes that had rusted were being discarded. He saw that only the bottom part of the pipe had rusted and found he could cut the pipes in half and join two tops together to make a virtually new pipe at a lower cost than a new one. He was contracted by the government to repair an extensive part of the pipeline. 

Stopped in at the Merredin cemetery for a geocache...love these wild flowers

We stayed in Merredin that night and set off again the next day for Kalgoorlie.

We stopped along the way to do lots of geocaches, taking us to some interesting spots.

We think this is/was an Austin

Love rusty old things.....

We didn't arrive in Kalgoorlie till almost dark, it gets late out there, early! So just went straight to the caravan park and settled in for the night. The next day we were off to explore!

This is the super pit in Kalgoorlie. This photo does not really show just how big it is but those little dots down the bottom are trucks. The pit is just outside of town and makes us wonder just how long it will be before it sucks the town into it?

Close up of the same view...love this new camera lens!!

A water truck wetting down the road to try and stop the dust

The holes you can see in the photo above are old mine shafts that would have been dug by hand in the early days of the Kalgoorlie gold rush. That would have been very scary, that's a long way down and all underground!

More later....