Driving through the gold mining town we observe many
grand old buildings littering the streets. They all look to have been renovated
and really do look fantastic. Our thoughts are we will walk through town
tomorrow for a closer look.
After settling in at Discovery Park, I have a quick chat
to the owner, a 31 year old semi retired dude running a caravan park that is
bursting at the seams, we were lucky to snag the last spot. After quizzing him on the old buildings he
tells me that there is an old stonemason from Great Britain residing in the
park that was brought out to oversee the renovations - for the budget price of
$7,000 per week. Not bad money for making stones look pretty.
He also said to go up to the Superpit lookout, and to
walk down Hay St to see all of the old original brothels here. Apparently when
they discovered gold out here all the girls moved out here and got in on the
coin. Tall stories abound so I am on to it. There is even a tour through the oldest brothel in Oz,
still working on Nat for that one...I said I just wanted to poke my head in for
a quick look, perhaps that was a poor choice in phrase selection because I got
a funny look!!!
We went for a look at the pit, what an amazing sight. The
photos don't do it justice. This is massive scale earth works, particularly
when all they extract is 25-30 tonnes of gold per annum. In saying that, $1.4b
or so is nothing to sneeze at given the current gold price....and it's
predicted to go to $2000 per ounce in the not to distant future.
Tomorrow we will have a good look around, we've opted out
of the mine tour because it is very expensive and we saw the basics in the
Pilbara.
All good, glad we made the trip up here now.
Jase.....
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