Lamenting the fact that we couldn't find a campsite on the coast in Esperance, we turned inland and headed north to try and find somewhere to stay the night. Unlike NZ where we have recently made freedom camping difficult at best, the Aussies have a huge camping culture and have embraced the ideals of freedom camping. So we consulted the freedom camping book and headed up the road to see what we could find. And found what was probably the nicest camping spot of the whole trip tucked in a little secluded grove of gum trees just off the main road. There were numerous campsites among the trees and, despite the fact that there were no facilities, it was super tidy. It was a beautiful spot for camping, and with no one else around, the perfect spot to test out the newly constructed solar shower made from an old dry bag.
After a lovely night under the stars, we continued north towards Kalgoorlie. Western Australia's economy is driven by mining and Kalgoorlie falls on the Golden Mile, a geological goldmine of, well, gold. While Kalgoorlie maybe be famous in NZ for the bad reality tv show, Kalgoorlie Cops, it is the Super Pit that draws most of the visitors.
This monstrous hole in the ground is over 500m deep (with below-ground mining going on below that) and the tiny little specks you can see at the bottom are really....
MONSTER trucks (shown next to a hilux for scale!).
It was a pretty impressive sight and got the geologist amongst us pretty excited. Although we did concede that it seems kinda silly to dig such a giant hole in the ground to extract gold for it to gather dust in a bank vault somewhere. But that's another story.
After cruising the main street of Kalgoorlie and fighting off the urge to check out the skimpies in the bars, we set off west on the homeward journey back towards Perth. The trusty freedom camping book came in handy again as we set up camp for the night at Boondi Rock in the Goldfields Woodlands National Park.
The campsite was at the site of a steam train watering stop that was set up when the railway was built from the west coast to Kalgoorlie in the early 1900s.
The set up is pretty cunning with a big stone fence built around a granite outcrop to channel rainwater runoff into a series of rock-lined channels and on into a reservoir.
A huge amount of work but a lifesaving source of water for the men and their families walking east towards the goldfields.
After watching the sunset over the reservoir and the full moon rise over the woodlands, we settled in for the last night of our 2012 Western Australia road trip.
The last day of road tripping saw us heading west back towards Perth, through the woodlands, into the wheatbelt and finally through the lifestyle blocks and outer suburbs before reaching suburban Perth and home to unpacking and washing the layers of red dust off the car and ourselves. Yay for road trips and a fantastic holiday in amazing country with some pretty awesome company!
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