Norseman-Kalgoorlie

After Esperance we were meant to head straight across the Nullarbor but decided that we were too close to Kalgoorlie to just drive by it.

So instead we pulled up our caravan at Norseman, which is about 189 kilometres from Kalgoorlie-Boulder and only around the corner from the start of the Nullabor, so after a short drive in the morning from Esperance to Norseman, we un-hitched and took off towards the gold-fields.

We were not expecting it to be so big, the town is huge, full of heritage buildings and the necessities like Mc Donalds and KFC of course!

I must admit though I have never seen a town with so many pubs!

Our first stop was the super pit, a working mine in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.  

So amazing to see some of the machines they use and how HUGE they are.

Brenton standing in one of the old buckets.

The super pit

If you look close enough you can see a small mining truck in the bottom right hand corner, it's not actually that small but just shows how far down the pit actually goes.

A view from the top.

Some interesting facts about the history of the town.

"The Super Pit is an open-cut gold mine approximately 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long, 1.6 kilometres (1.0 mi) wide and 512 metres (1,680 ft) deep.^[5] It was created by Alan Bond, who bought up a number of old mine leases in order to get the land area needed for the Super Pit. Every now and again the digging reveals an old shaft containing abandoned equipment and vehicles from the earlier mines.

The mine operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and a visitor centre overlooks it. The mine blasts at 1:00 pm every day, unless winds would carry dust over the town. Each of the massive trucks carries 225 tonnes of rock and the round trip takes about 35 minutes, most of that time being the slow uphill haul. Employees must live in Kalgoorlie; it is not a fly-in fly-out operation. The mine is expected to be productive until about 2017. At that point, it is planned to abandon it and allow the groundwater to seep in and fill it. It is estimated it will take about 50 years to fill completely full."

Info from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalgoorlie

After a stop at the super pit we went for a walk around town and then for a drive, it is very big! The town has a population of around 28,000 people.

We couldn't visit Kalgoorlie and not do a famous brothel tour, there are a few legal brothels still left in town, we decided to do the 'Questa Casa' brothel tour as it's the only original brothel that stands as it did all those years ago.

"Kalgoorlies "Questa Casa" is one of the worlds longest operating brothels. Built at the turn of the 20th century (for those not good with centuries, that was 110 years ago) Questa Casa is the ONLY original brothel in Kalgoorlie."

http://www.west-oz.com/viewdetails.asp?id=16856

We were not really sure what to expect, the tour started at 2:00pm and there were about 12 other people, at first we sat down and were shown a few 'toys' to lighten the mood, rather awkward!

Then 'the Madame' comes in and sits down to tell us all about the history of the brothel, after the talk she leads us into all the different rooms (obviously there are no workers around, history tour only!), I think there were a few blokes in the tour hoping otherwise.

Poor teddy!

It was a very interesting tour and well worth the $20 spent!

After our tour and seeing most of the town it was back to our little van in Norseman for a good sleep, seeing as we had to face the Nullarbor the next day.

One of our latest days on the road.

The norseman caravan park we left from.