Kalgoorlie

Although we listened to a live band in the 'Wild West Bar' of the Exchange Hotel last night and admired the extremely scantily clad bar ladies, we were already wide awake at 6 o'clock. The sun rises very early here. We spent the time before anything opens here doing sports and reading.

First, we went up to the water tower. There we enjoyed the view of the peaceful city and learned a lot about the water supply of Kalgoorlie. The water is delivered here by pipeline from Perth for almost 600 km for about 130 years! Then we went to 'Hannans Old Tourist Mine', which is basically a gold miner's museum. There we tried our hand at gold panning (very laborious at 35 degrees), watched gold pouring, admired gigantic mining vehicles, and saw all sorts of old junk related to gold mining.

Finally, we drove to the Super Pit lookout point. The Super Pit is Australia's largest operating gold mine. In principle, it is a gigantic man-made pit in the ground where gold-bearing rock is mined. It is 3.5 km long, 1.5 km wide, and over 600 m deep. Very impressive! Even the huge transport trucks look tiny in it, and the regular cars at the mine site are hardly recognizable as such.

Summary of the visit to Kalgoorlie: Apart from the Super Pit, it's not that exciting. It's okay as a stopover on the way, but it's not worth traveling so far just for that.

In the afternoon, we drive a good distance towards Esperance and end up on the edge of a side road in the middle of the bush. Totally idyllic. There we enjoy our dinner, the sunset, and the starry sky with a crescent moon.