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Days 61, 62 and 63. Friday, we drove through Kalgoorlie to Coolgardie from Leonora to a funny little CP. It is very dog friendly , with a couple of resident dogs, 4 kelpies in a van next to us en route to yard dog trials, and Dennis the Poodle in another van. Also Kellie the blue healer. Very much off lead. There is also Mollie the ferret who is very gentle and cuddly, and quite unlike my idea of ferrets. The two towns are picturesque with an huge number of beautiful 19th century buildings. RM discovered Ernest Gile's grave in the graveyard across the road and we are also close to part of the water pipe that brings water from Perth to Kalgoorlie. There is also a Muslim section in the graveyard.
On Saturday, we drove into Kalgoorlie for the day. We walked up and down Hannan St, admiring the buildings and streetscape and spent a couple of hours in the Museum. It is a very good Museum, with half the State's gold in the Vault display. Then, after lunch, we drove out to see the Super Pit. This is a huge hole in the ground, visible from space, and is an open cut gold mine. It was the former site of many underground mines, bought up by one Alan Bond in the 1980s and turned into the mega pit it is today. That evening, we sat round the fire with the owners of Mollie and Kellie, the blue healer.
Sunday, our hosts of last night, JR (John) and Chris took us to a disused mine they knew of, outside Coolgardie. You can see the remains of the old mine shafts and crawl into them from the open cut mine that is there today. John has explored some of the shafts so he knew which one to go into. RM was brave enough to go in and was able to see the gold glinting in the soil by torchlight. The dogs made short visits inside too. I stayed outside with Chris! We brought back some soil and JR 'washed' it for gold. There were quite a lot of specks in it! No nuggets unfortunately.
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