We have no intention of going north at the end of the Nullarbor,  but I see a brochure for the Golden Quest Discovery Trail: it’s not gold mining that attracts me, but a sculptural installation 180kms north of Kalgoorlie.  To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Perth International Arts Festival in 2003,  they commission a major work by British sculptor Antony Gormley and he chooses a massive salt lake, Lake Ballard, as the installation site. Fifty-one tall, angular figures a couple of hundred metres apart, gaze into the distance. The nearby small town of Menzies (population 108) must be home to unusual bodies, as Gormley took digital scans of locals, abstracted these and cast them in alloys made from the mineral rich local soil.  

Luckily for us it is an overcast day; unluckily there has been rain in the previous week and the surface of the lake is gluey in parts.  We spend a couple of hours squelching from sculpture to sculpture and heading out to what we think is water, but must be an illusion as it keeps retreating. By the time we reach it will be midnight at the oasis and we’ll be sending our camels to bed.  At the end of our visit we climb an atoll for the overall view. At no point on the walk, or from the elevation, can you see the whole installation, but the outlook is an almost perfect horizon.

Back in Kalgoorlie everything is interesting, even if it does seem to be environmental vandalism at times.  Digging for Earth’s treasures is not an eco friendly activity.

The town exists because, on 15 June 1893, Paddy Hannan and his mates find a nugget of gold and stake a claim. Within weeks a flood of prospectors are pick and shovelling and digging and tunnelling, so now about 3,500 kms of tunnels snake under and around the town. It is not unknown to find a mine head (entry) under an old house during demolition.  Better than finding it while you live there I guess. Surprising to me, is that the area is an earthquake fault line, and in 2010 a 5.2 shake damaged historic buildings and put a temporary stop to mining.  The concentrated area of large gold mines surrounding Paddy’s original find is called the Golden Mile, one of the richest square miles on earth.

The Superpit is a yawning open cast mine right on the edge of town. It’s 3.5 km long, 1.5km wide, and 700 metres deep. Yielding 1.9 ounces per tonne of rock, it hardly sounds worth the trouble, but in 2019 the mine produced 456,000 troy ounces (14.2 t) of gold. So that is pretty much worth the trouble at today’s price of $1880 an ounce. The owners clearly think there’s plenty more to be had as the closure date has been extended to 2035 and they are spending up large on new equipment: three new diggers at $A18 million each; 40 CAT 793 trucks at $A4 million each. The scale is mind boggling – the truck tyres alone cost $40,000 each and weigh 5 tonne.

If you ever need an explanation of the “time is money” adage, it is here: the operation runs 24/7. Truck drivers have to hot seat: when one takes a break, the truck is not idle. Another driver takes over so there is no down time. Driving is a 12 hour shift, seven days on, seven days off, seven nights on, seven nights off, and pays around $110,000 a year. There is no FIFO (fly in fly out) so workers live locally. Yet every second shop is closed or empty so all that gold money does not seem to be flowing into the town. Or maybe it is – with a population of around 30,000 has 22 pubs, many are beautiful historic buildings dating from the late 1890s and early 1900s, though their heritage value is unlikely to be the reason for their continued existence.

And if you are wondering what all the gold is for, the answer may be found on your person or on someone close to you, or in your house: it is jewellery. Yes up to 80% is used in jewellery. Some is in electronics, for example your iPhone has about 0.034g, though at today’s price that’s only about $1.80 so barely contributes to overall cost. The remaining percentage is finance and investing, think gold bars, coins etc, dentistry, medicine and the space programme.

One way to strike it rich (not) is gambling. In Australia Two Up – betting on the toss of two coins – is an unregulated gambling practice and therefore illegal. However, in a strange legal aberration you can play on ANZAC day. A perfect way to remember those who lost their lives in war. It turns out it is also legal to play at Kalgoorlie on a Sunday, so of course we drive out to the historic Two Up ring a few kms out of town.  There is a very active session in progress, and it seems $50 is the basic bet. Hundreds of dollars and changing hands. Eventually we understand the rules, but as much as I like a game of chance, at $50 a throw this is too chancy for me. I won’t go into the intricacies, you can read them here.

Kalgoorlie turns up all kinds of interesting facts about outback life. The town water supply comes along a 530kms pipeline from a weir in Perth, thanks to the perseverance and ingenuity of C Y O’Connor. It took seven years and much wrangling to get the Coolgardie Water Supply Scheme underway the tap gets turned on in 1903. Sadly, in an early manifestation of bullying and cancel culture, O’Connor committed suicide in 1902.

Coming up: after an unexpectedly interesting few days in the dry of the central west, we head down the eastern border of the Wheatbelt, through the salt lakes to the south west coast of WA.