Chapter 25: Kalgoorlie and the fortitude of women
After a hot and humid night where we run the air-conditioner for the first time, it cools off to a tolerable level of steaminess. For once, the highly unseasonable cool weather works in our favour because everything there is to see in Kalgoorlie is outside. It is a fortuitous twist of climate change-induced fate that we are not trying to walk around in Kalgoorlie’s usual 40 degree heat.
Our first stop is the Kalgoorlie Tourist Information. A, who has an enthusiasm for golf that far outweighs any talent he has for it, is keen to do the Nullarbor Links.
The Nullarbor Links is the world’s longest golf course. It spreads around 1,500 km across 18 holes from Kalgoorlie to Ceduna. You can do the course in either direction and they even provide a bag of clubs for you to take with you. Some of the holes at established golf clubs, like the Kalgoorlie and Ceduna ones, others are established at various roadhouses along the way.
A is keen to get started straight away but first we have to drag him and his brother around the town’s mining history sites.
Kalgoorlie Railway Station
G, a train enthusiast who makes videos of various Melbourne train lines that an inexplicably large number of people watch on YouTube, wants to do a short video on the Kalgoorlie Prospector. G is disappointed; the Kalgoorlie Prospector is not due for several hours.
The Prospector is the Perth to Kalgoorlie leg but the line itself runs across the continent. Its construction between 1912–17 represents the commercial and economic unity of Australia after Federation in 1901. Before then, every Australian colony had its own railway line in its own gauge. These lines were never constructed to connect together, let alone carry passengers. Instead, they transported various resources to port so they could be put on ships and taken back to England.
We ask about when the Indian-Pacific transnational train comes into Kalgoorlie. This is a very fancy, expensive passenger train favoured by Boomers who don’t like to walk around much. Unfortunately, the Sydney-bound train from Perth won’t be in until Sunday, two days away. But it does come through from the Sydney direction at about 3 am on Saturday morning if we’re really keen.
Although I do my best to support my kids’ and their interests, I don’t like them enough to get up that early to see a train in the dark.
Since the Prospector is not due for several hours, we agree that since we have to leave early the next morning, we’ll make it to the station in time to see the train leave for Perth.
Kalgoorlie Gold
Kalgoorlie is a major centre for gold-mining in the country. It’s also up there for the whole world. When you’re in Kalgoorlie, you cannot escape the how-Paddy-Hannan-found-gold story. Paddy was an Irish prospector wandering through with a pack of other prospectors. He thought the area around Kal would be good for gold, so he tricked the others in to going on without him, and staked his claim with the office in Coolgardie.
Turns out he was right.
Queue a massive gold rush, a whole pile of competing claims all around what would become Kalgoorlie, some men getting rich, most dying trying… the usual story.
Paddy himself only stayed around for seven months before selling his claim. But he’s revered in Kalgoorlie as if he single-handedly built the entire town himself. He didn’t; as we’re about to find out, that was the women.
Hannan North Tourist Mine
We’ve a few hours to kill and the weather is staying overcast and coolish, so we decide we just can’t get enough of mining and visit the Hannan North Tourist Mine.
It’s essentially a mining history museum, with large hunks of rusting mining equipment representing 100 years of mining development. That makes it sound rather boring but it’s actually really well done and quite interesting. Everything you ever wanted to know about gold mining but were afraid to ask you can find out here.
As a historian, I’m far more interested in the early days of Kalgoorlie, particularly the women’s experiences. They have a quite comprehensive display with re-creations of the shacks and shanties the women would have had to live in.
It may have been the men finding the gold but this was something they did voluntarily. Wives of this era had very little say in the foolish inclinations of the men they married. In spite of this, they set about making the most of their circumstances and as a result, built the Kalgoorlie community. Sure, the men dug for gold and sold it, but the women ran the local businesses after their husbands died; worked in the hospitals and schools keeping men, women and children alive; educated the children; kept everything clean with very little water to reduce disease and improve hygiene; and built a cohesive network of people in a highly inhospitable place.
Undoubtedly, they suffered. Aside from physical diseases taking their husbands and children, depression was rife, often resulting in suicide. Anyone with money escaped to the coast during the scorching summer, as is still the case now. Those left behind had to deal with the oppressive heat in tiny shacks made of tin with all these kids everywhere.
Yet strangely enough, there’s no statue of a woman in Kalgoorlie, only old fly-by-night Paddy Hannan.
The Kalgoorlie Superpit
There’s one thing to try your luck digging for gold, and then there’s the KCMG Superpit.
It is essentially all the original gold claims combined into one enormous mine to extract as much gold out of the ground as quickly and cheaply as possible. Enormous trucks trundle debris and rock up out of the pit, empty them and then trundle back down to do it all again.
On one hand, it’s quite awe-inspiring. On the other, it’s a grossly obscene monument to capitalism and corporate greed. KCMG (a conglomerate of various international resource companies) go to great lengths to discuss how they are sustainable, care about safety and will totally fill that pit in at the end of the mine’s life (currently forecast to be 2035) so don’t you worry about that.
But my favourite part was how they proudly tell you how they do a pink dynamite detonation for International Women’s Day, that’s how politically correct they are. Apparently, KCMG do employ 50 per cent women at the mine. No word on how they handle the sexual harassment rife in the mining industry. No word on whether the women get paid the same for the same work as men either.
But that’s OK, a Pink Dynamite Cloud once a year totally makes up for 130 years of women’s invaluable contribution to Kalgoorlie’s development and survival.
Let’s just play some golf instead.
