Kalgoorlie

We had 3 days at Kalgoorlie, which was enough for us. There is quite a lot we could have done, but it wouldn't have been interesting for the kids and sometimes it's just easier to go with what works with them. I often think about how much different this trip would be if we were doing it without kids.. we certainly wouldn't have done the playground and Maccas tour of Australia and may have been able to absorb more history and eat out at yummy places.

Hammonds Park
We visited Hammonds Park, which is a great public park and playground. It has beautiful green lawns to run, play and picnic on and a range of other fun activities for kids. There are some cages with different birds in and a flock of emus that wander across the back of the park behind a fence. The emus have quite a large space to roam and every so often you would see a group of them roam across the back of the park. There are 2 fenced in playgrounds, which are suitable for kids of all ages and peace of mind for parents. There is also a pond with ducks swimming in it – one had ducklings following along behind her when we were there – and a bridge over it. And for some reason that I never found out, a Bavarian castle and surrounding town built using all sorts of local stones and gems. There is also a cafe there that serves coffee, which I was told was very good, and food options. It was a great place to spend a couple of hours.

The Bavarian Castle

The little kids playground

Kalgoorlie Museum
The Museum is by donation (suggested $5 per family, which is pretty good value). We went in time to do the free guided tour, as we have been on some very good and very interesting tours that made our experience so much more worthwhile, unfortunately this one wasn't one of them. The tour guide was worried the kids wouldn't handle it....given how incredibly dull she made it, she's lucky any of us handled it. I know that sounds horrible but she made something potentially very interesting into something very tedious. The museum had some early settler buildings, which I enjoyed because I love that style of building, displays about the local environment, finding gold, the local Indigenous community and the development of the town. It had some historic vehicles, which are always interesting to look at as well. There were a bits that were the most interesting.

Rory checking out a dingo

Miners hut

Police station (was on rail cart to be mobile)

Of the things we found most interesting, the first was the headframe. You could catch a lift up to a viewing platform on the headframe and get a really good view of the town and surrounds. The kids enjoyed it so much that we went up and down it 3 different times.

The Museum entrance (the viewing platform is the yellow bit)

Greg, Tilda and Rory in the lift

The gold vault has lots of different items made from gold, including necklaces, broaches, pins and a pocket watch, as well as some examples of different types of nuggets and a 400 ounce gold bar worth around $680.000. This bullion is the first one ever poured in Kalgoorlie from the Super Pit. All of this is housed in a vault that was especially built to store and display it.

The British Arms pub makes up part of the display. It is the narrowest pub in Australia, standing at 5.6m wide. There was a small bar area downstairs and 2 rooms upstairs for the owners to live in. The pub ceased operating following a scandal involving a gold theft and a dentist took over lease in one of the rooms, so in the upstairs they now display the dentist's room and the sitting room from the Pub when people lived upstairs. There are rumours of foul play in the death of the publican's wife and of the pub being haunted but the information given by the tour guide was so patchy and all over the place, so we don't really know what it was all about. But it had an intriguing clock, with the face on the outside of the building and the workings on display on the inside, and staff at the museum have to wind it every day to keep it running.