Tag: Golden Quest Discovery Trail

Insight into “insiders” of Lake Ballard

Lake Ballard. I wanted to visit this place for a few years and now I’ve got a chance. We drove on Mount Ida unsealed road from Leonora for about 1.5 hours to Lake Ballard (both are part of the Golden Quest Discovery Trail, which is 965 km long). We made a brief stop on the side of the road (or rather in the middle of the road, because there were no other cars moving in either direction of our whole journey) to look at Copperfield (An abandoned town which in 1898 housed 500 people and had state battery. Now only the old machinery is the reminder of what existed before).

Copperfield

The view from the Snake Hill Lookout a bit further down the road was pretty, although you can only see a glimpse of the lake.

View from Snake Hill lookout

Lake Ballard offers an excellent free camp spot and we saw quite a number of self-sufficient and happily settled caravanners there, taking note that next time it could be our camping spot too.

Note campers in the distance

Kids were the first to set off exploring. They were not impressed with the statues but were happy to climb the little hill closer to the carpark, while running a little competition on who was the fastest.

Lake Ballard is a salt lake (mostly dry and crispy but can be wet especially closer to the carpark area), 51 km from the nearest town Menzies. There are a lot of salt lakes that you can see in the outback. The Wongutha people (Natives of the Goldfields in WA) believe that the salt lakes were made by the tears of the silver-grey crows of long ago, when they cried because they felt not accepted by other birds and animals of the bush.

The main attraction and a sight of fascination of Lake Ballard is “Inside Australia” exhibit picturing 51 alloy cast sculptures derived from laser scans of inhabitants of Menzies. Created by artist Anthony Gormley, the sculptures reveal each inhabitant’s life passage. While the sculptures are of the height of a person, the cross sections are reduced by two thirds, making them look unrealistically thin. We didn’t have time to look at all 51 sculptures but those that we saw, were predominantly of women. Does it mean that the women outnumbered men in those days? Or their life was more interesting to an observer?  I didn’t get an answer to that question, but judging from excessive curves of their spines, the life of those people must have been full of hardship. Some of them reveal severe cases of lordosis and kyphosis (they, obviously, didn’t know anything about yoga, which helps to reduce muscular tension and flatten those curves!).

Although the sculptures do look similar to an untrained eye, the way they are positioned on the lake, against the sun and the background, make lots of wonderful opportunities for a good photo shoot, especially in the sunset (or sunrise). We spend a couple of hours, catching perfects shots in the rays of the setting sun. Only near complete darkness drove us away from that magical and serene place, where you can just stand in the middle of the Salt Lake and enjoy true solitude.

It is a nearly 2 hour drive back to our camping spot where we left our caravan. We must hurry up, because tomorrow is our Aboriginal tour with Greg from Morapoi Station!

Gwalia Ghost Town

On the way to Lake Ballard, we stopped to fuel our Pajero at Leonora, and then travelled 3km to reach another interesting living ghost town Gwalia. The town flourished when Sons of Gwalia Mine operated there from 1896 to 1963 and produced over 2.5 million ounces of gold. It is claimed to be the second largest gold mine in Western Australia. At its peak in 1911, Gwalia had a population of around 1100 people. Today, most places are abandoned with the exception of just a few. The main attractions are the Museum, the re-opened (but now open cut) mine and Hoover House, which was built for the Sons of Gwalia Mine’s then manager, Herbert Hoover (who later became the 31st President of USA) and now serves coffee and cakes and offers accommodation.

After a quick look at the mine, as well as Hoover House, I spend most of my time at the Mine Office exhibition, where I was fascinated to learn about the history of the place, which had a significant cultural meaning. A large portion of Gwalia residents during the Sons of Gwalia Mine operation were migrants from Italy and the former Yugoslavia. Reading stories of those migrants, I resonated with some of them. Like, Lucia, I too came to Australia as a migrant, leaving all my family behind and starting a new life here. Like her, I too, am finding it hard to be a first-generation migrant. But when life throws this challenge and you deal with it, you become a stronger person.

There are many lessons we can learn by reading and studying these stories. In the old days, life used to be simple and now it is quite complex. As Stephen Peacock, one of Gwalia’s residents put it:

Well, Gwalia was really just a stop over on our way to the main destination for the day – famous Lake Ballard. It’s time to go!

Ghost town of Kookynie

Going back to the past, we visited Kookynie – part of the 965km Golden Quest Discovery Trail. Once a vibrant community, a town of more than 3500 people back in 1907 during golden mining rush, now it is a deserted town with no more than 20 people (although, the town boasts Grand Hotel that is still in operation, offering meals, drinks and overnight accommodation to visitors and locals).

In the old days, Kookynie had 11 (!) hotels, a Town Hall which held regular Saturday night entertainment activities, the first public swimming pool in the Goldfields, a number of businesses and public facilities and even its own brewery and soft drink manufacturers! Many of its buildings are now gone completely or ruined but the memories and stories still live displayed through remnants of buildings and interpretive signs.

Here used to be the social centre of the town…. Not any longer.

In the past Kookynie was one of the many towns in this area that attracted a lot of gold mining prospectors. As people still go out to these places and do actually manage to find gold, our kids were seriously hoping to become modern day prospectors and find gold too!

While the kids were busy looking for gold, the adults wandered about the deserted place, each deep in their own reflections….

Kids were fascinated with a number of old antique rusty cars that seemed become part of the landscape quite long time ago. How much fun it is to climb on top of one such car!

…. or to sit inside and steer the wheel!

Photo by Iulia Galushina

A few kilometres further away from Kookynie is Niagara Dam, which was built in 1897 to provide water for the nearby town and the steam engines during the early goldrush days. It became redundant a few years later when plentiful underground water was discovered at Kookynie.

Now Niagara Dam is a popular picnic spot, offering wonderful opportunities for photography.

It is also a free camp spot with toilets, gas barbeque, picnic tables, and cement fire rings. Sounds like a perfect place for our next camping trip!

The sun was setting down, which meant it was time to go back to Morapoi Station and prepare for the night.