After we as parents recovered from an overdose of childrens’ movies at Mt Thirsty close to Norseman, we drove on to Kalgoorlie the next day. This town owns the biggest gold mine in Australia which we wanted to see. On february 14th, we visited the museum and the city which has a number of historic buildings remaining from the time of the gold discovery and we booked the 2.5h Superpit-Tour for the next day.

First, we were afraid the tour being too long for our children, but the fun already started with the hand-over of the security clothing (vest, glasses, helmet).
When we saw the first big machines, the children were enthusiastic. The dumptrucks (CAT 793) were especially impressive: they came out of the 500m pit with 250 tons of stones each time. They are loaded by diggers (Komatsu 8000) which carry each time 50 tons in their shovel. Before, the rock was loosend before by blazing and according to the material drilled our for the blazing holes, they know the gold contents of each area.
When driving out of the Superpit (overall size 3500m x 1500m x 500m depth), the trucks are led to different depots according to the gold concentration in their load.
Currently, only material with a high concentration is refined- out of one truck load, they get around 80g gold.
The remaining matrial with a lower gold concentration is currently stored on the area next to the pit. For the processing of these stones, it is planned to let the mine continue for another 13 years after finishing the digging (probably in 2021).
We rarely had such a good guided tour, there was a lot of information and live demonstrations: we could observe the loading and unloading of the dumptrucks and we saw the machines for extracting the good when driving through.

Our children got infected by the “mine machine virus” and after the tour, they received their toy dumptruck and digger for playing on the campgrounds. All of them have more than enough sand, dirt and stones- our children found that these vehicles were the ideal toys.
We had chosen the “Holland Track” leading from Coolgardie to Hyden for heading on. After the tour we made it to “Thursday Rock” which we had to ourselves – with at least 100 km to the next house.
The next day, the track continued with slalom around trees, passing through and around mud holes and over rocky sections.

Finally, we arrived at the famous Wave Rock. After evening photos, a night at the campsite and a morning walk to the “yawning hippo” and to the top of the rock, we headed on south to Lake Magenta and Fitzgerald National Park.

After visiting the beach, we staid here for one night at the campground “St. Mary’s Inlet”. We saw lots of interesting plants, many of them in blossom – some species only exist in this park.
The next morning, went straight through the park to Bremer Bay. The “continuous” road on the map turned out to be the crossing of an estuary and would have been possible only on absolutely low tide. But we arrived at Almosen high tide and Daniela got into the water up to her back when crossing it on foot. We had to go back 20km to leave the park on another road.

Initially, we had planned to drive to Stirling Range National Park and to for a hike that day. We cancelled it due to the weather: there were grey clouds in the sky and with the starting rain, we did mit want to to on a hike on which we would not have had any view.
We went on to Porrongurup National Park, where there was no sun neither but at least no rain. We walked up to Castle Rock: there was the “balancing rock” (our childrens tried to push it down) and the skywalk- some scrambling over ladders and boulders to an overhanging platform beside the rock. Without the fog, there would have been a great view…

After the night at Porongurup Caravan Park we went further south to Albany. There, we bought an annual pass for the parks in Western Australia and had our front tyres switched with the back tyres in a garage to prevent inequal usage. We visited the blowholes at Torndirrup National Park (by the pressure of the Waves, air is blowholes through a gap between the rocks) and Stony Hill, afterwards wie continued to the Giant Trees close to Walpole.
Instead of the famous but very expensive Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk (zu teuer), we did the also beautiful and free Tingle Tree Walk, where you Fan admire several of these eucalyptus giants and them went on to Crystal Springs.

WFrom there, we reached d’Entrecastaux National Park on small Travel roads and finally sand tracks through the dunes at Windy Harbour. Some Kilometers before the village, there was another Landrover on the Track which got bogged in the sand. We helped them to get out (they had already done most of the work) and we passed the section without any problems due to a low tyre pressure. After a break at Windy Harbour, we drove on toWarren National Park and saw one of “Dave Evans Bicentennal Trees” an. This tree was one of the Fire lookout towers.
Over Windung stairs consisting of pegs drilled into the tree, it is possible to climb up to the platform 65m above the ground. We only did the first few meters. For the next day, we had planned a track along the coast up to Augusta. Again due to a sufficiently low tyre pressure, the deepest sand was no problem. After a photo stop at Cape Leeuwin, we went to Conto Camping at the Cave Road.

After a rainy night, we had to get set up with helmets and torches at Calgardup cave and we climbed down into the depths of the Cave – the children in front as little spelunkers. We had 45minutes to visit this beautiful cave (selfguided) and it was always a struggle between the two kids who was walking in front. After another Crocomobile-drive, we reached Bunbury where we booked two nights on the Big4Campsite.

We profited of its infrastructure and the three women baked bread, cake and biscuits. In the dolphin centre, we informed ourselves about these ocean mammals and weile we balanced the pros and contras of the a boat tour to see them, the Bell rang to announce dolphins at the beach.
Like all the other visitors, we immediately ran to the beach and really: directly in front of us, some dolphins were splashing in the water. Under instruction of the volunteers we could even get close to them in the water. Therefore, the boat Tour was no longer an issue and wie saved the 150$. On the was back to the campground, we did a short detour Mangrove Walk.

In Perth, many tourist attractions were under construction and we liked the city only moderately. However, the ringing of the bells at Swanbell Tower was really nice.
On 26.2., wie visited Fremantle which we liked more due to its charming city centre. Also the guided tour through the ancient famous prison was very interesting. We had planned to buy a didgeridoos at “Didgeridoobreath”. We got a professional advice and finally acquired a very nice didgeridoo made from eucalyptus tree – made by Jesse we had met on the campground in Tasmania. In the evening, Markus went back to the store to do some recording with didgeridoo and alphorn with Sanshi (owner of the shop).

Here are the 3 Pieces:

Markus & Sanshi 1

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Markus & Sanshi 2
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Markus & Sanshi 3
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On 27.2., wie met Daniela’s parents at Ibis hotel in Perth and visited again the city centre of Perth and the Kings Park. On 28.2., wie headed on to the north…