We set off this morning at 6:00 to catch the Prospector train to Kalgoorlie. When we arrived we met a large group of school girls also catching the train. Teachers behave the same wherever!! They checked all the girls were there, lined them up in their houses and then ensured they all walked on the train in line and sensibly. You can probably imagine what I was thinking!!

The train leaves at 7:10 and arrives at 2:00, a journey of almost 7 hours. At first the scenery was very hilly but then it smoothed out as we reached the wheatbelt. It was very cloudy today and when we arrived it was obvious we had just missed torrential rain. As we walked to the hotel the cars were moving through some fairly substantial puddles and rivers were running down the edge of the roads.

Kalgoorlie is the centre of the gold mining area and Paddy Hannan discovered the first nugget of gold on 15th June 1893. Hannan Street is the main street and most of the streets are very wide because they had to accomodate the large trucks.

Most of the buildings display magnificent heritage architecture and many of them have balconies with the fancy ironwork around them. There are still a lot of the old hotels and these are quite famous within Australia and looking inside some of the bars they don't appear to have changed very much at all.

Our hotel is 20 minutes walk from the main centre so we have walked a lot today. Mick reckons about 10km but men do exaggerate at times! Tomorrow we are hoping to explore the town further and visit the mining museum.

Sorry to hear it's snowing back home again. Just hope it gets warmer before we get back.