Hi all

So, up we all got and as we sat around smoking cigarettes and getting burnt by the already blistering sun we hit upon a stupendous idea. We could play pinball on the computer, with the person with the lowest score cooking breakfast. Sweet. To cut a long story short, Mand lost. Badly. I shot off to buy the stuff and before we knew it we were all sat down to a huge fry up to commiserate our last morning together for six weeks. After we’d gorged ourselves to bursting, it was time for a tearful farewell before the other two shot off back to the west coast, leaving me and Mand to explore the mining town that is Kalgoorlie. We headed for the tourist information bureau and were served by the first genuinely sexy girl we’ve seen in Australia. Five weeks into our trip. And to be fair she probably only scored a moderate six out of ten. But she was really helpful and pointed us in the direction of the Mining Hall of Fame and Museum. Nice touch.

We got there, paid our way in and immediately set about panning for gold in the gold panning exhibition they have set up there. With Mand shaking her little booty as she shuffled the water about in her pan and me soaking up the sunshine, this promised to be a top day out. And so it proved. After our first incredibly poor attempt at panning we headed into the main building to see the Hall of Fame. We didn’t make it however, as we were distracted by the kids play area. This was quality. First we proved we had the knowledge of the average five year old by completing their problem solving tasks and achieved the mighty score of 38 out of 40. Not sure where we lost the extra 2 marks (I did say average five year olds) and the debate is still raging. I’d just like to state for the record that it was all Mand’s fault. Next up we had ourselves a go at the Day In The Life Of game. This involved dressing up in miner’s gear and spinning a wheel and moving the appropriate number of squares. During the game a member of staff came in, no doubt attracted by the shouting and cheering coming from the kids’ room despite the fact they had no school trips in, and asked us somewhat hesitatingly if we were alright. ‘Hell yeah’ we responded as we spun the wheel for all it was worth and did a little dance in our outfits, ‘But it’s not easy being a mining engineer’. He left looking slightly shaken. In any event, I emerged victorious and it was just about time for us to head for the gold pouring exhibition.

This was run by a guy who obviously loved his job too much. He was fantastic and blathered on about absolutely anything and everything that came to his mind He was particularly outspoken on ‘sheilas and foreigners’. Some of the stuff he thunder talked us about even had something to do with gold. Did you know for example, that gold is being used in Africa to combat AIDS? Apparently it can be injected into the body and forms kind of shell around the HIV infected cells and so prevents them from multiplying. Serious. Also, sheilas have more chance of getting a driving job for the mining companies than blokes. Because all the blokes round here are drunk and jacking up the whole time and the companies don’t trust them. He told us a bit about his life growing up round here when it was still just a village of tents and hungry prospectors, and then proceeded to give us the old ‘youngsters don’t know they’re born bit’. Being slightly older and wiser now, I was excluded from being one of the youngsters to which he referred. I’m not happy... In between this diatribe, he did talk us through the gold smelting process and even found time to actually give the demonstration we’d come to see. Which was nice. Molten gold being poured into bar moulds was pretty much it, but impressive nonetheless.

Next up we headed back to the gold panning demonstration to find out how it was supposed to be done. Predictably Mand hit gold on her first attempt and spent the rest of the time doing her best to impress teacher. If only she’d had an apple. As you probably guessed from my attitude, I fared less well. I did end up finding some though, and we did have loads of fun doing it. Which is what counts. Not who got the most, Mand :o)

Our teacher at the panning was a guy of 66 called Jim, who had worked the mines from 1967 for the next 25 years. This very mine in fact, and others around it. Jim was also to be our guide as we ventured underground to see the actual mine itself. There were three others waiting to go down on the tour too, and we all piled into a cage the size of a telephone box for the 36m ride down to the tunnel. As you can imagine it was cramped as anything, and I spent the whole ride with my hand up some old lady’s backside. I think I minded more than she did, although we both studiously avoided each other’s gaze for the rest of the tour. But I bet her husband won’t know what’s hit him tonight. The tour was fantastic and John recounted tales of his days in the mines as we went. If the miners ever suffered from some sort of drama then they got the rest of the day off. For example, he was working down there one day when he heard a slight tapping sound coming from the rock. His slight confusion at this turned quickly into fright when chalk started pouring from the walls around him. He scarpered out of there and was rewarded when a huge rock came crashing down where he’d been working. 125 tonnes of it to be precise. Feeling slightly windy after this, he headed to the surface and was ready to go home when the foreman stopped him. ‘Really sorry Jim, I know you’d normally go home after something like that, but we can’t afford to let you go today. We need you to drive the bulldozer topside.’ Feeling mightily pissed at this, Jim jumped in the dozer, headed across the compound and lowered the blade. Right onto a pile of explosives waiting to go underground. One, thankfully, small explosion later and the foreman relented and wished him all the best as he went out the gate.

Or there was the time when a guy couldn’t be asked to wait for explosion time (12.45 or 3.15 daily) and decided that as no-one was around in his section he’d light the fuse and go up the ladder. Just as two blokes were coming down the ladder at the other end. They were mining for nickel which when it enters the bloodstream does all sorts of poisonous stuff and pretty much f***s you for life. As you can imagine, the two blokes got absolutely peppered with the stuff. The guy who set off the explosion? Oh, he lost his job. Can you honestly imagine if that happened now? The dude would be up on all sorts of charges and the company sued out of existence. On that note, accidents in the mines used to be put down to acts of God. As in ‘Ah well, it was obviously meant to happen’. How quick has that changed in the last 30 years...

One of the women (who came down separately from us) was slightly claustrophobic. Her husband had refused to come down at all. As we got into the older sections of mine she started breathing heavily and acting like she was about to freak right out at any second. To make her feel better Jim told her about a couple of other people who’d been claustrophobic on this tour. One of them said he’d go down but if he asked to come back up would it be ok? Of course it would and in the cage he got. It moved about 6 inches before he asked to get out. I mean seriously, why bother? He must’ve been able to see how small and cramped the cage was. Another guy got the s***s as they entered the older section and turned round and headed back to the cage. Jim shouted after him: ‘Are you sure you’re not coming back down?’ The answer came back: ‘Only if the f***in rope breaks’.

We broke the surface again thanked Jim for an excellent tour and headed round and about to see what else the place had to offer. It turns out shedloads, without even going back to the main building. There’s a knock up of Hannan’s campground, complete with a talking Hanhan dummy in it. This thing is macabre as fook. Hannan was an Irish guy who made the first big find in these parts (the town was originally called Hannan Town) and made an absolute fortune. The dummy of him is set up with a blank face. A real face is then projected onto it, complete with winks at the audience, tuts and grimaces as he tells the story. It’s amazing to watch. Every now and then during the story, he pauses and some really really cheesy Irish jig music comes on. The accent on the commentary has to be heard to be believed. It gives new meaning to the word stereotype. ‘The luck of the Oirish’ ‘Go-ald at the end of the rainbow’. Absolutely wonderful. But by now time was getting on and the ever helpful Jim suggested that if we hadn’t seen everything then we could just get a pass from reception on the way out for the next day. This pass turned out to be a scrap of paper which the ticket lady ripped off a page and wrote her name on. Safe.

That’s about it for today (although we did see our second semi fit bird in Australia when we went in a shop on the way home. If it doesn’t rain it pours) although while I’ve been writing this I’ve just invited the two Germans in the tent next to us to come with us tomorrow. We met them in Albany and they seem pretty cool. I guess we’ll find out in the morning...

The Germans (said in my best Stan Collier voice) turned out to be called Phillip and Julia. She speaks hardly any English and his is only just passable. Which suits us cos we get to feel superior simply by speaking our own language. Nice.

During the night our b****** tent was flapping on us so badly we nearly suffocated when a wind blew up from nowhere and about one o’clock we finally had enough (my attempts at punching it back into place failed miserably) and had to empty the car and for the first time got to sleep in the back. Comfy as f***, mate. So we’re probably just going to do this from now on, which was the original plan anyway. Just woke up feeling like we were in an oven is all...

So the four of us set off to the Mining Hall Of Fame, where me and Mand spent the morning finishing off our tour of the kids’ room. You’ll be pleased to know we completed the ‘How to set up a mine’ section and scored 100%. Top five year olds that we are. We then went to watch a film about prospecting (called bizarrely ‘The Prospectors’) which went on for far too long and bored us silly. I just don’t have any time for watching a bunch of black and white people flicker their way through panning for gold. I did learn one thing though. Lots of people died in the pursuit of wealth. No s*** Sherlock. Next up we headed for an art exhibition (much more my style) by a local artist. It turned out it was a celebration of womanhood b y a local artist called Trish Lome. But the opening commentary was pretty cool (at least I thought so) So here it is:

‘Women have lived in this are for possibly forty thousand years. Over this time we have made love, made babies, made do, made amends. We make meals, make friends, make money, make time. We make judgements, make good, make merry, make mistakes. We make out, make off, make up, make over. We make believe, and we make stories. These are some of mine, and maybe, some of yours.

Well, they weren’t really some of mine (it was all trying a bit too hard in m humble opinion) but it was pretty interesting nonetheless. One of the pieces was a tribute to all the women in her life (who were listed -‘one mother, two grandmothers, four daughters etc etc), but was actually just nine pieces of random metal shapes in a box (one rather ironically was a cow - presumably the mother-in-law - sorry Chris). But apparently when the artist created this she was thinking of all the women in her family. What a load of old s***e. Feeling somewhat peeved by the whole experience I went and bought a pair of high heels and a lovely little black number that was simply to die for darling. Obviously the last bit isn’t true but I did leave feeling more full of oestrogen (and confusion) than I’ve felt for a long time.

At this point, it was time to head out of this museum and off to the Super Pit. This is a mine originally pegged out about a 100 years ago (that’s two things I learnt from the DVD earlier) and is now an absolutely f***in huge hole in the ground. They didn’t have to think too long before calling it the Super Pit let me tell you. The reason we went there was primarily to see the huge explosion that takes place pretty much every day at one o’clock. This is where they are still mining further down. What we saw was this. That’s right. Absolutely nothing. The explosions are happening so far underground, you get a distant sounding whoosh and about five minutes later a couple of clouds of dust. Which could well have just been thrown in the air by the miners. b******s is too kid a word for it. I tried to cheer up the disappointed crowd with a ‘Woo hoo. Top blasting’ but no-one was really interested. Ah well, you can but try....

Back to the museum and we realised we’d well and truly had enough of mineral, miners, prospectors and soil samples. This moment of clarity arrived when we finally went to see the Hall Of Fame itself. And it was exactly that. A hallway. With plaques along it. If you put the name into the one computer they had to explain just who the f*** these people were, it gave you a twenty page synopsis of their life. We looked at each other, shrugged resignedly and headed off back into town for a beer. Leaving Phillip and Julia behind.

In town, we had a beer in an Irish bar imaginatively named ‘Paddy’s’ and wandered around the few shops left open. Bizarrely Australian shops have half dat closing on Saturdays. Although this is doubtless wonderful for shopworkers, when the f*** does everyone shop? This has been the same everywhere since we got here. From the city of Perth to the backwaters of Esperance and Albany everyone goes home at one o’clock on Saturday. One of the guys on our campsite told us (while I was sounding off about this very issue) that it’s the same pretty much everywhere. They did briefly experiment in Melbourne with 24 hour supermarkets but soon did away with it. I kind of love the laid back b******s for it though. I have become (for no apparent reason) an advocate of keeping Sunday special. I think everyone should have Sundays off and get involved in a national love in. Seriously, if you aren’t forward thinking enough to buy that extra pint of milk so that nobody needs to work Sundays then you’re some kind of retard. And I’m pretty sure Stu and Tone would agree with me. This doesn’t however apply to Johnny. Or doctors. And it definitely doesn’t apply to Saturday afternoons.

But I digress. With more time left to kill before going to pick up Phillip and Julia we went to a different pub called ‘The Wild West Bar’. And it was exactly that. This place was rough as it gets. Seats with the stuffing ripped out, graffiti all over the walls (my favourite was on the condom machine in the toilets where someone had written ‘For full refund insert baby here’) and a proper horrible drunk sat at the bar. And everything stank of piss. But on the plus side the barmaids are dressed in their underwear. Well, kind of a plus side. The only barmaid working was a proper BOBFOC. But th guy at the bar was priceless. He was drunk. Angrily, lairily drunk. The bloke he’d colllared before us just got up and left. The guy between us and him said he wanted to do the same. The drunk guy was from Southern Australia and just kept telling us and the other tourists unlucky enough to cross his eye line that they were foreigners and that he was proud to be Southern Australian. He even started offering the locals outside for a fight. Quality. But he did have one redeeming quality. He was intent on doing a Suicide Tequila. For those of you who don’t know, this is like a tequila slammer i.e. lick the salt, down the tequila and suck a lemon wedge. What makes it a Suicide Tequila is that you snort the salt up your nose, down the tequila and squeeze the lemon juice in your eye. Yep, you heard me right. Snort, shoot, squeeze. Now after his initial bravado at this, he kind of lost interest. So with some gentle goading from yours truly he was eventually forced into action. By now, two new skimpily clad barmaids had arrived (and they were proper fit in case you’re wondering - that makes Kalgoorlie 4: The rest of Western Australia 0) and this seemed to tip him over the edge. He cut up a line of prime salt, sniffed it up, downed his shot and squeezed the lemon straight into his eye. I was the only one who applauded. Mand was laughing her head off and the two fit barmaids just told him he was a loser. Everyone else just stared at him. He started shouting that now it was my turn and with a sympathetic smile I told him we had to go. I don’t know if the tears were from the lemon or from the realisation that he’d just made an absolute tit of himself for nothing. Considering the state of the guy, I’d say the former.

We jumped back in the car and headed off to pick up the German couple and were slightly surprised to find them already walking back along the main road. We pulled up and Phillip looked at us relieved and said he thought maybe we’d forgotten them. Strange race these Teutonics. Back at camp and it was time to get drunk, before returning to the Wild West bar and the GB v Australia rugby game at 11pm, Before this though, they had a live band starting at nine. Quality.

Well, things didn’t quite go according to plan. Me and Mand hit the Raspberry Vodkas and lemonades and were soon sozzled as sausages. So much so, that Mand went starfish in the tent by 8 o’clock. Some people just can’t hack the pace. The German couple also bailed out without actually having a drink which goes to show just how untrustworthy the Krauts are. But by now I’d been joined by the ever ready Craig and three Scots named Craig, James and Martin. After a free flowing hour of booze and ranting (most of the ranting on my part it has to be said) we headed off into town to see what the locals get up to at the weekends.

I was sadly disappointed. What I’d both wanted and hoped for was a real backwards town, full of s***-kickers and barn dancing. Instead what we actually got was a really nice bar, full of good looking girls and well dressed boys. Gutted. But the music was a bit mixed. We had the ‘Grease Mega Mix’, the ‘Abba Mega Mix’, a bit of Rock, a bit of R ‘n’ B, a bit of Country and Western and God only knows what else before the alcohol drowned out the rest of the memories. We all sat round in abject shock for a while trying to decide whether to stay and drink or get the hell out of there when the stand out track of the evening came on. The thud of the bass, the slow sound of the fiddle and before I knew it I was up in the middle of the dancefloor yelling ‘Well my name’s Conley Patton Moore, Same as my daddy and his daddy before’. Steve Earle at his best. Copperhead Road. Never before or probably ever again will I hear that track being played in a club. I was in hog heaven as I threw myself around singing to anyone who’d listen, while the Scots boys looked on in amazement and (I hope) admiration. Well, they were laughing their heads off whatever that means. I answered their questions of ‘How the f*** do you know this?’ with a worldly wise shrug which said ‘Everyone who’s been around bit knows this’. What it actually said was probably ‘Cos I’m a sad loser with far too much time on his hands who smoked far too much weed when he was younger’. But never mind, they played the Proclaimers a bit later, and that pleased everyone...

But what of the people I hear you ask. Well to be fair, most of the blokes looked at us like we’d dropped in from outer space or just plain ignored us. Even when I made the effort. Laughingly asking one guy where he was from probably didn’t help my case much. As for the girls, well what can I say? I got into a few conversations but only through sheer persistence. One girl who was a hairdresser refused to sort me out with hair extensions and the refused to by me a drink for the hurt she’d caused. My favourite was a girl who I ended up chatting to for ages, purely by default. Her and her mate joined our table and she was unlucky enough to end up next to me. Sweet. It turns out she was twenty, born and raised in Kal, engaged, and had a little girl. When I asked in all sincerity whether she didn’t want anything more out of life, she answered ‘Yeah, of course. I want a little boy too’. Hmmmmm.

Eventually, this bar closed and with Martin and James heading off home, it was left to Craig and me (the Scottish one, the Aussie one had already gone) to carry on. Obviously by this time thoughts of rugby had gone, as had the thought processes in general. We never even made it to the Wild West Bar. But the next place was just like the one before, only more Hip Hop and R ‘n’ B and lacking the necessary rhythm, let alone the inclination to dance, this was obviously bound to end in failure. Although the sight of groups of women scattering as we blundered towards them will live long in the memory. Time to leave. With Craig trying to drag me to Hay Street (the red light district) and me constantly reminding him I had a girlfriend, we bundled up the road and eventually got a ridiculously over priced taxi home. Ah well, it was half five...

The following day was an absolute travesty. With me and Mand deciding that the only answer to the ocean of sweat we woke up in was to go on a Sunday session. The temperature was in the high thirties by 10 o’clock (it eventually peeked at 41), so an air conditioned bar sounded like the perfect place to be. With virtually no sleep (for me anyway) and having had no dinner the night before it’s no surprise that I was drunk on my first pint and Mand was asleep after her first orange juice. We gamely soldiered on, taking it in turns to snoozle on each other, even changing the scenery and heading back to the Wild West Bar for one, before eventually admitting defeat and were back in bed by half seven.

An early start for our trek down to Norseman and our subsequent trip across the Nullarbor went t*** up pretty much from the start. The car wouldn’t start. Again. Flat battery. Again. Off into town to buy a new battery (the plates inside our one were corroded almost to nothing) we then made ourselves feel like real heroes by fitting the new battery ourselves. Yeah baby, self sufficient. We got to the supermarket for supplies and the f***ing thing cut out completely. Cue panicked silence from the pair of us. Not even we could have f***ed up changing a battery. Surely. Okey dokey, we’ll just get a jumpstart. Nope, that didn’t help either. Oh s***. The blokey who gave us the jump suggested we call the RAC. Cheers mate. While I was still standing there looking desolate and wondering just how much moolah this was going to set us back, and getting angrier and angrier, some old guy comes over. ‘Still not got it started?’ What the f*** does it look like? ‘Nah, not yet, Going to have to phone the RAC I reckon.’ ‘You checked the fuses?’ ‘Yep, they’re fine.’ So then HE checked the fuses. ‘Yeah, you’re right. They’re fine.’ No s*** Sherlock. Then he just looked at the engine really slowly like it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, and just as I was about to tell the nosy old buzzard to piss off he says ‘Is it automatic?’ ‘Yep, (now f*** off you nosy old s***)’ The response was very nearly out of my mouth before I could stop it. ‘Does your gearshift still move?’ ‘(What the f***? Are you carrying out a survey?) I’ll go see (and then, you old coffin dodger, you can go and get your kicks at someone else’s expense or I’ll be kicking you)’. The gearshift moved like normal. ‘It’s fine (and now you can do one before I ruin your day).’ ‘Try the key again’. Gritting my teeth I turned the key and I’ll be f***ed if the engine didn’t catch first time. Like nothing was or ever had been wrong with it. I nearly kissed the old goat. ‘If the engine bumps and it stalls at the same time, sometimes you have to take it out of gear and put it back in for it to start again. ‘(I love you) Really? I didn’t know that’ ‘Well, now you’ve learnt something today’ ‘(Will you marry me?) Certainly have. Thanks so much.’ ‘No drama. See ya later.’ ‘(At least let Mand have your babies) Cool. Thanks again. Take care.’ ‘Bye.’ And off he went. Mand arrives back with the shopping and away we go. Legend...

We drove back down Hay Street just to have a look and saw absolutely nothing. Back at the camp we finished packing up and gave Craig a six pack of beer. Not only has he given us the number of a weed dealer in Melbourne, but also the name and number of a guy who might be able to get me work, and has volunteered his sister’s services to go view our flat. He also showed me where everything was I needed to know about on the engine. Top bloke. Next stop Norseman and then out across the Nullarbor.

We got back to Norseman late afternoon and were torn between staying there the night or pushing on and at least starting out across the desert. We chose the latter and confidently headed off to stay overnight at a rest stop in the absolute middle of nowhere, about 79km out of Norseman. These stops are free but obviously there’s no water or anything. After our unexpected expense with the new battery, we decided that’d be about perfect. 97km later, she asks me how much further it should be... Only we could get lost on a straight road. Biting the bullet, we decided to head on to a place called Balladonia and stop there for the night. So much for our money saving exercise.

Laters all

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