Page 197 - Mit dem Wohnwagen durch Australien 2

approached. I almost shot up out of my comfy chair to stand at attention expecting every moment that she would
take out a cane rod and give me a wrap over the knuckles. We barely passed muster. No wonder, that despite
Easter Holiday crowds, this particular campground was never full to capacity.

Now that we have escaped without further damage, other than that inflicted on our self esteem, we can say with
jubilation: “We have survived the Mt. Barker dragon!”

HYDEN ROCK
One of our reasons to come to these parts was the call of the Wave. Many people know that call, but what they
mean is the ultimate wave to surf. Not so for us. The wave has quite another connotation for us. It is one of the
oldest Rock formations on earth. Actually over 2.7 Billion years old, a bit dated for modern surfers I should say. It is
very impressive. 15 m high and 120 m wide the wave curls like a real ocean wave and would make any surfer happy.
For comparison though, the tsunami which wrecked Japan earlier this year was 25 m high, as deadly a mass of
water as nature could form. Even at 15 m it dwarfs all the human visitors, such as the four Balinese tourists which
had real fun in posing in front of it and asked Beat numerous times to take their photos. The granite rock was built
aeons ago, still covered by the all encompassing oceans. When they receded, the sediments, sandstones and
other softer rock formations eroded and slowly bared the rock. Wind and water formed a lip and hidden away by
softer layers water, acids and minerals slowly eat away a wide cavity underground until such time, as large water
forces from the nearby rivers washed the softer stones away and left the wave standing on its own. Lichen and
minerals dripping down the slopes coloured the wave to its striking presence. From atop we have a wonderful view
over other granite outcrops and the flat surrounding land.

Back in the campground in Karlgarin we meet up with Monica and Ernst, two Swiss who travel with their landcruiser
all over Australia. Our host shows us his private museum which is full of memorabilia. He surprises us with the most
complete collections of gramophones we have yet seen. From the first Edison apparatus with wax cylinders over
shellac discs to the modern disc player he has everything. But most astonishing of all, he plays them for us. The old
wax cylinder machine has two different horns which have to be held against the contraption and produce different
sound levels according to the listeners delight. Further up the line he has a gramophone built into a little cabinet
which regulates the sound by opening or shutting doors or the lid in order to dampen the sound level. Quite amazing.

He then lets us choose a song from the ‘20s and ‘30s which he plays from an old shellac disk. We are enchanted.
Our mood is very fitting, because tonight we are invited to the wedding of Wills and Kate Cambridge. The champagne
is in the fridge and Beat is preparing little dainty tid bits, among them some cucumber sandwiches, no less.
Unfortunately we do not have any Strawberries, so some sweet melon cubes will have to do. Together with the
majority of the worlds inhabitants we toast the newlyweds and wish them well, democrats as all four of us are.
Kalgoorlie

We arrive at one of world’s richest gold fields. In the 1890’s large Gold veins were discovered in an otherwise barren
landscape. The Aztecs in Latin America called gold the excrements of the goods. It was not edible or drinkable
would not warm you and was too soft for weaponry. It was only good for ornamentation. Water was very scarce in
the outback of Kalgoorlie and only found in little water holes and soaks. Soon gold fever was complemented by
typhoid fever and something had to be done. And it was. In 1903 they built an almost 700 km long pipeline from
Perth to Kalgoorlie in record time and all of a sudden had all the water they ever wanted; for a while. The town grew
exponentially and with it the wealthy people who built lovely houses, most of which still stand, like the town hall. End
th
19 century Kalgoorlie had a competition with the nearby town of Boulder on who would be first to have the best
town hall. Kalgoorlie was hit by a cyclone and the not yet finished back wall caved in, so Boulder won the race.
Kalgoorlie built bigger than Boulder, so they won the beauty contest. Boulder commissioned a very elaborate curtain
for its theatre, so Boulder won the culture trophy. But in 2010 an earthquake put an end to that. Boulder town hall
was hit hard and has not yet been repaired, so Kalgoorlie has the present advantage and the only town hall.

At the beginning of the gold rush lots of little individual mine shafts were dug and shored up with all the available
timber. The depression and the war years had various effects on the gold mining. In the late ‘30s Businessmen and
enterprises tried to buy up all the small mines to build a large conglomerate in order to mine more economical; they
started to cut he Super Pit. Today the pit is 3.6 km long and 1.5 km wide one of the 5 largest open cut gold mines in
the world. Plans are to widen it up to 5.6 km long and 2.3 km wide by 2017. Even today, when the huge machines
are cutting wider into the landscape, old barely decayed shoring timbers are surfaced. “Sticklers”, miners on the