Shaws Five State Adventure

  Thursday 24/4/25. After leaving the caravan park we went to Boulder, which is right next door to Kalgoorlie, to do our voting. There was no queue and we were in and out in no time. We must always be travelling in May as for the last 2 Federal elections we have done an absentee vote - Broome, Broken Hill and now Boulder. Then we checked out the Main Street of Boulder. There were lots of empty shops but the last business in each premises name was freshly painted above the  We set off for Norseman and Esperance but this time we went via Coolgardie which is only small compared to Kalgoorlie. As we drove south the rain became worse and the wind became stronger. At times we could feel the truck being blown sideways. On arriving in Esperance we went to a Bush Caravan Park out behind the town away from the beach, hoping to get out of the wind.  We were told there was only one site left and it was quite windy. Bob tried to call a motel to see if they had a spare room but as it w...

  Tuesday  22/4/25. This morning we packed up and went into town to go to the PO to see if Bob’s parcel of supplements and finally caught up with him. Guess what ?    It did!!! Yay!!!   6 days for Express Post from Adelaide. Well Easter did make it longer. After a nice coffee we went on a bus tour of the Super Pit Mine. This is the largest and deepest mine in the area. Here, everything is BIG! Big tonka trucks, big front end loaders and other machinery, big amounts of money and fuel, big truck and grader tyres weighing 4 ton each. Each Tonka truck has 8 wheels. The guide explained the workings of the mine very well so if you want to earn big money, this is the place to be. First stop on the tour was the Super Pit Lookout. View from the lookout. Then we were taken down towards the bottom. The truck on the road going down gives you an idea of the depth. We had to take pictures from the bus so they are a bit far away. These were used tyres. The conveyor taking the ...

  Thursday 18/4/25. We left Cocklebiddy and continued heading west. Just before we arrived at Balladonia we saw the roof of an old building so we did a U-turn and went in to check. The building was the old Balladonia telegraph station which was a very sad sight as it is being allowed to rot  The view from the front. The building was in the same design as the other stations but the main entrance was from the back. The back is falling down. The main room, probably the actual office. View of one of the buildings ends. Around the perimeter of the area was a fence constructed from stones. Behind the building were many flattish mounds of rock and between the rocks the area had been dammed to harvest the rain off the rocks. All dams had some water in them. We had noticed a station stay that looked good on Wikki Camps so we decided to give it ago and arrived at Fraser Range Station Stay. It turned out to be such a good place that we decided to stay 2 nights.  After setting up we ...