It continued to rain on and off throughout the night with the temperature dropping to 5 deg, so it was all quite unpleasant.
However when it was time to get up in the morning at 6am we were delighted to see that the sky was blue and the sun was shinning, however it was still quite cold.
As we closed up the trailer I noticed that one of the shock absorbers to the leaf spring had snapped the holding bracket and was hanging down loosely. We would have to have it repaired as soon as we arrived in Kalgoorlia-Boulder about 205km north.
The drive was good, the sun was shinning and we were warm in the car as we pulled out of the caravan park just after 8.15am.We were on the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway which was in good condition. We didn’t see to many other caravaners on the road and those that we did always waved as they passed which we eagerly acknowledged, it was always good to see fellow travellers.
We passed some vast salt lakes and dead trees from the salinity in the ground. The soil was now no longer sandy as in the south west, here it is red. The land here was cultivated in some places that supported live stock and the growing of wheat and canola along with other crops that we were not able to put a name to.
We drove into Coolgardie which was once a very busy town with a population of nearly 15000 at the turn of the century in the 1900’s.
Today the gold mining days are over and the population is down to about 800, as the nearby town of Kalgoorlia is the main hub of the area. However some of the old buildings from its glory days look quite good and along the main street we stopped to read the history of many of them. It was still quite cold and we were looking for somewhere to have a cup of coffee but not finding anywhere we set off for Kalgoorlie 39 km away.
As we entered this much larger town we saw a truck and trailer repair centre so we pulled in to see if we could get the repairs we needed. Not being the right place we were directed to a steel fabricator where we could probably have the brackets made and fitted. We found them to be very helpful and they could make and fit what we needed. So we unhitched and left the trailer which we could pick up again at 3pm.
We immediately left for town where we had our coffee and then off to the tourist bureau where we picked up a local map and some info and then headed out to the gold museum and a walk along Hannan street which was the main street in town which had many great historical buildings.
Here we also read all about Paddy Hannan whom the street was named after.
We treated ourselves to some lunch, walked around town a bit more and then went back to pick up the trailer and check in at the caravan park and set everything up for our stay.
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