Still at Leonora , we headed out to the showpiece - the township of Gwalia ( pronounced Gworlia apparently ) . It's only a few kilometres south of town and is adjacent the Gwalia Gold Mine . Most of the old town has been kept intact , and has been restored to give you an insight to the conditions these people faced daily .
At the top of the hill overlooking the mine pit is Hoover House , the Assay Office and the Mine Office . Nearby is the head frame and winder shed , transport shed and the museum office / shop .
This is the view into the pit , showing the different colours in the right hand side wall .
The start attraction is Hoover House , which is also used as a B&B and you can have snacks & drinks on the verandah as well .
Lovely green lawn & garden seems very strange here , such a dry and unforgiving place , this is the view to the front door .
And this is the view looking out from the front door & verandah - straight out over the pit !!
Such an opulent house was commissioned by Herbert Hoover as the residence for the mine manager . This was Herbert Hoover's room - he went on to become the 31st president of USA .
Sitting & Dining rooms.
On this dresser is a photo of a dinner that was held - called the gold bar dinner , the WA Premier attended and on the end of the table were 4 gold bars , same as the replica on the dresser - this was how much gold they found and processed in the first month of production in 1899 .
It's a very comprehensive museum , lot's of machinery , tools and everything used at the mine .
A selection of bottles beside a large steel boiler .
This is the winder shed - it houses the 2 cylinder steam powered 1000 horse power winder that hauled the ore skips to the surface from the underground mine .
These 2 cogs intrigued me , on first look you'd think okay a couple of old cogs , but on closer inspection these are hand crafted from timber !! What excellent craftsmanship , the different angles and circular surfaces and the teeth all hand crafted !
Looks like hard work to me . There's also carriages and the old steam engine .
Inside the museum is an old International mail truck and a tram - they had a tram that ran from Gwalia into Leonora .
From the museum , we drove back down to the houses below - most are open for inspection , so you can just walk through . It was 34 degrees so we were expecting them to be like ovens - we were pleasantly surprised , they weren't cold , but they were certainly cooler than outside ?
This house had newspaper as wallpaper , most had hessian that had been plastered , concrete floors or dirt .
Gwalia Stat Hotel is a little further down the road , but is privately owned so there's no access to it .
This is the pink house , also surprisingly cooler with the awning windows and the breeze blowing through .
This is the Sly Grog shop .
And inside .
Behind the Sly Grog Shop is the Lock Up - this we were expecting to be stinking hot - it was fully lined with timber boards and also quite cool even though there were no windows .
The Garage obviously .
This is part of the Patroni's Guest House - single rooms with 2 single beds and nothing else , meals were done in the house on the right .
This has been a huge eye opener for us , the conditions these people lived and worked in are almost unimaginable , so difficult , testing the people to the limit .
Gwalia also still has some residents living here in 7 or 8 houses .
It was getting hotter so we headed back toward town , we spotted a track up to a water tank and looked like it went further up the hill as well . Nothing ventured , nothing gained we headed in , got to the water tank and up a bit higher before needing 4wd to get to the top of a very rocky track . Turns out that this hill is Mt Leonora . Views are looking straight at Leonora township .
Definitely a place we have enjoyed looking at , lot's of surprises . Here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=18u38W6mROsFW9q_jz5vz5rspUPWDHP5E&usp=sharing
No comments:
Post a Comment