Not quite Mordor

It's funny how some of the biggest spanners happen when we have no time or ability to deal with them. Around lunch time on the day before I left, one of my cats was beaten up pretty badly by another bigger cat. So much so that I'm not kidding when I say I had to clean up blood spatter, from when she ran inside the house, for AN HOUR afterwards. She bled all over the floorboards (thank G-d I don't have carpet!) and all over my cream coloured lounge (thank G-d I water/stain proofed the micro-suede!). In fact, when we got back here, I found more on my kitchen cupboards and my vertical blinds. A trip to the emergency vet (why do these things happen on a Sunday afternoon, costing you twice as much?) and a lotta money later, I took a drugged up kitty home and gave instructions to my girlfriend about how to give her antibiotics while I was away. Thankfully, she's ok now, although she has a nasty gash in her stomach.

It's taken me a while to get back here, for various reasons, but I'm back. I haven't had a chance to update my photo blog yet (there's over 400 pics to sort through!), so I'll post a few from our travels on here.













I've been to a few similar places, but nowhere I've been can be compared to the WA goldfields...for a number of reasons that I might explain in another post, when I have more time.

Proof we were in the middle of nowhere for most of the time. Looking east and west on one of the many never-ending roads we travelled.
























The pic on the left is what is left of a town called Siberia, name sorta self-explanatory.












The truck on the left is just one of many wrecks we passed. When the mining ended, these old towns were basically just left as they were after the people left.










This is Niagara Dam. A bucket load of money was spent constructing it, only for water to soon afterwards be found close to the town.











The picture with the statue is Lake Ballard, which is a salt lake...looks and feels like walking on crusty snow with red mud underneath.











Ruins at Kookynie, where the photo of the truck was also taken. Current population 13. You might have to click on the pic on the right to read the inscription. Sad.


















Along the road in the pics above runs an old train line. T and I went a bit mental taking all sorts of shots of the decaying sleepers and worn away rail bridges. Most of the pics I have are of him bending over that tripod. On the right is a house made of corrugated iron, taken at sunset. It's in a ghost town called Gwalia and, like the other ghost towns we visited, everything is left exactly as it was up to 100 years ago...including the things inside the buildings.


















Another of the houses in Gwalia. Another statue on Lake Ballard.


















This is the Super Pit in Kalgoorlie. If you look closely at the one on the right, you can see a dump truck, to give a bit of perspective on the size of the place.