596 km east of Perth, Kalgoorlie is the capital of the WA Outback. It's a mythical town in the Australian imagination, synonymous with the gold rush. The real Wild West, then, and, it has to be said, a controversial reputation due to some less-than-glamorous events. But visitors are often surprised by the warm welcome they receive! Kalgoorlie has merged with the "ghost" town of Boulder, 5km away, also a mining center, but whose population has not survived the changes in the price of gold. Kalgoorlie, too, almost collapsed before the price of gold began to rise again. After the First World War, production stagnated as world prices fell. The famous businessman Alan Bond had taken over mining of the famous Golden Mile, "the world's most expensive square mile", just before he was stripped of his billionaire title and thrown in jail.At first, the Golden Mile's gold miners picked up nuggets of varying sizes on the surface, then mines began to be dug. The ore here is so rich that the old heaps, prospected by modern methods, are still profitable. The open Super Pit is the country's largest gold mine and a must-see. Karlgoorlie is home to a renowned mining school, where engineers and geologists from all over the world come to study or lecture. The great buildings of the turn of the century bear witness to the region's immense wealth. Of the town's hundred or so superb old hotel-pubs, some thirty remain. These are vast buildings, surrounded by wide verandas supported by fine colonnades, along the very wide streets, which were specially designed to allow carriages to turn around. These carriages sometimes included up to 34 dromedaries.And then there's the old brothel street, Hay Street, where only one remains today. These were corrugated iron shacks, repainted in pastel colors, which opened onto a street leading into the bush, worthy of an Amsterdam harbor district, but in the middle of the desert! They say it's neither legal nor illegal. Prostitutes have never been allowed to solicit beyond the tiny terraces of their shacks, and are medically supervised. Australian Puritanism, tinged with Lutheranism, thus preserved.Kalgoorlie is the only real town in the Western Australian outback. Apart from Kalgoorlie, scattered across the desert are numerous Aboriginal communities, where Aboriginal peoples have lived for millennia, as well as a number of small mining towns and gigantic cattle stations. Of particular note is the community of Kirrwirkurra, in the Western Desert, 700km from Alice Springs on the WA side, which is very difficult to visit, but which is home to the last Aborigines to have stopped living in the desert... In 1984! Nicknamed the Pintupi 9 (they were a family of 9 members of the Pintupi people), a documentary has been made for those who want to know more.

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Kalgoorlie en Australie occidentale. Alamer - Iconotec

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