BY BEVERLEY
Getting out of Perth takes time, but once you’re up over Greenmount Hill, you can almost hear the Bakers Hill pies calling your name….Bakers Hill was originally called Mount Baker, apparently, but it got confused with Mount Barker further to the south, so the name changed. Not sure how long the pie shop’s been there, but as long as I can remember. Anyway, it’s in institution – and a great treat after extracting yourself from Perth.
After paying homage to the pie, we trundled on through the towns pf the wheatbelt. It was all pretty straightforward really, until twenty kilometres after Southern Cross, we happened upon a flock of about thirty pink cockatoos – always a sight to behold, and preferably photograph as well! And I did!
We pulled into our cabin accommodation on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie – it was called Discovery Parks-Kalgoorlie Goldfields. The cabin was appalling – dilapidated and badly in need of a refurb. Very disappointing!
LAKE BALLARD AND MENZIES
Next day we headed north to some old gold mining towns that were well past their heyday. Our first stop was the pub at Broad Arrow, also known the “The Broadie”, as you would expect. It was not open at this morning hour, which is fair enough, so we had a quick look around. It’s a well-loved drinking hole, precisely in the middle of not much.
Next stop: Menzies, a place my grandmother – and her mother, her mother and her mother – called home for some twenty years! Yes, four generations! And it was primitive… Amazingly, the remains of that makeshift house of my great-great-great grandmother’s were still visible when I first visited in 2009.
Menzies was a thriving gold rush town in the 1890s and 1900s, named not after a certain prime minister but after a Canadian prospector who discovered gold there in 1894. Now it’s a shadow of its former self, but it has its own charm. The town hall with its clock remains in excellent condition.
Suitably replenished at the local cafe, we headed on our trek out past the Menzies cemetery to an even more remote destination: Lake Ballard. This is a large salt lake accessible via a good sealed road north-west of Menzies.
So why visit a salt lake in the middle of nowhere? Because an artist named Antony Gormley created and installed 51 steel statues based on residents from Menzies. The statues are scattered across seven square kilometres of the lake.
As you walk around, they appear on the horizon, but as you get closer, you can see that they’re modelled on real people. They are quite haunting, and so is the lake, even though we saw no water.
The flies were incredibly friendly too!
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