Frommer's Australia from $50 a Day 13th Edition - To Parent Directory

THE GOLDFIELDS 463
families for aboveground activities only; if you want to join the underground tour,
too, the prices are A$20 (US$13) adults, A$15 (US$9.75) for seniors and students,
A$10 (US$6.50) for children, and A$50 (US$33) for a family. Underground
tours and gold panning are run four times a day, more often in WA school
holidays. Allow half a day to see everything. The complex is still a work-in-progress
with new attractions, including a Chinese garden and more galleries to open during
2003.
The WA Museum Kalgoorlie-Boulder, 17 Hannan St. (& 08/9021 8533),
is worth a look for the first 11kg (400-oz.) gold bar minted in town, nuggets and
jewelry, and historical displays. It is open daily from 10am to 4:30pm, closed
Christmas and Good Friday. Admission is free (donation requested). Tours are
at 11am and 2:30pm. Allow an hour.
Don’t leave town without seeing the Super Pit open-cut mine. There is a lookout
platform at Outram Street in Boulder, off the Goldfields Highway (called the
Eastern Bypass Rd. on some maps). It is open daily from 6am to 7pm, except
when blasting closes it temporarily (check with the tourist center). Entry is free.
Another reminder of the days when miners spent their spare time trying for
riches of another kind by indulging in two-up (a simple game involving betting
on a penny landing heads or tails) can be found about 12km (7 1 ⁄2 miles) north
of Boulder on the Goldfields Highway. The original shanty that housed the
Bush Two-Up School still stands, but if you want to try your hand, the only
place to do it is at Sheffields restaurant in the Recreation Hotel, 140 Burt St.,
Boulder (& 08/9093 3467), which runs two-up games on Wednesday and Sunday
at 3pm. You must be 18 or over to play.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service (& 08/9093 7500) base at Kalgoorlie-
Boulder Airport is open for visitors to browse memorabilia, see a video, and look
over an aircraft if one is in. It is open Monday through Friday from 11am to
3pm. Admission is A$2 (US$1.30), free for children under 6. Allow 45 minutes.
Full-blood Aborigine Geoffrey Stokes of Yamatji Bitja Aboriginal Bush
Tours (& 08/9093 3745 or 0407/378 602) grew up the Aboriginal way in
the bush. On his full-day 4WD tours, you’ll forage for bush tucker, learn
bushcraft, and do things like eat witchetty grubs, cook kangaroo over a fire, or
track emus. Tours cost A$80 (US$52), half price for kids 4 to 12. Geoff also
does twilight campfire evenings, and overnight or longer tours in the bush.
“Kalgoorlie’s Most Unusual Attraction” award goes to Langtrees 181, 181 Hay
St. (& 08/9026 2181), a working brothel styled into a sex industry museum in
the heart of Kalgoorlie’s (in)famous red-light district. For the most part housed in
red and pink corrugated iron sheds festooned with colored lights, this neck of
town is a popular drive-by spot among the blue-rinse bus-tour set, who get a kick
out of returning the cheery waves of the workers standing in their doorways.
Ninety-minute tours, fun rather than sleazy, of some of the 12 theme-rooms cost
A$25 (US$16). Tours depart 1, 3, and 7pm daily.
EXPLORING COOLGARDIE
Wandering Coolgardie’s quiet streets graced with historic facades is a pleasant
stroll back in time. Signboards erected around the place, many with photos,
detail what each site was like in the town’s heyday at the turn of the last century.
The Goldfields Exhibition, 62 Bayley St. (& 08/9026 6090), tells the town’s
story in an 1898 building once used as the mining warden’s courthouse (the visitor
center is also here). It has a huge bottle collection, too. Admission is by gold
coin donation. It’s open Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 3pm. The Railway