Welcome to Life Images by Jill

Welcome to Life Images by Jill.........Stepping into the light and bringing together the images and stories of our world. I am a photographer, writer and multi-media artist.
Focussing mainly on Western Australia and Australia, I am seeking to preserve images and memories of the beautiful world in which we live and the people in it.

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Sunday, 15 December 2024

Midwest, Goldfields, Wildflowers Trundle - Part 6 - Niagra Dam & Karalee Rock - Western Australia

 Hello dear blogging friends. I hope you and yours are doing well. I thought before the year finishes I better finish off our Wildflower-Midwest-Goldfields Trundle. But I see now there is going to be two posts to finish this off. If you didn't see the last post you can revisit here - Part 5 - Leonora, and Gwalia, Western Australia

We are going to be free camping for the next few nights. Here is the map again - we have just left Leonora and are heading south through the goldfields area towards Niagra Dam and then passing through Kalgoorlie to Karalee Rock on the Great Eastern Highway before turning north to Beringbooding and Elachbutting Rock before returning home via Bruce Rock. 

Niagara Dam is located about 83 kilometres south of our last stop, Leonora, and 191 kms north of Kalgoorlie via the Kookynie Road. It is a great place to stop for a picnic, or to free camp overnight or for a few days. We discovered this little oasis years ago and have camped here several times. There are plenty of places to set up camp and we have found it to be a quiet camp. As we didn't have a long way to go from Leonora, we had a lazy get up and arrived at Niagra before lunch-time. 

The 30,000,000 gallon Dam was built in 1897 with cement hauled on 400 camels from Coolgardie by the Afghan cameleer Abdul Waid. The Dam was to provide water for the now abandoned goldmining town of Niagara, the surrounding district, and for the steam locomotives using the railway linking Kalgoorlie, Menzies and the northern goldfields. John Alway pegged the first gold lease in the Niagara area in January 1895, followed rapidly by other mining leases.

Underground water was found at Kookynie soon after Niagara Dam was completed, and the Dam proved unreliable due to intermittent rainfall.  Named after a nearby waterfall which proved to only flow after heavy rain, Niagara was a little different to its gigantic namesake.

There are two walk trails – the Round the Dam Trail (1150 metres) and the Breakaway Trail (1600 metres). The walks are relatively easy and are well marked with steel marker posts approximately every 70 metres letting you explore and learn about the landscape through the interpretive panels. The path takes you across the dam wall - no jumping or diving. 

These rocky outcrops are called breakaways - Breakaways are a notable feature of inland Western Australia. Softer soils have gradually eroded through the repeated action of wind and water. Only those areas with a hard laterite (ironstone/granite) top have resisted this reshaping erosion.


There was a gorgeous display of the Tall Mulla Mulla - Ptilotus exaltatus which is prolific through midwest and northern Western Australia. It always signals to me when we travel north that we have travelled out of the south west. They are one of my favourites. There are around 100 varieties of Mulla Mulla. I have added a few more to my photo list since I wrote this post in 2017. 


And some birds - we think the one on the left is the Grey-headed honeyeater and on the right is the Cockatiel weiro (often a household pet as it responds well to people). 

It was a beautiful still, quiet night and we toasted marshmallows over our campfire. 

The next morning we headed south to Kalgoorlie, passing through Menzies around 60kms from Niagra Dam. There is an interesting story to read on my blog about the Menzies Town Hall clock here - Menzies - Town hall without a clock. As you can see it now has a clock - but didn't have for around 100 years. 


We only stopped in the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie briefly before heading west to our next stop Karalee Rock - around 372km from Niagra Dam - arriving early afternoon. 

Located not far off the Great Eastern Highway 177 km west of Kalgoorlie, we have camped at Karalee Rock several times over the years, and it is one of my favourite free camps.  We decided to stay for two nights. 

There is plenty of places to set up with lovely shady camp sites suitable for caravans, camper trailers and tents. The only disappointment was that the toilets weren't operating. It is a popular site to camp so I hope they fix them soon. 

There are walk trails around and over the rock. And plenty of opportunity to take photos of wildflowers, including orchids in season. Orchids can particularly be found in the rock gardens were water collects on the rock. We enjoyed pointing some of these tiny orchids out to some other visitors to the rock. 

Below you can see, clockwise from top left - Lemon scented sun orchids (I love their little faces), what we think is the blue Candy orchid, Little Laughing Leek (so tiny), and the Clown orchids (I love their stripy trousers). 

Karalee Rock is one of the stopping points along the Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail which follows the 560 kilometre Perth to Kalgoorlie pipeline, and is one of a number of rain water rock catchments built in the 1890s to service the steam trains on the Eastern Railway from Perth to the Goldfields. The rock's history goes back thousands of years to when Aboriginal people camped here and collected water from the rock’s gnamma holes and soaks.

When the railway between Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie was completed in 1896 a series of rock walls, an aqueduct and 48.3 million litre dam was constructed at Karalee to collect rain water off the two granite rocks and provide water for steam trains en route to Kalgoorlie. 

Six kilometres of granite slab walls up to a metre high, all cut from the rock itself and laid by hand, surround Karalee Rock forming a rain catchment. 

These walls direct rain water to flow off the rock into the dam via a large semi-circular steel flume aqueduct, which was hand riveted at each joint.  The water was then pumped 3.6 kilometres south to the railway siding. The construction was an enormous achievement of both manual labour and horsepower.  


And more wildflowers - it really is a lovely place to stop and relax, walk or just sit and read under the shade. 



You often see Ornate Dragon lizards darting across granite rocks - you need to be quick to get their photo


And last year when we were camped at Karalee we came across a Tiger Snake slithering across the rock. Deadly poisonous - you don't want to get tangled up with one of these. Stand still and back away slowly.



I hope you have enjoy this part of our Midwest, Goldfields and Wildflowers Trundle. Next time I will take you to Beringbooding and Elachbutting Rocks for the final part of our tour. 

These are free camping spots with basic facilities, be self-sufficient: gas BBQ, fire rings, bins, long-drop toilets, chemical toilet dump point. Bring own firewood and be aware of fire bans. Please be respectful of other campers. Please take away your rubbish. 

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Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you are enjoying my continuing tour.  I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week.
 
I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!
   
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Monday, 9 December 2024

Rone Exhibition - Art Gallery of Western Australia

 Hi all, I hope you and yours are doing well. Life has been busy here and I haven't blogged the last few weeks, and now it is December already! But I have been busy - mostly with getting ready for a market, family things, photography and writing, etc etc just life really. In there I managed to get myself elected as Secretary of my photography group - and at the moment it is a steep learning curve. 

However last weekend we did take some time off and went to Perth for a few days - mainly to see our sons compete in the Chung Wah International Dragon Boat Festival, but also to visit the  Art Gallery of Western Australia, and the WA Museum. 

Wow - the Rone Time Exhibition at the Art Gallery was amazing!

I have never experienced anything like this amazing immersive art experience which was shown in the historic Centenary Galleries of the Art Gallery of WA. Installed in 12 rooms over 2 floors, it was the first time the Centenary Gallery had held an exhibition in almost 20 years.

As you walk through the rooms you step you back in time, where it appears that people have suddenly left leaving everything as it was and the rooms shut up for years - exploring places lost in time.

Rone says he hopes his work acts an an emotional catalyst and an open-ended narrative with no right or wrong way for people to experience the space. He says it is not just the painting on the wall, it is the objects that surround it that really tell a story, playing on all our senses.

Taking Tyrone ‘Rone’ Wright and his crew several months to set up in completely empty rooms, every part of the worlds they created is specifically placed, including especially made cobwebs. It is like walking into a time capsule - an art piece - overlaid with music. Amazing. It is quite overwhelming and you need to slow down and take your time to take it all in. You can walk around as long as you don't touch or move anything. The back of each room is a painting of a girl. Her eyes seems to follow you. His art work is so detailed, you would think they were photographs.

The exhibition invites you to consider time and how it has worn away so much, with dust settling over the detritus. But through the peeling paint and cracked ceilings, life persists. Faces search out for something, for all of eternity.

Below I share a few photos (yes you were allowed to take photos) Considering I was just using my point-&-shoot and the subdued lighting, I was very happy with them. But I know my photos won't do justice to them.

As you enter the Art Gallery the foyer is dominated by the glass house - imagine sitting here sipping tea.

My favourites were: the library - I love old libraries - with books lining the walls and on the floor, the spiral staircase. We read later that they weren't really books, just made to look like the covers, as the weight of them all would have been too much.

I've always dreamed of having a dedicated library in my house - with walls lined with bookshelves and those ladders that slide along - or indeed a spiral staircase! And comfy chairs beneath a window to sit and read.

Another favourite which kept drawing me back - The dinner show. Backstage elevates you from the viewer to the performer, placing you in the spotlight.

You stand on the stage where there is a microphone and lights along the edge, and look out over the room where there are tables set up for dining. There is a light on each table, coats on the backs of chairs, a handbag or hat here and there, bottles of wine, place settings.

I could relate to the typist pool with the old manual typewriters like those I learnt to type on, with the boss's office just beyond. And that somewhat sad look on the girl's face as she looks out the window dreaming of another life perhaps. I wish I had paid more attention to what they were typing.


The boss's office - the inner sanctum, not a place for mere typists.

the telephonist room - my Mum was a telephonist in a Western Australian wheat-belt country Post Office during the late 1940s early 1950s. Pulling plugs, connecting callers. A few years ago we went to her country post office and I asked if I could see the room - it was tiny!

The sewing room - with material laid out ready to cut - and paper patterns hanging on a rack. Old sewing machines and huge rolls of thread.


In the old shop the top newspaper on a stack of newspapers was printed 2 days before my husband was born - 17 December 1955. My Mum and Dad ran a newsagency in South Perth for many years.


Another of my favourites - the store room with shelves of boxes of all sorts of things. The clock face in silhouette is not really a clockface - it is a back lit piece made to look like a clock on an outside wall. We checked - no clock outside.


The mail room - unfortunately because of the low light it was hard to get a photo of the mail bags attached all around the edge of the desk. And I don't like to use flash. I used to deliver mail around a library at a university in my first job out of school.

The art room - at the back below the image of the girl was a place, on the rug,  for the models to sit

You can read more about the exhibition and Rone the artist here - ArtGalleryWA-Rone-Media Release

A previous exhibition was created at the Melbourne Flinders Street Station in Victoria, Australia. You can go here to see a video, which will give you a better idea of the detail in the exhibition - www.dezeen.com-Flinders Street station

You can also read more on his web page - Rone.Art

If you are in Western Australia and haven't seen the exhibition yet, I suggest you do. It is on till February (yes you do have to buy tickets). They even have a dining and bar experience. How amazing that would be! time-rone-agwa.com

We are fortunate to have Rone street art in Bunbury where I live in Western Australia. They are on a wall in a carpark. I have always thought how amazingly life-like they are considering they are painted on a brick wall.


A snapshot about Rone: Emerging from the fertile underground street art scene in Melbourne, over the past two decades, Melbourne-based artist Tyrone ‘Rone’ Wright has established an international reputation for his distinctive large-scale portraits and hauntingly atmospheric multimedia installations – which, since 2016, have pursued an increasingly ambitious scale.

Rone has carved a distinct niche for himself, drawing acclaim and growing audiences to his large-scale installations that breathe life into forgotten rooms, buildings and eras. More than just murals, these are collaborations with the very spaces themselves.

Rone’s work is held in permanent collections at the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. He is co-founder of Everfresh Studio, an artist collective based in Collingwood, Australia.    
..... with thanks to Art Gallery of WA for some of the information in this post. 

I hope you have enjoyed my share today of the Rone Time exhibition in Perth, Western Australia. Have you ever seen anything like this? Perhaps you would like to share in your comments. 

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 
I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!
   

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Monday, 18 November 2024

Midwest, Goldfields, Wildflower Trundle - Part 5 - Leonora, and Gwalia, Western Australia

 Hi all, I hope you and yours are doing well. 

I hope you have been enjoying my little recap of our Midwest, goldfields and wildflowers trundle. Today I bring you Part 5 - Sandstone to Leonora and Gwalia, in the north-eastern Western Australian goldfields region. If you missed my last post you can see it here - Midwest, goldfields, wildflower trundle - Part 4

From Sandstone we travelled east via the Agnew-Sandstone Rd and then south on the Goldfields Highway. Distance from Sandstone to Leonora is around 278 kilometres. 

We made a quick stop at the Peter Denny lookout where there is a free camp with views over the breakaways. The Rest Area and lookout commemorate Peter John Denny, who was President of the Sandstone Shire Council from 1995 to 1997. Peter Denny lobbied hard for the road to be sealed from Mount Magnet to Leinster.

The lookout carpark is right next to the highway but there are plenty of places to set up camp. There are picnic tables and bins but no toilet. There are also plenty of flies! Bring a fly-net! 


Here are a few of the wildflowers we saw along the way - Below you can see one of the yellow grevillea's or it could be a hakea - sometimes difficult to tell the difference. The purple one next to and immediately below is a native hibiscus - very beautiful. And there were lots of the purple firebush flowering along the road. 



At Leinster we turned south onto the Goldfields Highway. Leinster is basically a mining town built to house mine workers in the area. We found a truck bay to pull over so we could stop for morning tea, arriving at Leonora around 1pm and booked into the caravan park for the next 2 nights. 

We hadn't stopped in Leonora before but we found the caravan park to be neat and quiet and we did a bit of washing, and went into town to buy some groceries - we were surprised at higher prices than we are used to, but in reality this is an isolated town. We also visited the Visitor Centre to pick up some tourist information. 

Leonora is the service centre for the mining, exploration and pastoral industry.

Indigenous people lived here for thousands of years before explorer John Forrest and party, in search of the lost Leichardt Expedition in 1869, made camp near a hill and named it Mount Leonora. Twenty five years on, prospectors moved through the area and by 1896 mining claims were pegged and gold discovered, leading to the establishment of the twin towns of Leonora and Gwalia, along with the smaller town of Malcolm. A railway link from Kalgoorlie opened in June 1902 and still operates today.

Leonora became the largest centre on the North Eastern Goldfields and by 1908 boasted 7 hotels, general stores, chemists, tailors and bakeries. Mining has continued to the present day with gold, and now nickel, being produced in large quantities. From Leonora-Visitors


We took a drive out to Malcolm Dam which evidently is popular for camping. There are picnic shelters with fire rings and rubbish bins and there were a few people camped out there. It was very windy when we visited, and the area is quite wide open and exposed, however there are plenty of areas to camp. We had our morning tea which the flies tried to carry away. 

We saw what my husband thought were Banded Plovers and stilts - but we couldn't get close enough to photograph. 

12kms from Leonora, Malcolm dam was built in 1902 to supply water for the railway. 


After lunch we went to old living ghost town of Gwalia, 3kms from Leonora. 

Gold was discovered near Mount Leonora by prospectors J Carlson, F White and A Glendinning in 1896. The Sons of Gwalia mine was at one time the second largest gold mine in Western Australia. It was managed during 1898 by Herbert Hoover, who became the thirty-first president of the USA in 1929.


Listed on the WA State Register of Heritage Places, and named after a Welsh investment syndicate, the Gwalia townsite is a unique heritage site which includes 27 partially renovated miners’ cottages. The one-stop Mazza’s general store which sold everything from soap to ammunition and also handled the mail for Gwalia, Major’s Boarding House, Patroni’s Guest House, the Shift Boss’s house, mechanics shop with its collection of number plates, and the lock-up all give you a snap-shot into the life of the miners and their families. 


 
The cottages were simply built from corrugated iron with white washed hessian and pressed tin interior walls, with dirt or wooden floors. Imagine the heat during the summer! Around 1000 people lived here in the 1890s including Italian, Austrian and Yugoslav immigrants. Evidently galah and polenta was a local speciality. 


The mine ran at a loss for some years before closing prematurely on New Year’s Eve 1963 when the headframe was damaged in an accident. The town’s residents virtually left overnight, seeking work in mines to the south, reducing the population from 1,200 to 40 within a few weeks.

27 of the cottages in Gwalia have been partially restored by volunteers through the Adopt-a-Cottage Project 1995-96, with further conservation work commencing in 2013.  



You can also explore the history of Gwalia in the fascinating museum precinct. 

The café in Hoover House is open from 10am to 3pm. Once the grand home of Sons of Gwalia Gold Mine managers, Hoover House is now a luxury Bed and Breakfast and function venue. The house was designed in 1898 by Herbert Hoover, however he had left Gwalia before it was completed. There are three bedrooms with ensuites. 


The mine was reopened in 1983 and visitors can view the pit from the lookout. Over 1,800 metres below the surface, it is the deepest trucking mine in the world. It takes approximately 80 minutes for mine trucks to travel to the surface. Today 550-650 people are employed at the mine, a combination of Leonora residents and fly-in-fly out workers.


Entry to Gwalia is free, but donations are appreciated.

I recommend at least 2-3 hours to explore Gwalia. Longer if you want to read all the fascinating information. 

There is camping at Gwalia adjacent to the mine precinct, but only for fully self-sufficient and self-contained RVs and caravans which have a grey water tank. 

For more information:
Gwalia Ghost Town and Museum

Gwalia - Relics of the past - a previous blog post of mine which includes the story of the Gwalia Hotel beer strike. 

Shire of Leonora

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 
I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!
   

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