Now In Perth

We've been out of range and unable to add to our blog for the past week. We are grateful to God that we arrived safely in Perth late yesterday and are now enjoying wonderful hospitality in the home of Bevan & Gail Short. Gail is a first cousin of Pam. We're off to King's Park this afternoon to view all the wonderful wildflowers for which W.A. is well known.

Since our last post we have crossed the Nullabor. Before doing so we ate fish and chips on the foreshore at Ceduna and absorbed the history of Iron Knob where the Australian Steel Industry commenced We stayed at idyllic Fowlers Bay in South Australia on the Great Australian Bight. Edward John Eyre departed from this spot on his historic journey by land across the continent to Albany almost 175 years ago. Then we enjoyed whale watching at the Head of the Bight before reaching Eucla in W.A. where we spent our next night. Before setting off the next morning we revisited the old telegraph station which is increasingly being buried by sand. It was our pleasure to stay at Frazer Park Station the next night before reaching Norseman and then heading north before heading to Perth. About 33 kilometres south of Kalgoorlie we hit and killed an emu (poor fellow). Fortunately no damage to us or our van!
We spent two interesting days north of Kalgoorlie at Leonora and Menzies in
the Northern Goldfields District . This included a memorable visit to the Gwalia Gold Mine where Herbert Hoover (later President of U.S.A.) was Mine Manager and constructed a magnificent mansion now restored and used for bed and breakfast).We went trough Herbert Hoover House and the extensive museum The mine closed for a period but is now back in production and we watched the open cut operation as well as inspected a number of miners huts that are being restored. While in the vicinity we also went out to Lake Ballard (a dry salt lake)at sunset to view a selection of sculptures by a renowned sculptor that have been embedded around the lake (about 50 of them). En route to Perth yesterday we took time to visit Pam's mother's grave and those of other relatives in the Methodist section of the Kellerberrin Cemetery.