Coolgardie - Mother of the Goldfields

Besides watching runners and going to train the dog on Sunday I also did a bit of sight seeing. Coolgardie is a town about 35kms from Kalgoorlie. I drove through it on the way here and mentally made a note to visit when I had a spare afternoon.

It is now a very small town with a population of around 100. A far cry from its bright beginnings at the end of the nineteen century, when it became the third largest town in Western Australia after Perth and Fremantle.

"Mother of the Goldfields" is its apt claim to fame, because it was in the Coolgardie area that gold was first discovered. Now Coolgardie is more noted for its incongruous buildings which stand as testimony to its grandiose past.