Places we used to live: the Goldfields, Western Australia

Just checking out the view....

A long, long time ago, before Barbie and Mittens joined the household, Froufrou, Bender, N & I spent a year in the Goldfields town of Kalgoorlie.

We used to host backpackers through the website couchsurfing. It helped Frou get over her fear of strangers, and Bender had to share the back seat of the four wheel drive with random backpackers more than once on road trips to the surrounding tourist attractions.

We had a couple of Estonian backpackers stay with us on their way to work in a 'country pub'. Kalgoorlie couldn't have been more different to their home country. We asked them what pub they were working in, and they said Laverton.

A couple of weeks after I had loaded them on to a bus out there, we went for a drive out to Laverton to visit them and see how they were going.

Laverton itself wasn't that interesting, though we did have fun taking Bender to the pub, where we were allowed to sit with him in the beer garden. That kind of thing is not allowed in the city.

Anyway, we went out to an old abandoned mining town called Gwalia. A lot of abandoned townsites in the Goldfields are nothing more than rubbish and abandoned cars, but there are still houses at Gwalia.

The sad abandoned houses at Gwalia

Another vintage car which isn't going to be moving anywhere, and an old windmill used for pumping water.

Bender says, hurry up, if I'm not allowed to pee on it then I am totally not interested.

I managed to get him into the cab of this old train. It was pretty cool pretending to drive it, wasn't it Bender? Though I think he is plotting his escape in this photo.

I don't think this old car would be able to take us anywhere now.

Edgar Hoover's house

My American followers would be impressed to know that this grand mansion for it's time was the home of the US President Hoover before he became president. It has been preserved and is now the site of a museum. Bender was impressed with the green, lush lawn as he hadn't seen much lawn out in the desert.