Next town on my tour of Western Australia was Kalgoorlie. Karyn and I had a nice drive to Perth airport for my airplane ride to Kalgoorlie. I bid farewell to another new friend.
Kalgoorlie has been the hardest word for me to learn. The "r" is supposed to be silent, but I keep trying to include it. It is: Kal-goo-lee. Briefly, the town of about 30,000 was established in the 1800s after gold was found. The whole town is based around the mining industry.
I was met by Cathy, a member of the Goldfields branch of the CWA of WA. Our first visit was to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This service is amazing. I can only touch the surface of the. information about it.
Western Australia is quite large...about the size of the western third of the United States. Many people live in remote areas, which have no medical facilities. If there is an emergency, fully equipped hospital planes are dispatched. The patient might be treated on site or might be transported to a hospital, usually in Perth. Because each plane is fully equipped, the patient can be treated on the way. The service also supplies a monthly clinic where people can get their blood pressure tested or can be checked for skin caners, for example.
The service also provides education about nutrition or hygiene. They cover 2.5 MILLION square kilometers out of five bases. Currently, they have 17 aircraft. Annually, they fly out 8,500+ patients and provide 1896 clinics.
44,000 phone consultations are fielded by the service's doctors and nurses. Above are communication devices that have been used in the past. Below is the kit that every remote station has. This contains most needed medicines. These stations or farms have been issued this for free. Each item is numbered, so that if the doctor prescribed cough medicine, he/she will say to take "Number 6," for example.
My new host, Rachael, picked me up from the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Next on the agenda was the Super Pit. Gold mining started in Kalgoorlie in the late 1800s. Many of the smaller mines have been bought up and these mines now take up a HUGE area. The equipment is massive as represented below. This is a shovel. That's me! Two pictures below this one is an explanation of the bucket and how much it costs.
In the next entry, I will show some of the mining equipment. Everything is massive. There are some large trucks that carry loads of rock to be processed. It takes 7 loads of rock to produce one golf ball-sized piece of gold.
The Super Pit
That evening, I spoke to the Goldfields CWA of WA. Rachel and I are holding the map while I explain that Illinois is shaped by rivers and Lake Michigan. I also share information about the IAHCE and my life in Fulton County.
I got to spend two evenings with these wonderful ladies.
Tomorrow, road trains, CATs, mining equipment and more....
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