Perth to Lake Ballard and back

Lake Ballard had been on our bucket list for a while, so we decided to use a few days off on either side of a weekend to go and see it.

We followed the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme for most of the way – a huge engineering achievement that was not recognised at the time. But that is a story for another time.

First day we drove from Perth to Merredin and stayed at Merredin Caravan Park. We had dinner at the local pub – the same one that had a bit of excitement just a couple of days later.

Next we wanted to stop and see Pumps 4 to 8 of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, but only No 7 was accessible to visitors.

We continued on to Kalgoorlie where we had a very brief lunch stop to see the Super Pit and the end point of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, the reservoir on Mt Charlotte. The purple dots of jacaranda in bloom around the dusty red landscape typical of Kalgoorlie were an unexpected surprise.

Next stop was Menzies, a town that was thriving in the late 1800s with a population of about 10,000 people, 13 hotels and 2 breweries. Now only very few people still live there to provide some basic services to the passers-by (tourists and truck drivers) and look after the remaining buildings. At the town hall we met a very helpful deputy mayor who gave us maps and some info about the area.

The drive to Lake Ballard was on a very well maintained road, most of it bitumen, and only the very last bit being gravel. We arrived just in time for sunset with its amazing orange hues and long shadows of the slim statues.

Lake Ballard is a salt lake that usually dries out in early spring. In 2003, Antony Gormley, a British sculptor, was commissioned by the Perth International Arts Festival to create a piece of art for its upcoming 50 year anniversary. The statues on Lake Ballard are 51 compressed versions of residents that lived in Menzies at the time whose bodies were scanned using a 3D technique and the resulting images condensed. There is not much information about the exact location of all the statues, about the way they were produced or the artist’s interpretation and this is all deliberate, the local shire respecting the artist’s wish that people discover The Salt People by and for themselves rather than guided.

Our drone had even better views of Lake Ballard that you can see here.

We went for another walk in the morning to see the statues in the morning hues of yellow.

We continued through the Australian outback, gave way to a goanna

and followed paths previously beaten by explorers and gold miners, back through Menzies and then on to another ephemeral construction, Niagara Dam. This was built around 1900 with cement carried by camel trains, aiming to provide water to the newly established mining settlements. As luck goes, abundant underground water was found in (the now ghost town of) Kookynie not long after the dam was finished and the whole town of Niagara pretty much disappeared after only 20 years of existence.

Kookynie is another place that once flourished and then quickly disappeared. It is advertised as a living ghost town but it looked just ghost to us.

Gwalia is another ghost town but it is much better preserved as the local shire had a brilliant idea to get the old houses “adopted” and funded by various people. Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the USA, started his career as manager of the Sons of Gwalia gold mine. The house that he commissioned (and in which he stayed briefly on a later visit to the mine site) is now part of the Gwalia museum – Hoover House cafe and bed & breakfast.

Next to it there is still a working open pit mine.

From Gwalia we drove through Leonora, past the turn off to Leinster to get to Sandstone just before sunset. We saw the Irish brewery and marvelled at sunset over London Bridge.