One thing that really amazes me about the Goldfields is the numbers of "towns" there once was - it seems the country side literally had hundreds of them back in the early 1900's. I guess it was the gold rush after all but still amazing considering the vastness of our great land and how these people used to get about!
Anyway this trip we decided to do a day trip up to a couple of dots on the maps about 200km's up the highway (we had 6hrs between school dropoff and pickup). Namely Kookynie and just down the track Niagara Dam. The plan was to enjoy a nice burger or something at the Kookynie pub but unfortunately for us the kitchen was closed that day :( plan B therefore was a couple of meat pies and head down to the dam.
This really was an interesting place and the story behind it is quite amazing if anyone is interested in reading the links - basically it was plagued with trouble and then when finally finished they discovered underground water located where the water was intended for... real white elephant story!
So enough of my blabbering... here's my happy snaps (only Niagara this time as we plan to go back to Kookynie for a better look and lunch) :)
Firstly the local council have done a real good job with heaps of plaques around telling us all about our history
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Although I've never been here before I can safely say the water level is pretty low at the moment. It still draws a crowds though and both camping sites above and below the dam had a few caravans parked up.
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Over at the mouth of the dam they had quite an interesting "debris trap" which I really enjoyed trying to be all arty and fancy with the camera ;)
Another plaque (sorry about the bird sh#t :mid:) but again the detail was impressive.
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The water eroding through the rocks over the years sure has taken its toll and I would love to see this place after a big rain.
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The Niagara town site was situated about 3km up the road and again the info was quite interesting in the plaques - it was the first place in Australia to have a pub on every corner of an intersection (4 of course) and when gazetted was meant to have 7 streets but only ever got to 2...
All these places are on this trek trail the government funded that runs through part of the goldfields and follows all these sites that once were...
Golden Quest Discovery Trail
ENJOY
