Elaine had a slightly better day today but she really suffers at night.

Yesterday was a very interesting day, as I have already said we were camped at the free RV camp area outside the Gwalia museum. The Gwalia mine has a long history starting in the last decades of the 19th century. A lot is made of the fact that Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the USA, was an early mine manager and was instrumental in some very innovative activities that helped make the mine very profitable. It has had 3 incarnations, the first being the usual underground mining surviving a major fire and subsequent rebuild in 1921-1923. Then becoming unprofitable and closing 1963, reopening under new managements in the 80s as an open cut mine. There is now an enormous pit, quite beyond imagination that is many hundreds of metres deep and many hundreds of metres diameter. Now it once again has been under new management for some years and is once again an underground mine. This mine is some 1600 metres underground and huge ore trucks transport the ore from that depth underground to the surface! Again quite beyond imagination. It really needs to be seen to be appreciated.

I took a morning walk around the old ghost town. To start one has to realise that the buildings are slapped together tin shanties, some with hessian internal walls, quite an eye opener to the miners living conditions. There is Patronis Guest House which has hessian walls dividing the tiny rooms that people, mainly single men, lived in. In a modern house the laundry is bigger than these rooms! Then there is Mazzas Store which literally sold everything and anything. From there to houses that are unbelievably primitive in size and construction, tin outer walls and roof, hessian internals (mainly) and it is hard to imagine families living in these houses. There were cots and all sorts of old furniture still there as evidence that complete families lived in them. Then I visited the museum, another eye opener from the original headframe (which lowers men and materials into the mine and lifts them out again) to the gigantic steam engine that powers the headframe and loads of interested artefacts. I could go on for hours but suffice it to say that it was an great experience.

Today we packed up and drove 130km north to Leinster where we are in the caravan park and have caught up on our laundry. We also have power and are able to watch tv, at least madam is watching.