Letter from the Bed of the 31st President of the United States

When we decided to travel around Australia for a year I expected beautiful beaches, red dust, flies, tropical rainforests....many many things. But I never expected to be sleeping in what used to be the bedroom of Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the US and father of the Hoover Dam. But here we are!

When Herbert Hoover was a very young man (23, and basically on his first job) he came to Australia as a mining engineer employed to identify mining sites with good potential. One mine that he identified and helped to acquire for his employer was the Sons of Gwalia mine - located in outback WA. He ended up becoming the manager of what was to become a very successful gold mine. It sounds as though HH was an ambitious, aggressive and relatively cut-throat operator. He made his name in the company by cutting costs, often at the expense of miner safety. And he is particularly well known for endeavouring to break the mining unions by importing cheap labour from Italy and the Balkans - and typical of all foreign CEO's he ended up firing most of the local management and filling the place with Americans (sound familiar to any of you guys from Coles?). His arrogance got up the nose of his boss and eventually he was transferred to China. But not before he built a grand new managers house, in which he lived briefly. According to the literature here this is the only house that an American President has resided in outside of the United States.

The mine at Gwalia eventually closed in 1963 and almost overnight it became a ghost town. So Hoover House is part of a museum which is endeavouring to maintain what is left of that ghost town. It's a fantastic place. This house is beautiful, and what remains of the old mining equipment and miners cottages is fascinating. When the price of gold went up in the '80's the mine reopened, and although the original owners went bankrupt, the new owners continue to mine the site in huge open pits. So the Hoover House balcony looks directly into an active mine site.

Full credit to Rod and Lisa Hands, our official forward scouts. Rod and Lisa are just finishing up a long tour around Australia, so they have been a vital resource as we have been planning our own trip in their wake. If it weren't for them there is no way that we would have found this place as it is in the middle of nowhere and very poorly advertised.

I can hear you all breathing a sigh of relief that we actually managed to get out of Alice Springs...and we have certainly done that as we are now about 1200 kms SW of Alice.

We went first to Chambers Pillar, about 120k south of Alice via an unmade road, with the last 45k being pretty corrugated and requiring us to cross a few huge red sand dunes. We got there in the middle of the afternoon and simply found a shady place to hide from the almost unbearable heat and flies. Once again we were pretty isolated, with only a Swiss couple and a French/Thai couple to share the camp ground. The rock formations of Chambers Pillar and Castle Rock are what one comes for and we were there for both sunrise and sunset, taking pictures and gaping in awe. Absolutely stunning, but God it was hot!

We then started to head west. First to Yulara, the resort village at Ulura (Ayers Rock), where we did absolutely none of the requisite tourist things (because we had done these 3 years ago) and stayed only long enough to get our permits to travel through the aboriginal land we would be crossing in NT and WA. Then we headed out on the Great Central Road. We had expected this 1100km stretch of road to take us 4 days to cross, but we did it in 2. This is largely because it was so horrendously hot and the flies so pervasive that you didn't want to stop anywhere until the sun was setting. We stayed in a couple of pretty horrendous "caravan parks", first in the aboriginal community of Warburton and then in the mining town of Laverton.

We have been exposed to alot of the public face of aboriginal life while in NT and particularly crossing into WA and I keep feeling that I should write about this experience. But at this stage I don't think that I can because my feelings are so conflicted. Suffice it to say that the picture is bleak and the answers, if there are any, are certainly not apparent.

So that brings us here to Hoover's bedroom in Gwalia where we sit in a a beautifully made up room with clean clothes, while our completely filthy camp trailer sits outside. Dennis is reading the paper - which reminds me to add another observation that I have made on this trip. The daily news is very much like a soap opera. Once you get hooked on the news it's like a drug and you think its critical to your life to watch, read or listen to the news at least every day, if not every hour. But, what I have discovered, is that you can go for days and weeks without the news and still not have missed much and certainly be able to catch up to the storyline within a day or two. Quite liberating!

I will see if I can rouse Dennis from his reading (which I now notice is studying the car ads) to add a few words of his own.

DENNIS SPEAKS...

It feels like we are having the weekend off the 2nd one in 3 months now since we started and to be lying about in real comfort is a treat. The trip across the desert from Alice had few highlights however what stood out was the vegetation, not what I was expecting at all as it was reasonalbly green in parts and not just the sand. Wildlife was minimal with a few Camels and not much else apart from wrecked cars abandoned by the locals after they were run into the ground (seems like its a part of the culture). We met the local Sherriff and his deputy in one of the parks we stayed in, fortunately they were friendly and we had a chat, the area they cover of Aboriginal land is larger than England to get some perspective. As we got further into WA the road kill became more prevelant and so too did the Eagles feasting on the corpses, a real sight to see these graceful birds taking off in front of the car as we came upon them. We have clocked up some 14,000 klms and the vehicles (toys) are going well albeit that we do have some issues arise that we seem to manage to repair. Our equipment has also come in handy rescuing on 2 occassions other travellers with flat tyres. This week we purchased an emergency beacon just in case. Our travels have taken us way out back and at times outside of my comfort zone which has been interesting to observe. Steph continues to impress with the camp cooking and we are having a great time. Well, now looking forward to the Southern part of WA and the coast.

Not much golf at present and resisted playing today as the course in Leonora has no grass at all, not even the tees so hanging out for Kalgoorlie.

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