Kulgoolah

"Kulgooluh/Karlkurla" - Aboriginal for the silky pear common to the region.
Kalgoorlie - English for the one of worlds great gold fields.

For a hundred years since the finds at Coolgardie and surrounding areas sparked a huge gold-rush, Kalgoorlie has been famous around the world for its massive reserves of the precious metal.

The flood of diggers pouring into the Goldfields from Australia and all corners of the world changed Western Australia forever. The struggling colony, which had just won self government from Britain in 1890, was transformed into a boom state.

Economic foundations were laid for it to enter the 20th century - and the new nation of Australia. History records that without the votes of the Goldfields diggers it is unlikely Western Australia would have joined the new Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.

Today it is easy to forget just how tough those early days must have been. Imagine, trying to walk to Kalgoorlie from Perth or Esperance, no towns or roads along the way, no certain water supplies, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded high with food and gear, heading for a dot on the map in some of the toughest country in the world.

We dont know for certain how many of the first diggers did not make it to the Goldfields, perishing along the way. Nor do we know how many reached the fields only to fall victim to typhoid and other diseases, which swept the Goldfields during the early years.

 
However, we do know that many survived and in the space of a few years transformed the region, towns springing up like desert flowers after rain, turning the Goldfields into the economic and political centre of the state.

Almost as quickly as they came many towns disappeared. When the easy gold was gone the diggers moved out, leaving the towns to wither away, gold their only reason for existence. Today they are little more than names on a map. Even for those that survived, the post-boom years brought change and tough times.

Kalgoorlie-Boulder survived because of its enormous gold reserves and the vision of the builders of the water pipeline form Perth. Although the early 1900s saw most of the easy gold being worked out, big companies arrived to take the search deep underground, the permanent water supply from the pipeline providing a guarantee that the region could survive. Headframes sprouted along the Golden Mile and with the tailings and mullock dumps, became the symbols of the Goldfields.

The completion of the water pipeline in 1903 also enabled millions of hectares of land between Perth and the Goldfields to be opened up, much of it by former diggers who had come to Western Australia searching for gold.

For more than 50 years gold production declined, with a significant revival during the depression years of the 1930s and many other fluctuations along the way. Kalgoorlie-Boulder today is a bustling, thriving, cosmopolitan city of more than 30,000 people providing impetus for a healthy mining industry and a source of enjoyment for the many visitors who have discovered its historic treasures.