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Five hundred kilometres east of Perth, at the end of the Great Eastern Highway , lie the Eastern Goldfields . Just over a century ago, gold was found in what still remains one of the world's richest gold-producing regions. Lack of fresh water made life very hard for the early prospectors, driven by a national economic depression into miserable living conditions, disease and, in most cases, premature graves. Nevertheless, boom towns of thousands, boasting grand public buildings, several hotels and a periphery of hovels, would erupt and collapse in the length of time it took to extract any payable ore. In 1892 the railway from Perth reached Southern Cross , just as big finds turned the rush into a national stampede. This huge influx of people accentuated the water shortage, until the visionary engineer C.Y. O'Connor oversaw the construction of a 556-kilometre pipeline from Mundaring Weir to Kalgoorlie in 1903. By this time many of the smaller gold towns were already in decline, but the Goldfields' wealth and boost in population finally gave WA the economic autonomy it sought in its claim to statehood. In the years preceding the goldrush, the area was briefly one of the world's richest sources of sandalwood , an aromatic wood greatly prized throughout Asia. Supplies in the Pacific had become exhausted so that, by 1880, the perfumed wood was WA's second-largest exportable commodity after wool. Exacerbating the inevitable over-cutting came the goldrush's demand for timber to prop up shafts or to fire the pre-pipeline water desalinators. Today the region is a pit-scarred and prematurely desertified landscape, dotted with the scavenged vestiges of past settlements. The Goldfields are centred around the rich reef of gold adjacent to the twinned towns of Kalgoorlie-Boulder , with Kalgoorlie being the thriving, energetic core. This prosperous town's unexpected vitality is accentuated by stagnating or decaying settlements all around it: adjacent Boulder and Coolgardie to the west, and the semi-abandoned communities and ghost towns in the desert to the north. Even if you're not planning to pass through the Goldfields, a couple of days based in Kalgoorlie are worth the excursion from Perth - if for nothing else than the novelty of riding on the Prospector , the daily rail link between Perth and Kalgoorlie, which stops off at all the towns along the highway. Greyhound Pioneer, Goldfields Express and Westrail buses depart with similar regularity (and journey times) and a visit to the Goldfields can be undertaken as part of a two-thousand-kilometre loop along WA's southern coast, making use of Perth's inexpensive car-rental agencies. The Streetsmart Goldfields Touring Map is highly recommended, especially if you're thinking of exploring the area north of Kalgoorlie.
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