Golden WestWestern Australia is a land of superlatives and
extremes. With an area of 2.5 million sq.km, it is the largest
of the Australian states, occupying a third of the area of the
continent, with a coastline of over 12,500km.This immense area
has a population of only 1.66 million (1989), or 9.5 per cent of
the total population of Australia, and great expanses of the
state are almost uninhabited. To the east of the Heartlands
region is the Goldfields region, the barren plain with its
saltpans, shimmering pink in the sun. The old gold-mining towns
of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Leonora, and Coolgardie, are among
Western Australia's main tourist attractions. After Arthur
Bayley and William Ford found great quantities of gold nuggets
here in 1892 Coolgardie grew from nothing into a town which by
1900 had a population of 15,000, with 23 hotels, six banks and
several daily papers. But the superficial deposits of gold were
quickly exhausted, the prospectors moved on and many of the
town's buildings fell into ruin. Tour