EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

In 1893 Paddy Hannan (then 53 years old) and his mates, Tom Flannigan and Dan O'Shea, brought renewed meaning to the expression "the luck of the Irish" when a lame horse forced them to camp by the tree which still stands at the top of Egan Street. With their instincts highly attuned after eight months of prospecting around Coolgardie, they soon found gold all around them: as the first on the scene, they enjoyed the unusually easy pickings of surface gold. Ten years later, when the desperately needed water pipeline finally gushed into the Mount Charlotte Reservoir, Kalgoorlie was already established as the heart of WA's rapidly growing mineral-based prosperity, a position it still retains. As sole survivor of the original rush, revitalized by the 1960s nickel boom, Kalgoorlie has benefited from new technology that has largely dispensed with slow and dangerous underground mining. Instead, the fabulously rich " Golden Mile " reef east of town - which Boulder was originally built to serve - is being devoured wholesale by machinery and explosives to create the vast, open-cast "Super Pit".

Proud of its history, isolation and continued prosperity, Kalgoorlie is one of the most parochial towns in a country that's full of them. An ongoing gentrification programme means that soon sophistication in "Kal" will no longer be regarded as a fully clothed barmaid, and, if nothing else, the Federation-era architecture and history deserve to be appreciated. The city has dramatically grown over the past ten years, but still clings to vestiges of its colourful past. Even in the sniggeringly louche red-light district of Hay Street, only three of the infamous "tin shack" brothels remain in business, and, interestingly enough, they forbid any male ownership or control. But Kal remains a Working Man's Town, a dinky-di testament to the ethos of hard work and hard play that flourished in Australia's Anglo-Celtic heyday. The town is still a good place to find employment if you have engineering-related skills, though expect to work nothing less than twelve hard and dusty hours a day.

Start your tour of the town by taking a walk up to the top of Hannan Street, where the bright red head-frame immediately attracts your attention. This is the impressive entrance to the Museum of the Goldfields (daily 10am-4.30pm; free), right next to the spot where Paddy and his crew found their first, auspicious nuggets. Inside is a modern display of Goldfields artefacts and history, with the very stuff that keeps the town going viewable in the basement vault. Aboriginal history and the sandalwood industry are also covered in this excellent introduction to the area, and there's a lookout over the town from the top of the red-head frame. Next door is the British Arms pub, now a coffee shop but better known as Australia's narrowest pub.

Hannan Street itself is one of Kalgoorlie's finest sights, with its superbly restored turn-of-the-twentieth-century architecture, imposing public buildings and numerous flamboyant hotel facades. You're welcome to inspect the grandiose interior of the town hall (Mon-Fri 9am-4pm; free), with its splendid hall and less impressive art gallery. It's only when you stop to reflect that this is a remote, hundred-year-old town in the West Australian desert that the stunning wealth of the boom years, which still continues, is brought home to you. Outside, a replica of a bronze statue of Paddy himself invites you to drink from his chrome-nozzled waterbag - the much vandalized original is inside the town hall.

The School of Mines Museum (Mon-Fri 10am-4pm; free), on the corner of Egan and Cassidy streets, perhaps outstrips most visitors' enthusiasm, with its vast display of minerals and replicated nuggets; just over the road, on Maritana Street, is the stop for the Boulder-bound bus.