Conveniently forgetting to visit Kalgoorlie's main attraction, it's Raison D'Etre, the largest mining pit in the world, the pit of all pits, the ACTUAL POINT OF INCLUDING KALGOORLIE AND THE 16 HOUR DETOUR IN OUR ITINERARY IN THE FIRST PLACE - the Superpit. Despite my single-minded obession over the last 9 days accompanied with frequent (ladylike) grunts of "Superpit, Yeah!" (with a Texan accent, while wearing my cowboy hat), I nearly missed it! Nice one. Classic in fact. :)
It wasn't until I was just swerving onto the highway that we realised - and I instantly completed a completely illegal u-turn maneuver (squealing tires and all) to aim us back in the opposite direction, the Superpit Look-out. Hey, once you've been in trouble with the law... it's easy to become a repeat offender!
OK, so the average person would be wondering why a pit would be on my list of things to do - but anyone that knows me, knows this is just my cup of tea! Besides, it's another first!!!
The Superpit is much like the Grand Canyon, minus the river, green stuff, and natural beauty :) Also, there are digger shovels and tires to climb on! Yeah! The trucks in the picture are actually over 10 metres high! Each of the trucks carries about 50 tonnes of rock at a time... They look like ants - and this image only shows one third of the overall pit, nor does it depict the true depth of The Pit as it goes down a further 50 metres. 
The thing I am standing in on the right is a shovel and actually goes on the front of the microsopic digger in the picture (loading the trucks). And no, I did not mean to coordinate my outfit... wholly coincidental. There were 2 truck tires lying on their sides and I had the brilliant idea of climbing on one. I was totally shown up by a bunch of kids ranging in age from about 7 to 12 who leapt onto the other one in no time flat. Of course, they didn't think once about injuries, dirt, photographic angles etc... oh to be a kid again! I made it in the end, feeling very proud of myself!
Following the eventful morning, we said a sad goodbye to the Superpit and hit the Highway once more (at a sedate 120kmh), heading for Perth. Since all the tours we'd looked at stopped in the "historic township of York with its quaint hotel and beautifully restored pubs and shops", we decided to make this an afternoon stop. Kelly, as the navigator and Chief of Mapreading was in charge of determining the route. When we saw the sign for "York", we thought nothing of leaving the highway to follow what surely must be the most direct route... and yes, it was the most direct route - clear accross dirt tracks and country roads, past farms where farmers were burning off the fields, and with zero signage along the way... when got to a t-junction:
Marisa: I feel like we should be going left, what does the map say?
Kelly: This road if not on the map.
Marisa: What, not at all?
Kelly: Well, there's a really faint line here (pointing to Avis map), but that doesn't have any t-junctions...
Marisa: Shit, no one even knows where we are...
Kelly: Well, we could always go ask at a farm or something, although, did you see Wolf Creek?
At which point I voted to go left (lucky guess) and Kelly told me in detail about the movie where 3 backpackers are abducted in the outback by a farmer and 2 end up carved into handy freezer-size chunks.
York was so interesting we didn't even get out of the car and just drove straight through - ending back up on the highway we'd been following from Kalgoorlie until we followed the signs to York. But hey, it COULD have been awesome... you never know! And being lost in the middle of nowhere, about 200km from Perth was definitely interesting...
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