Checked out of the Perth hotel and drove back up to caravan park where we had stored the van, then south to Fremantle.
Had a quick explore of the town, admiring all the old buildings and the wharf area. The Esplanade hotel area is beautiful, streets curving around the sea shore, old architecture painted in soft colours giving a Mediterranean air. (Note from Pat: See if you can spot places where Pam adds comments.)
Woops. I forgot about the Mint.
While in Perth, we visited the West Australian Mint, on the advertised promise of seeing gold bars melted down and cast. The tour guide pointed out that it is a West Australian Mint, not a federal one. It was started after the Kalgoorlie gold rush had brought thousands of prospectors, heaps of gold, but no additional currency to this remote area. The British government decided it was easier to let the colonials have their own mint, rather than sending cash. In hindsight it was a very dumb decision.
The tour guide was a regular Mint employee, who conducted tours along with his other duties. He pointed out that a Mint is not a bad business to be in: After all, it makes money. Yuk, yuk, yuk.
We saw the second largest gold nugget in the world, the largest having been spirited away to Las Vegas. We saw other large lumps of gold. Gold embedded in quartz. Gold mixed with sand. All sorts.
Through thick, toughened glass windows, we watched workers produce commemorative coins, some with values in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The machines producing the coins are nothing more than ordinary punch presses and the workers appeared as enthusiastic as I was operating similar machinery for $1.15 per hour at the Utility Products company in Milwaukee in the summer of 1966.
It was possible to buy take-away gold at only a bit more than double the market rate. There appeared to be few takers.
For the finale, we were herded into a viewing area with a glowing furnace featured at the front. A burley Mint worker came out, explained a bit about the history of the workshop, then lifted a glowing crucible out of the furnace, tipped the liquid gold into a mould, dropped the mould into a bucket of water and showed us a $250,000 gold ingot. He didn’t pass it around. We all cheered.
The sight was enough to awaken the avarice of a Wall Street bad mortgage broker in the most ascetic Tibetan monk.
Had a quick explore of the town, admiring all the old buildings and the wharf area. The Esplanade hotel area is beautiful, streets curving around the sea shore, old architecture painted in soft colours giving a Mediterranean air. (Note from Pat: See if you can spot places where Pam adds comments.)
Woops. I forgot about the Mint.
While in Perth, we visited the West Australian Mint, on the advertised promise of seeing gold bars melted down and cast. The tour guide pointed out that it is a West Australian Mint, not a federal one. It was started after the Kalgoorlie gold rush had brought thousands of prospectors, heaps of gold, but no additional currency to this remote area. The British government decided it was easier to let the colonials have their own mint, rather than sending cash. In hindsight it was a very dumb decision.
The tour guide was a regular Mint employee, who conducted tours along with his other duties. He pointed out that a Mint is not a bad business to be in: After all, it makes money. Yuk, yuk, yuk.
We saw the second largest gold nugget in the world, the largest having been spirited away to Las Vegas. We saw other large lumps of gold. Gold embedded in quartz. Gold mixed with sand. All sorts.
Through thick, toughened glass windows, we watched workers produce commemorative coins, some with values in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The machines producing the coins are nothing more than ordinary punch presses and the workers appeared as enthusiastic as I was operating similar machinery for $1.15 per hour at the Utility Products company in Milwaukee in the summer of 1966.
It was possible to buy take-away gold at only a bit more than double the market rate. There appeared to be few takers.
For the finale, we were herded into a viewing area with a glowing furnace featured at the front. A burley Mint worker came out, explained a bit about the history of the workshop, then lifted a glowing crucible out of the furnace, tipped the liquid gold into a mould, dropped the mould into a bucket of water and showed us a $250,000 gold ingot. He didn’t pass it around. We all cheered.
The sight was enough to awaken the avarice of a Wall Street bad mortgage broker in the most ascetic Tibetan monk.
Since we had run into the Milner’s twice (at Katherine and again at Denham), we finally decided to have a chat and a meal with Glyn and Karen. Pam and I drove back from Fremantle to meet them at a pub about three blocks from where we had been staying. (Everything we do is carefully planned.) A really pleasant evening, with minimal 'teacher talk'.
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