Winter 2019 - OZ 3 The Royal Mint of Perth

2019 - OZ  3   The Royal Mint of Perth

The Perth Mint

Gold!   Wherever there is gold, people go to find it, dig it up, rub it, hold it, and admire it. The urge to possess gold in some people is very strong. It’s called Gold Fever and it can be contagious. History is full of episodes of owning gold. The Gold Standard was the economic backbone of the U.S. for a long time. French Aristocracy loved their gold coins. Gold covered God Statues show the attraction for gold.      

 Gold, Gold, Gold.

Sculpture of the 1991 Gold Strike

Carol found an advertisement that Perth has a Royal Mint and a Museum with a little show to make us understand how gold is processed at this Mint.

She also said, it’s not far away, we can walk to it. It’s just a few blocks away from our Hotel.

That's a Lot of Weight Gold

Right!  We found out it was something like 30 blocks away, took us about 90 Minutes to walk to and all that in heat of 32+ degrees Celsius. Phew! But we made it.

And the visit was ‘worth’ it.   How much worth?   For Carol it was worth her weight in Gold. The Mint told her ‘if’ she were to be paid for her weight she would be worth:  $ 4,495,750 dollars.

Mine was a tad more, ahem:  $7,064,750 for me, it just shows you…. I am no light weight!

Tour Guide Explaining the Process

Pouring Off the Molten Gold

It was an informative visit. A ‘performance’ of a meltdown helped us to understand how gold is melted into bullion. A whole small ‘smithy’ was set up, with the instructor really melting down gold and then forming it into a brick. Fascinating!

After Cooling With Water - A Gold Bar From Nuggets

 Ah, GOLD! It was found and dug up in Western Australia and so much gold was found that Australia decided to build a mint in 1899 in the city of Perth. It was the first Mint operated by Australia. In the first 2 decades after opening the goldfields in Western Australia 800 TONNES of gold were processed. In Monetary value?

Just over 100 million pounds Sterling:   Depending on the rate and time:   over 130 million U.S. $ worth. It would be worth a lot more if the information given to me was the number in the year 1900.

Gold brings out the greed, the speculation, the drive for riches.

Stamping Gold Coins

Possession of gold does something to the brain: it disregards ‘nice’. It squanders resources. Gold might cause a mental breakdown, the NEED to possess it is like a radiation illness, you can’t feel it but you can see the bad results in later years. 

Weights - 1896

Australia had many ‘gold rushes’. Some not reported, some in the Eastern Half of the continent, there is a whole slew of people digging for gold, for treasure, for a relief of poverty, for all kinds of reasons. Gold takes over, reasoning is left behind. Gold = Money.  Some people just can’t get enough of it.     

There were some really nice examples of the nuggets found near Perth in the Museum.

Golden Beauty

"Golden Beauty” is a blob of gold weighing 11.46 KG (368.60 ozs) in today’s gold prices worth: $ 694,490.32 dollars.   A good find if you could just ‘find’ it.

 Newmont, Normandy Nugget, 2nd Largest Still In Existance

But how about this one:   the Newmont, Normandy Nugget found in 1995 in Newmont, Normandy, Western Australia. It’s a nugget with a weight of 819.02 ozs.   Worth   $ 1,543,140.15 dollars.

And a guy just walking around in a dried up riverbed, found this blob of gold, right there, under his feet, kind of ‘stepped ‘ on it.

More Huge Nuggets

No wonder men and women scour the neighborhood in the old goldfields looking for GOLD.

You might think this was then and that does not happen any longer?  Oh, yeah?

I met a fellow who walks around the old goldfields with a metal detector. He finds small amounts, small flakes of gold here and there but at $ 1884.13/oz in today’s market it does not take a lot of GOLD to make some serious money.

Yes, he just walked around, picks up gold and then sells it.

Yes, he was kind of a hippy kind of a guy, but hey… Gold is gold. That was his ‘work’. He lived off of it!  One (1) gram of gold is worth (depending on purity) between $ 30 to $ 50 dollars.

A 1 Million Dollar Coin

Did you catch the Gold Fever yet?   All these numbers make you think?   

All you have to be is ‘lucky’!!!

Other Side of the Coin

Just in case you wonder what BIG looks like… here is a picture of just ONE gold coin on display at the mint. This ONE coin weighs a TON and it is worth over $ 50,000,000.00 dollars. That is Fifty Million… count all the zeros.

Australian Souvenir

Carol was lucky!  She received a nice pendant made with Gold. No, not ‘of’ gold, I said ‘with’ Gold. Pure Gold items at the mint, in the store were beautiful but also extremely pricey.

Here are some pictures of some items for sale in the Perth Mint.

Exquisite and Expensive

But Its Not a BMW

Winter 2019 - OZ 2 First day in Perth

2019 OZ  2   First day in Perth

Exploring Perth

I found the hotel Peppers Kings Square Hotel online and booked a 1 night stay. It was an easy drive from the Airport to downtown Perth and we found this new Hotel relatively easily. Parking the car was handled by the hotel staff and the room included breakfast, so we are all set for some time in Perth.

Where do we go? Perth is not a huge town, but not that small either. About 2 million+ inhabitants make up the greater area population but we concentrated on just downtown Perth. Perth is the most Western major city in Australia and a somewhat ‘forlorn’ tourist attraction. 

The Swan Tower

Carol and I have no itinerary; all we know is that in a month from now we have to be in Melbourne for our flight back to Toronto. We have this rental car, which we’ll drop off in Melbourne and that will be it. We have absolute freedom of movement, of what to do, or see or not go to. 

Do we go north from Perth?  Or do we go south?  Do we drive through the desert, or as they say here the ‘Outback’?  It is all up to us. It all starts here in Perth, what will we do, what is there to see? 

A Small Corner of the Opus Stadium

We opt to take the HoHo bus for our short time in Perth; it should give us an overview as what Perth is all about. I don’t expect much and my feelings were confirmed. I know the Tourist Office of Perth wants to attract tourists, but… there just is nothing ‘spectacular’ in or around Perth. Our HoHo tour was a bit boring, I took some photos but Carol might disagree. She liked the Bell Tower area, we did not get off the bus however, it was a bit late in the day to explore, so we just rode the bus. We saw and passed the Optus Stadium, but, again, it was just a drive-by.

Entering King's Park

The most impressive section of town was in the Kings Park. I liked the vistas of the shoreline offered from this vantage point but also, given one had weeks to spend in Perth, there are activities that I could have explored more deeply.

View of the Shoreline From King's Park

Yet we have to make choices, I am a traveler, just traveling through town, seeing what there is to see while I am there. I am sure that if I lived in Perth I would have a totally different outlook on the city, but for me Perth was just a stopover.  

An Idyllic Scene in King's Park

Outdoor Sculpture

We did notice a wonderful assortment of public art sculptures throughout Perth, though. It shows me there is a much deeper, artistic side of Perth I know nothing about. 

The Cactus

More Sculpture

Carol took some pictures of some intriguing sculptures yet I did not take notes of who the artist was nor what each sculpture represents.

I did however like this one:  James Angus’ “Grow Your Own”  Sculpture which the locals call ‘the Cactus’. 

Traditional and New Architecture

So, on day one we had to decide, do we stay here a week or do we travel on?

We have 3500 km to drive, and there is …hopefully… lots to see on the way.

Half-Timbered Building

What a Contrast in Architecture

We decided to head towards Melbourne and see how much time is left over at the end, maybe we’ll stay someplace closer to Melbourne later. And thus, we picked the ‘southern’ route, a traveled route, but not so much traveled as the route from Cairns to Melbourne, for example.

We had a good day on day one…

Now we are off to explore Western and Southern Australia as we see fit. We will not write down each day… that would be too cumbersome and even boring, but we will pick highlights that will add up anyway.    

See you down the road!