The Eastern Goldfields is part of the Western Australian Goldfields in the Goldfields-Esperance region of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

, covering the present and former gold-mining area east of

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

Extent and name origin

The region encompasses the towns of

Kalgoorlie Kalgoorlie-Boulder (or just Kalgoorlie) is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder as the surroundi ...

Boulder In geology, a boulder (or rarely bowlder) is a rock fragment with size greater than in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In ...

, Coolgardie, Kambalda,

Southern Cross CRUX is a lightweight x86-64 Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users and delivered by a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts. It is not based on any other Linux distribution. It also utilizes a ports system to ...

and other smaller settlements within this area. The name is derived in two parts: ''Eastern'' in relation to its location from

, and ''Goldfields'' as the name suggests comes from the mining of

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

in the region.

Vegetation and biological survey

In the 1980s, a series of surveys were reported for the broader region. The component areas were designated: * Lake Johnston - Hyden * Edjudina - Menzies * Youanmi - Leonora * Duketon - Sir Samuel * Kurnalpi - Kalgoorlie * Norseman - Balladonia * Sandston - Sir Samuel and Leonora - Laverton * Boorabbin - Southern Cross and Barlee - Menzies

Transport

The region was the destination of the long-running '' Westland'' overnight railway sleeper train run by Western Australian Government Railways; for decades this was the main means of travelling to the "coast" or metropolitan Perth. The ''

Prospector Prospector may refer to: Space exploration * Prospector (spacecraft), a planned lunar probe, canceled in 1962 * ''Lunar Prospector'', a NASA spacecraft Trains * Prospector (train), a passenger train operated by the Denver & Rio Grande Western ra ...

'' is now the main railway service into this area.

Water supply

Water to the area is supplied by the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme.

Literary culture

It was the region of inspiration for a group of writers - Gavin Casey, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Henrietta Drake Brockman and others. It has been an important cultural region as far as labour history and Australian political history, with a rich worker and

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

history. The history of the goldfields region also developed into a significant number of publications over time.

References