Nearby to Kalgoorlie are the Ghost Towns of Kanowna, Broad Arrow and Coolgardie which was once the third largest town in Western Australia and the site of the first gold discovery. In Coolgardie, you can visit the Exhibition, Pharmacy and Railway Systems; Warden Finnertys 1895 residence and a working state battery.
A section of the original pipe that was laid by the navies carrying out C.Y.OConnors plans is visible at Coolgardie, after all of these years.
Also close by are the Old Gold Mining towns of Kambalda, Norseman and Widgiemooltha.
In 2002, the Perth International Arts Festival commissioned British Sculptor Antony Gormley to produce something different for the 2003 Festival of Perth. Antony Gormley visited the outback to search for a site the more remote the more in the vast interior the better. The project was called Inside Australia.
Gormleys plan was to put 100 stick-like figures spread across the wide expanse of a salt pan called Lake Ballard. Lake Ballard itself is a 40-minute 4WD along a rough track from the little outback town of Menzies. Menzies is 650 km from Perth so Gormley certainly got inside Australia. Unfortunately the project ran over greatly budget so only 51 stick statues were placed on the harsh salt pan. However, the project was so successful that instead of being dismantled at the end of the Festival, the statues have been left in situ and have become a tourist icon of the outback.
