Goldfields or Fields of Gold?

For several days, I’ve been biking on a road called Goldfields Road. Parts of that road, I’ve discovered, has been labeled as part of the Goldfields Heritage Trail, and other sections are part of the Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail. (The Golden Pipeline is in reference to the pipes built to push water inland to towns where the gold mines were.)

It seems like everything is about “gold.” Further east also is the Goldfields Highway. I asked a host I was staying with if he knew the reason it was called Goldfields. “It’s the gold mines, of course,” he said. Like U.S. history, when gold was discovered in the early 1850s, hordes of people came rushing in to search for wealth. Instead of the amber waves of grain that could describe this area (it is also called the Wheat Belt), it is known for gold ore. Tourist pamphlets encourage people to come and learn to pan for gold, and reminisce of the old days. Soon I will reach the town of Kalgoorlie, which boasts the biggest open gold pit mine in the world. I find such an ore-focus discouraging.

Instead of gouging out the land to rob of what is under it, there is so much on the surface to enjoy. Even though I am riding in the fall, when the wheat and other crops has long died off, and even though this year is drier than normal, the land itself, in its stillness, is still pretty. In just four days, Nature showed that there is an abundance of wealth on the surface. I hope Australia doesn’t become like the U.S. where the latter has basically wiped out much of what nature had when the non-Native-American settlers came.