The Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail takes you to Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields, rich in gold, history and scenery, revealing the story of a unique engineering feat. Travel on the old Goldfields Road along which fortune seekers rushed in the 1890s. Stop to explore where they stopped to rest and fill their waterbags.
Prospectors learned that water is more precious than gold – some died of thirst – and a scheme was devised to deliver water further and higher than ever before to supply the goldfields. The well-signposted Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail follows this life-giving water east from its source in the forested Perth Hills, through the golden expanses of the Wheatbelt to the gold boomtown of Kalgoorlie.
This Top Trail is an easy 650 kilometres and is ideal for motorists who have a couple of days or more to explore the history, hospitality and horizons of Golden Pipeline Country. There’s plenty to get you out of your car: 100-year old pumping stations, remote sites where workers lived to keep the water flowing, walk trails around massive granite outcrops – 25 interpreted sites in all.