The Billion Dollar Man

I always knew that Darrell was valuable, but I never knew that he was worth $7,130,200.00, more or less.  That is the value of his weight in gold at the price of gold when he visited the Perth Mint.  This is one of the branches of the British Mint in Australia.  He toured and saw how gold was turned into coins, including one very large one (solid gold).







The Mint produces silver coins as well, and also does some other casting, such as this ANZAC memorial bell, one of a set of bells.  Interestingly enough, many of the bells are mounted upside down.

It all starts with finding gold.

The buildings in Perth are spectacular, especially the Bell Tower.  You can walk up over 100 steps to get to the observation level, or you can take the elevator.  Guess which one Darrell did?

Darrell saw buildings;  I saw rocks.  Western Australia is miles and miles of miles and miles.  Very little of the land is settled or even explored.  The aborigines have lived on the land for thousands of years, moving from area to area following the seasons and the game.  In the 1960's someone stumbled on some really unusual rock formations which have been named The Pinnacles.  There was really never reason for anyone to travel in this area.  The land is rocky sand with little moisture and only stunted bushes growing.  Scientist do not agree on how The Pinnacles were formed, but one thing they all agree on is that bits of seashells blowing in the strong wind combined with elements in the soil to form a substance that solidified into solids.  Some think the material got into the soil, was absorbed by trees growing there.  When sand covered the area from sandstorms, the trees died, but the solid minerals in the trees remained.  When later sandstorms blew away the sand, the stronger material remained.  However they were formed, there are a lot of them.

Bushes have thick, prickly leaves for protection.

This gives you some idea of the vastness of the area.

Those are not snow-capped mountains in the background.  The Indian Ocean is in the distance, and the blowing sand has formed dunes which move inland and cover the vegetation with very fine white sand.

Along the way we saw strange looking "trees" called grass trees or "black boys" because the early settlers thought that, from a distance, they looked like warriors with raised spears.

One of the largest industries in the area is the catching and processing of "crawfish" which we know as lobsters.  Our tour included a tour of the processing facility where the lobsters are inspected, sorted by size and packaged to be shipped, live, all over the world.  Unfortunately, there had been a power failure, so all the lobster were transferred to a different facility, but we saw where the work would have been done.  Then they fed us lunch.




















We stopped to see the beach.  You can see how the sand is trying to cover the near-by vegetation.