This week on Back Roads, Heather Ewart travels to the town of Leonora in the goldfields of WA.
Eight hundred kilometres from Perth, Leonora is a place where many people pass through, but Heather seeks out the people that call the town home.
Heather arrives on the biggest event in Leonora’s calendar, the Leonora Gift. It’s the richest road mile running race in Australia. Now in its 20th year the race attracts some of the country’s best runners seeking to win the gold nugget prize.
Leonora raised athlete Kiara Reddingius has won the race six times and returns every year to support the local kids. A former nationally ranked heptathlete, Kiara went on to represent Australia in the two-woman bobsleigh event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, having switched to her new winter sport less than a year before.
Heather also meets aboriginal Tjupan man René Reddingius Jnr, who runs the youth centre. René Jnr is building on the work of his dad, René Snr, who was a teacher in the town for five decades.
They take Heather to visit Pricklepatch Farm, where Rene Snr runs programs mixing school studies with animal husbandry and other life skills for local kids.
Heather also visits Gwalia – it’s a real ghost town. It was once a busy hub with over fifteen hundred people. But in 1963 the big Sons of Gwalia mine shut and within a few weeks the town had almost completely emptied out.
Heather meets local multimedia artist Roderick Sprigg who takes her back to where he grew up in Gwalia. She also learns about one of the mine’s early engineers, Herbert Hoover, who would go on to become the 31st President of America.
Production credit: Executive Producer, Brigid Donovan. Story Producer, Damian Estall.
