One Year to Give: Gold Fever!

We decided a trip to WA, wasn't complete without making the 'detour' from Norseman to Kalgoorlie, and back again, before heading across the Nullabor. Isn't it common knowledge that WA is built on gold!!?

It all began in 1893 when a trio of Irishman, Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Dan Shea (as if they would be called anything else??) stumbled over some gold near Mt Charlotte - later to become Kalgoorlie. They soon had about 100 ounces of gold bundled up. At today's value that equates to about $167,000 worth. I wish I had've had that kind of stumble in Kalgoorlie!? This was soon followed by a couple of other 'lucky' blokes who were responsible for pegging the sites of the first two most profitable goldmines in the area, situated in what is now commonly known as "The Golden Mile" - about 5 kms south of Kalgoorlie, at Boulder.

Kalgoorlie - viewed from the Mount Charlotte Lookout

This sparked the "Gold Rush" to WA, and the Kalgoorlie area. With only an 11 inch average rainfall, water for mining, and domestic purposes was in short supply. The solution to this problem came with a fantastic engineering feat - the piping of water from the Mundaring Dam (near Perth) to Kalgoorlie, some 530 kms away. The Golden Pipeline Project was supported by the then Premier of WA, Sir John Forrest, and CY O'Connor designed and oversaw the construction of the pipeline but had to suffer lots of criticism for it. ('nay sayers' said it would never work, or the gold supply would run out and then it would be a worthless investment etc, etc). Sadly, CY O'Connor never got to see the success of the project, as he committed suicide not long before the projects completion. In 1903 the project was commissioned and the 'tap turned on'. Two days later water was coming out the other end, at the Mt Charlotte Dam and would be capable of supplying 23,000 kilolitres/day for the area. What a vision! (What about all that water wasted up in Kununurra??? - can it be got to South Australia somehow)?

Over the years their developed many kilometres of mining tunnels under the ground adjacent to Kalgoorlie/Boulder. (About 4000kms worth, evidently). Over the years this sort of mining, with so many individual operators became unprofitable. In the early 1980's Alan Bond's company began buying up individual mining leases to consolidate the mines and create greater efficiencies. Part of this involved developing the operation as an open pit mine. Of course "Bondy", went 'belly-up' and a couple of other big companies, Newmont Australia and Barrick Gold Corporation, bought him out and finished the process. And currently, Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines runs the mining operations.
The Super Pit (and it is HUGE) produces up to 850,000 ounces of gold every year (by my rudimentary calculations this equates to $1,419,500,000.00). Even with the huge costs they have, that is a lot of money!

The operators are keen supporters of the community and the community collaboration, consultation and involvement is really evident in Kalgoorlie. Tourism is an off shoot of this and there is a Lookout over the Super-Pit as well as allowing a company to run tours of the pit and facilities.

We thought we would participate in one of these tours to learn a bit more. However, some of their 11 inches of this year's rain began to fall, as some storm clouds gathered nearby. I'm not sure if it was fortunate or unfortunate, but we got halfway through our tour and they issued a "blue light warning". This means lightening has been detected within a certain distance from the mine and everyone must leave the pit area. So we had to leave. However, we did get our entire fee back - so only had half a tour, but it didn't cost us anything!

We did see lots still - huge trucks, loaders, water carts, tyres, ore piles and recieved heaps of info from the Tour Guide, as well as lucky enough to see them doing some blasting. The different colours in the clouds of dust rising from the exploded rock was amazing. They blast 3-4 times a week and almost immediately the trucks are lined up, ready to be loaded and take the ore off to the designated stockpile/processing area. They already know, from geologist testing prior to the blast, which ore is of higher grade. On average, 1 out of 4 trucks carries reasonably good quality ore, that contains approx $70,000 worth of gold in a load. The Chubb trucks come fairly often!!

The Super Pit

Little 'match box toys' at the bottom of the pit - drilling and preparing for blasting

No one was going to run over us, while we were on the mine tour.

Some interesting statistics:

The Super Pit is 3.2km long and 1.5km wide (hard to get all that in a photo)
they are currently down to 500m, below top and are allowed to go to 650m
they can only mine another 400m towards Kalgoorlie
the pit has only another 10 years of life being run as it is currently, and then decisions will have to be made. Eg. will they tunnel under Kalgoorlie (as the ore line runs in that direction. They obviously built the town on the "wrong" side of the mines! And they might have shifted Leigh Creek, but there's no chance they'll shift the 30,000 people that live in Kalgoorlie/Boulder.
after this time, they will still have stockpiles of the lower grade ore to process for gold for a good number of years.
KCGM employs approx 1000 people
a dump truck costs 4.5 million dollars, and they have 31 on site
the truck tyres cost (can't remember) - much more than our ute!
it takes only 45 mins to change those huge tyres
3 x triple road train tankers, come in per day to keep the massive fuel tanks 'topped-up