KALGOORLIE, Western Australia

Kalgoorlie had always been on my 'must visit' list for this trip. I have wanted to see the gargantuan open pit mine and get a sense of the kind of frontier mining town Kalgoorlie is famous for. Well, I'm glad i've ticked it off the list, but i wouldn't rush back!

Firstly, the SUPER PIT.

What a truly spectacular destination. The scale of the pit is quite unbelievable. It's almost 4km long, 1.6km wide and 600m deep. They plan to dig down another 100m over the next 2-3 years then move their operations underground. To give some perspective, the whole of Uluru could be buried inside the pit! It can also be seen from space! Despite the rather grotesque nature of what they've done to the landscape, it actually exposes the beautiful colours of the underground rock layers and has, whether you agree with mining or not, provided huge economic benefits to the region.

It is Australia's largest open pit gold mine and when you drive around, as we did, on a tour bus inside the gates, everything is scaled up to meet the demands of the 24/7, 365 days a year work. There are giant trucks, giant water processing plants, giant maintenance facilities, giant roads and giant personalities. To a novice like me, the whole endeavour seems a little fruitless when you're told that each one of the enormous trucks taking 240 tonnes (remember 1 tonne = 1000kg) of ore per load has roughly a golf ball size amount of gold in it (about 500gm) - the rest is waste! Apparently this 'fruitless' amount of gold is worth about $10,000 per load (and about $70-80,000 per hour!) so i guess the boffins who do the sums have determined there's still money to be made on the Golden Mile.

So how did the Super Pit begin life I hear you ask?

At a visit to the Hannan Tourist Mine (think Sovereign Hill on a smaller and far less impressive scale!), we learned that in 1893, Paddy Hannan, Thomas Flanagan and Dan Shea found nearly 100 ounces of gold in the dry red soil of what is now Kalgoorlie-Boulder. This sparked a gold rush and the 'Golden Mile' was created - an area with one of the richest gold deposits in the world. By the early 1900's there were 49 mines operating and more than 3,000km of underground workings along the Golden Mile. Fast forward 80 years and the situation hadn't changed all that much until Alan Bond came to Kalgoorlie wiedling his 'entrepeneurial spirit' (some may have other ways to describe his business dealings!) His vision for creating a low cost operation by consolidating all the smaller leases and developing an open pit mine was new thinking (and was arguably driven by new levels of greed!). Although Bondi's takeover bid failed, another company formed in 1989 (Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd (KCGM)) with the same purpose. They continue to manage the site today.

None of the extensive mining activity that has continued unabated since then would have been possible without the incredible courage and vision of Irish engineer Charles Yelverton O’Connor who defied critics to plan and construct the world’s (then) longest freshwater pipeline over the 530 km from Mundaring Weir near Perth to the Goldfields. Commissioned in 1896 and completed in 1903, The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme still supplies water to the homes and mines of the goldfields. It’s also still the world’s longest steel pipeline. Sadly, Charles committed suicide less than a year before final commissioning after a poilitician opposed to the project used the local press to attack his integrity and engineering credentials.

...back to our visit

So the massive trucks you see hauling the ore from the pit cost about $4 million each and last about 8 years or 146,000 loads. When fully loaded they can travel at a break-neck speed of 12km/hr. They are 2,300 horsepower and use 146 litres of diesel PER HOUR. It takes 8 minutes to fill their massive fuel tanks and costs about $5,000 per fill. Their giant tyres cost $35-40,000 each! I'm glad we're not travelling around Oz in one of those! The trucks operating in the super pit (loaders and diggers) are driven by 50/50 split of men/women so equal opportunity is alive and well in the modern Aussie mine.

They seriously look like Tonka trucks in the enormous hole though! Standard vehicles are barely recognisable and people are completely invisible from the top viewing areas. I've tried to capture the scale in some of the photos I've added below but i don't think you can get a real appreciation until you witness it in person.

We were also lucky enough (well...we were told it was lucky) to see a blast in the pit while we were there. After quite a few changes to the blast schedule, we headed to the public viewing platform just in time to witness the 'spectacle'. It was a little anti-climactic and we couldn't hang about to see the aftermath as the lightening activity in the area was a safety risk so we were shooed away.

As we know, Kalgoorlie's other famous 'attractions' are the brothels and pubs. We skipped the brothel tours but did notice the rather plentiful amount of pubs, particuarly those proudly displaying banners inviting us enjoy the skimpy barmaids after dark. Given the demographic of the town is quite different to its foundation years, I'm surprised so many of these 'institutions' continue to be commercially viable today.

KCGM expects to wind down mining operations over the next 10 years so it will be interesting to watch what happens to Kalgoorlie. It has clearly grown with the mining boom; will is also die when there's an inevitable 'bust' or will new prospectors keep arriving just as they have for the past 120 years? The super pit is already below sea level and a couple of huge pumps are needed to remove the ground water constantly spilling into the bottom. It's 5 times saltier than sea water so creates problems with corrosion. Once they stop mining in the Pit, they will let the water re-fill to it's natural level, which is exepected to be about 1/3 of the depth. It's difficult to imagine Kalgoorlie without the Super Pit but it is going to end...and soon. If you get a chance, I recommend taking a trip to see it with your own eyes. There will, no doubt, be pressure from some camps to fully restore the Super Pit to the original landscape, to completely erase all signs of ‘unnatural’ mining activity, but that would be to erase Kalgoorlie’s heritage.

Coolgardie

I had also been looking forward to visiting Coolgardie, the home of the 'Coolgardie safe'; a favourite antique relic of mine. For those who aren't familiar with the Coolgardie safe, it's a low tech but rather ingenious box designed to prolong the life of perishable food - invented, you guessed it, in Coolgardie in the 1890s by Arthur Patrick McCormick. Essentially, the 'box' was made of wire mesh, hessian, a wooden frame and had a galvanised iron tray on top. The tray was filled with water and a hessian bag was hung over the side with one of the ends in the tray to soak up the water. Gradually the hessian bag would get wet. When a breeze blew it would pass through the wet bag and evaporate the water. This would cool the air inside the safe, in turn cooling the food stored inside. They were still used regulalry until the mid twentieth century when refrigeration begame more popular and affordable.

The history of Coolgardie in the creation of the goldfields is relatively important but driving through the almost abandoned town, there's sadly little evidence of this. Still, it was great to visit!