Hawthorns excellent win last night beating Geelong again only when it counts most! I guess we will need to be near a TV next weekend as well. No idea where we will be then. I suppose the radio is a backup but there are many dead zones out here where you get nothing at all, AM or FM.

We had a super pit tour booked for 1PM so Sharon did some washing and we stuffed around for a while before we did a quick pack and headed off to see the sights of Kalgoorlie. I am afraid we did not read about much that excited us overly so we headed off to the super pit public viewing area. There was a lot of information here and a good view of the pit. It is HUGE and getting bigger. After that we headed off to the super pit shop but as we have managed to do all this trip it was closed. It was open yesterday! Instead we went down the road to the Mt Charlotte lookout. There is a resovoir on the hill here that is the end of the Coolgardie Goldfields water scheme. Completed in 1903 and what many thought was impossible they take water from Perth to here and beyond through a series of lakes and pumps. The area would not exist as it is today with out it as water was always the problem in early goldfields. They get the water through 560Km of pipe to get it here and raise it a lot higher than Perth along the way. The techniques used were ground breaking at the time and copied all over the world.

Did we say things were big around here

Kalgoorlie from Mt Charlotte lookout

The super pit came about from a vision of a guy called Allan Bond. You may remember him, Bell Resources and the America’s Cup etc. He did not ever achieve what he intended but came close. The golden mile was covered in small claims and operators and he saw that it would be much more profitable and efficient to mine the whole area as one mine due to economies of scale. He started buying up all the leases to combine them all into one mine. Eventualy in 1989 it was achieved but not quite by Bond, he never quite got the last few of leases over the line.

This is how it once looked

The golden mile had shafts and tunnels all over it which went to 1.6Km in depth, no mean feat for pick and shovel stuff. Apparently all the shafts and tunnels end on end would add up to roughly 3000Km. The amazing thing is you can see these old tunnels in the walls of the pit where they have intersected them. In places it was a bit like a swiss cheese.

You may be able to see some of the old tunnels?

Quick lunch and into town to catch the tour bus. I had a look at some fancy metal detectors as I have always thought that could be a bit of fun. After prices from $6,500-$3,500 I just took the brochures! On the bus we headed out to the pit with our driver and about 20 other people. The driver was a miner of many years and worked under ground and above ground and excellent knowledge of the operation. The process is quite complex and goes through many different stages depending on the ore quality put in at the start.

All manner of ‘big stuff’ to look at. They mine in the pit as well as underground here. Driving in about 25Km out of town there is a huge smoke stack, this is the Giji roaster, also part of the processing. The gold is inside another mineral that they burn off in the Giji roaster to get to it. It is out of town as it produces sulphur gas. There are several other different processes at the plant to extract the gold. They produce 4x25Kg bars a day worth about $3 million dollars. The bars are sent to Perth where they are further refined to remove copper and silver (pays for the extra processing) to end up with 99.99% gold that goes to Fort Knox for trading to who ever buys the stuff on the world market.

our tour bus

Part of the pit

More big stuff moving the earth from one spot to another

and dropping it in a hole

To crush it up

and send it through all manner of ‘processes’

Back at camp the revelers from the cup are starting to ramp up and wander in so it could be a long night here! Also the Dockers are crushing the Swans at the minute so that could fuel it as well.