Kalgoorlie Adventures

We all slept quite well last night, even through the sound in the distance of a stamping machine crushing ore through the night (well this is a mining town). We got up, had breakfast and Mum decided Dad needed a good shearing!

After this we all piled into Uncle John's beast of a vehicle and headed up the road about 200 km to Kalgoorlie. This outback mining town has a population of just over 30 000 people and is quite a beautiful town. We stopped at the entrance to Kalgoorlie for some photos with the big Ore Buckets. Everything here is huge!

Speaking of huge, our next stop was the super-pit. Alan Bond first came up with the idea of buying out all of the smaller gold mines to make one huge mine - he was unable to bring his dream to fruition (busy doing naughty things with tax and famous paintings I think), but another major company took over his dream. It is almost impossible to describe the size of this huge mine - so perhaps some photos will help. In this first photo, see if you can see the huge mine truck driving down the road into the pit..... and then remember that a 4 wheel drive doesn't even come to the top of one of the tyres on the truck. If you look carefully, you will see a 4 wheel drive to the right of the truck, to give you an idea of the scale.

There are 32 of these trucks operating in this superpit, they cost 4 million dollars each and carry 225 tonne each load. The truck tyres cost $26 000 each, a total of $156 000 of tyres on each truck at any given time. Even more amazing are the big shovels. There is one to the right of the truck in the picture below. There are 4 of these huge machines in the pit, and they cost 10 million dollars each. Each shovel holds 11000 litres of fuel in its tanks (that's an awful lot of petrol stops for Fred). Each time they pick up a load in the shovel, they are picking up 60 tonnes of ore. They dump 4 loads into each truck. It is amazing to watch.So what do they get out of all of this? Well every huge truck load of ore yields just 19 ounces of gold. But at current prices, that is $10 115 of gold each load.

We came back to the super-pit at 1.00 as we had been told they would be blasting then. Quite hilariously, we missed seeing the actual blast as we were looking in the wrong direction! But we certainly heard it and felt it.... and mum managed to get a couple of photos of the dust caused by the blast (they have to wait 12 hours after a blast for everything to settle before they can start working in that area again.) In the pictures below, look at the trucks sitting on the edge of the blast site, about to be enveloped in dust. Interestingly, blasts can only happen on days when the wind is blowing in the right direction - as they must not allow the dust to spread over the town.

After this we went into Kalgoorlie to have a look around the town. There truly is a pub on every corner here and most of them are beautiful with ornate wrought iron lace-work around the verandas.

We stopped off at the beautiful old town hall. This is a magnificent building, filled with interesting paintings and artefacts. Mum quite enjoyed sitting in the Mayor's seat in the council chamber.

We also went for a drive along Kalgoorlie's infamous Hay Street - the "red-light" district of Kalgoorlie. Most of the brothels offer tours during the day time, however we decided to give it a miss (in case the men felt tempted).

We picked up some groceries (surprised to find the prices similar to home) - it was great to get some fresh fruit as we haven't had any since we went through the quarantine station on Saturday.

After this we drove on to Coolgardie for a cuppa. This quaint town was once a booming mining town - but is now quite a historical site. We were impressed by the green lawns in the park (watered with treated sewage effluent so the sign said). People in these little towns can be a little quirky and we stopped to photograph an interesting garden as we went through. I guess plants don't grow so well without water, so anything goes!

We set off for the long drive home, stopping only to photograph a beautiful wedge-tailed eagle. These birds are just so elusive and hard to photograph as they fly off as soon as you slow down.And finally, the beautiful trees we saw yesterday and today are called Salmon Gums.... so here's another photo of one of these extraordinarily beautiful trees. Tomorrow we are off to Esperance.