As I arrived late yesterday I didn’t have a chance to look around town, so I decided to stay another night. This morning I did some washing and trip planning for the next few days. Then I headed out for the day. First up was some grocery shopping to restock the pantry and then the day was free.
I headed over to the lookout for the Super Pit. This is the name given to the open cut gold mining pit just outside of town. That is actually not quite correct for the pit runs from basically the top of main street S to Boulder. The pit eventually will be 3.8km by 1.5km by 500m deep – massive. The impressive Golden Mile.
The pit was actually a result of Alan Bond’s endeavours in the 1980’s trying to buy up all the individual mining licenses to consolidate them all and thus use modern equipment to open cut mine. Prior to that there was a lot of smaller licences using underground mining techniques. He didn’t succeed in this endeavour but it did eventuate and the mining is now performed by KCGM (Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mining) for the partners that now have the mine.
The pit is massive, and as expected work continues on weekends and there is blasting most days. The trucks crawl their way up from the bottom to the surface like snails following the leader. (Double click on this picture and in the background are the trucks just reaching the pit top.)
Next up, to the water reservoir to get a look over the towns and a little history on this endeavour. I hadn’t realised that the Golden Pipeline was an engineering feat, ranking internationally along with the Snowy Mountain Scheme and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The water pipeline was built in 1903 and carries water from the hills near Perth all the way to the goldfields of Kalgoorlie.
To end the day I headed to the WA Museum in town and this was again extremely interesting. This is the 3rd or 4th museum that I have visited run by the WA Museum and all have been fantastic. Its theme obviously was gold, the history, people, culture and mining. They have gold in a vault
down stairs, a rig out front that you can take a lift up to get panoramic views over the town.
I didn’t make it to the Mining Hall of Fame which was an actual underground mine, now a museum, where you don the gear and climb down ladders to the second underground level, crawl through spaces, see some mining and then catch the jerry lifts back to the surface. I was tempted, but with some long riding ahead I just didn’t want to stress the knees and possibly make for some uncomfortable travelling.
The town has a lot of historical buildings and places. From the old court house and post office, the original pubs and bars with skimpily clad bar girls to the old places for the ladies of the night (take a tour by day and still operating by night, only just down the road form Woolworths & Coles). Quaint!
It was a hot day reaching 34C and I hope the warm weather continues. All in all a productive and interesting day.
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