Kalgoorlie Mining

Kalgoorlie is absolutely a mining town. As you drive in from the south, you see old spoil heaps and exploratory drilling holes and as you approach the town, the Super Pit dominates the landscape. It's a big town, steeped in history since the late 1800s-early 1900s and there are a lot of historic buildings. There are two towns that merge into one – Boulder and Kalgoorlie – and both have historic main streets with lots of interesting buildings. You can do a self guided audio tour of both streets and learn all about the historic buildings but we didn't do that as it's not something we could easily do with the kids. Having said that, there is still lots to do.

Kalgoorlie Super Pit
The Super Pit is the result of a number of smaller mines being bought up and becoming one massive open cut mine. It is impossible to get your head around the sheer immenseness of the Pit, even when you are standing there. Even knowing how massive the trucks are that dig and haul the rock, and the fact that from the lookout at the top of the Pit they look like teeny, tiny toys, it is still impossible to really comprehend just how big the Pit is. We visited the lookout all 3 days were were at Kalgoorlie, as it is really worth just standing there and trying to absorb it all.

Some (most?) days they blast and that is pretty cool. You phone the information hotline around 9:30am and they have a recorded message saying what time blasting is going to happen, if at all. They did blasting on the Wednesday and Thursday we were there. Both times it was scheduled for 1pm, and both times they went early (5 mins and 10 mins) and so we just weren't quite ready with out camera to get a video, much to Greg's disappointment. There is no warning to let you know and on the Wednesday, the trucks were still working, rumbling up and down the massive roads while the blasting occurred. All you see at first is a bit of a lift/disturbance on a patch of ground, then a dust cloud begins billowing up and then you hear a bit of a boom. It is very cool to watch.

The dust is from the blast. I can't get the video to upload

Hannan North Tourist Mine
This is a great little tourist attraction set up to show off how mining used to occur “in the olden days”. There are lots of different buildings to explore, including miners huts, managers office, bank, stores and explosives storage. There is also a lot of different equipment used in mining, from simple ore carts, to different types of drills and different mine shaft headframes.

A rescue pod, that produces oxygen and scrubs CO2 for I think it was 36 hours. I guess they have them at strategic points in the underground mines in case of collapse

The most exciting part for Rory was a modern digger and a modern dumper. You could climb up into the cab of the dumper. The sheer size of these trucks is mind boggling! It was good to get up so close (and into) one of these to get an even better perspective of just how huge the Super Pit really is.

 

There is also a Chinese Rememberance Garden, complete with koi ponds which entertained the children. I don't think either of them have even seen koi before and they were amazed at the size and colours of them.

You could also pan for gold in a little stream. They must seed the water daily with gold, as we all found some little flakes. I can see how gold fever hit so many, as once you find one bit you just really want to keep trying to find more, not because you are greedy but because it is exciting to go through the process of digging the dirt, panning it and seeing that little flake of gold come out of all the mud and mess.