3/6/2014.
A shortish drive by backtracking to Norseman from Esperance and on to Kambalda and then Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
First a few pics missed from the last entry of Frenchman Peak....
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| The story |
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| The view from the top...it matches anything in the NT |
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| Luck Bay is the bay in the centre, just above where the dirt road ends |
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| The hole at the top is continuous from one side to the other |
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| The trail up/down. There is a bloke in the centre taking a pic. |
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| A showery Lucky Bay departure |
Kalgoorlie is there because of gold, namely "The golden mile". It all started when three Irishmen stepped on an alluvial nugget of about 3 oz's. They kept quiet and registered their lease and found 300oz's in the first couple of weeks. Then the word spread.
The super pit was an Alan Bond idea of joining all the old underground mines together with open mining, thereby mining all the ore in between the old mines. The area, the goldfield region, is riddled with abandoned shafts and open cut mines, not unlike Coober Pedy's opal mines. The town is spread out with businesses scattered all over. Boulder is dying. Kalgoorlie will die when the gold finishes. All of the towns only last as long as the gold does.
There are many working open mines in the goldfields, the owners of the Super pit only employ non fly in fly out staff, thereby keeping the money in the community and having a community.
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| Read under "for electric shock".... funny. |
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| Gold gilded town clock tower dome...whoops the advertising |
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| The super pit |
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| The holes are old mine shafts, some 3000k's in total tunneled by the old timers |
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| There are 40 trucks working 24/7, each carrying 230 tonnes, 1 in 7 has prime gold bearing ore. $3m in gold is extracted each day. |
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| 3 to 4 bucket loads and the truck is full |
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| Charges laid and ready to go off at 1.00pm |
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| 12.54 pm and all we got was dust pics |
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| About 20 minutes to get out of the pit and back down they go again, all day long. |
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| A planned safety demonstration.. no one was told what was to be, but a truck ran over this Toyota..once. It apparently had the desired effect |
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| This pile is the gold concentrated ore about to leave for refining off site. |
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There is lots more to Kalgoorlie-Boulder than the super pit, but it is the towns main interest point, esp for blokes.
Off to Niagara Dam.
Oorroo
Bill
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