We had booked on a tour of the Super Pit this morning so we set off for the tour departure place to be issued our high visibility vest and protective glasses then it was all aboard the bus to start the tour. The Super Pit is one of the largest mines in the world, Gold was first discovered in 1893 near Mt Charlotte which caused the initial gold rush, the surface gold soon ran out and in 3 months two prospectors called Sam Pearce and William Brookman pegged out what became known as the Golden Mile, the richest square mile on earth. Over the next 120 years there were more than 80 separate mining operations with 1200 different companies floated and 60 million ounces of gold extracted from the golden mile. The Super Pit came about because Alan Bond started buying up leases to form a single large scale operation which eventually became the super pit. You really can’t imagine how big everything here is, we started by parking next to the skip that sits on the back of the lorry and brings the ore out of the pit we easily parked the bus under it with room to spare, we drove past tyres that came half way up the window and other bits of equipment that defied scale. Apparently it takes 2 men 45 minutes to change a tyre with the help of a machine so I don’t think they will be competing with the F1 teams. All of this is run by a workforce of 800 employees and contractors, 40% of which are women, the majority work 12 hour shifts from 5:30 – 17:30 with 7 days of days, 7 days off, then 7 days of nights and 7 days off. It is one of the policies of the mine that you live in the area which helps the local economy. The super pit is actually covering the ground that was mined about 100 years ago and part of the activity once the rocks have been brought to the surface is to separate the wood and iron from these previous mining activities as they will ruin the crushers, the sell off the metal and give the proceeds to local charities, apparently last year they gave $25,000 to the local flying doctor. We drove round to one of the viewing points and the scale of the operation really came into focus, apparently it takes the trucks 35 minutes to come up but only 10 to get down! They actually have a fuel farm on site with a capacity of 700,000 litres, each month they use between 5 to 6 million litres of diesel. Our first view was looking across the mine which is 1.6km wide and 700 meters deep, we just stood looking at it watching the trucks come up carrying rocks each truck brings about 250 tonnes of rock to the top and apparently 1 in 7 trucks carries ore that contains gold about the size of a golf ball – about 500 grams. We then got back onto the bus and drove to another view point, this time we looked along the length of the pit which is 3.9 kilometres long, we still can’t see where the loading activity is taking place but it is a long way down. From here we drove round to the crusher and watched that for a while then we had to leave which is a shame as it is fascinating and to think the operation runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week even Christmas Day. They believe the mile will continue operating until 2034 although the company is continuing to look at other options for the mine. After we finished this tour we came back to the hotel to get changed, one of the rules of the tour is that you have to have long trousers and sleeves so it was really hot! After getting changed we drove to the public viewing area which gave us yet another view of the super pit, it would be great to be allowed to the bottom of the mine so you can fully understand the sense of scale but as this is a working mine I doubt they would be willing to risk tourists in that environment! After spending quite some time looking at the mine and reading the information boards we went to Hannans North mine which is a tourist attraction being developed by KCGM (Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines) who own the Super Pit. This has a mix of history and information about modern day mining but most importantly they have a Haul Truck which you can climb up and get a great view of how high they are and a Loader that unfortunately you can’t go in. We spent a couple of hours walking round the exhibits which were really interesting, they had various buildings from about 1910 and a number of Head frames from various mines that are no longer in operation, unfortunately these are not over mines so all you can do is look at the structure but interesting all the same. After we finished walking round the site we went back to town to have a look round the buildings there, you can see that this was a prosperous town as a lot of the buildings are quite grand, the biggest problem they had in this area was the lack of water which they had to buy at 2/6 (two and six) per gallon but you were normally only allowed to by half a gallon, a lot of the information boards have the locals complaining that beer was cheaper than water and apparently the pub kept the whiskey on the bar and the water under it so it couldn’t be stolen as it was more valuable! Since 1903 all of the freshwater used in Kalgoorlie and by all of the towns between it and Perth is obtained from the ‘Goldfields Pipeline’ which pumps fresh water from Perth over 690km away. By about 4pm with the temperature still around 37 – 40 degrees we decided to head back to the hotel to relax in the air conditioning as we have another long drive tomorrow but at least we are heading back to the sea where it should be a bit cooler.
