We have come to the end of the Golden Pipeline route to Kalgoorlie and settled into a park in Kalgoorlie at Boulder. Kalgoorlie’s real name is Kalgoorlie-Boulder the two former little cities merging into one a few years ago. There are about 25,000 people here today. 1000 of whom are employed at the Super Pit, 600 men and 400 women. All have to live in K-B and they work 12 hours on 12 off for 7 days , 7 days off and then rotate through a night shift. Currently, the Super Pit has 3 years left of mining. When Alan Bond got the Super Pit started in the early 1980s by amalgamating and taking over a lot of small leases and miners they gave it 5 or 6 years. So things can change with these estimates of mine lives! There is also a big pile of low-grade waste rock being built up which will take 13 years to process once the mine closes. So there is a bit left to do yet.

Allthego learnt all this useful information by doing a Super Pit tour, Homealone thought she could better occupy herself on the  main street in the frock shops. The tour takes you in a small bus down into the Pit, only about 70 of the 600 metres to the bottom. Eventually the pit will be 3.9 km long,1.6 km wide and 700 metres deep. There are some big machines working away down in the Pit, all very organised and controlled. The big haul trucks carry 225 tonnes at a time and the contained gold in that lot is about the size of a golf ball! 1 in 7 trucks carries this material the other 6 go to the waste dump. A lot of waste for a golf ball size bit of gold. Witnessed a blast in the bottom of the Pit at 5 pm one day. A big bang with a lot of rock being broken up and a cloud of dust growing a bit like an atom bomb, eventually filling part of the Pit and coming out over the top.

Paddy Hannan, found gold in Kalgoorlie and started the rush.

It is race week here in Kalgoorlie,  the main sponsor being XXXX Gold. Feels like you are in Queensland. The Kalgoorlie Gold Cup runs on the Sunday as does a lot of XXXX.

Have had a wander around town and drink in the old Exchange Hotel and dinner in the Albion Hotel out our way at Boulder.  It has been a relatively quiet time for us around town.

Exchange Hotel in Kalgoorlie

York Hotel in Kalgoorlie

Allthego completed the first two holes of the Nullarbor Links Golf Course at the Kalgoorlie Golf Club. The 18 hole course finishes on the other side of the Nullarbor at Ceduna. There will be a more fulsome report on progress through the course in a later blog.

We now head off south down to Norseman before turning west along the 300 km Granite and Woodlands Trail to Hyden, home of Wave Rock.