Judy & Brian Tour Oz: Kalgoorlie WA, Super Pit. KCGM, CAT 793C

Kalgoorlie WA May 5, 2015
We dumped the car at the Ford dealer for its 45,000km service, 45k is supposed to last three years and its just short of 12 months) and took there loaner and went down to the meeting point for our tour of the Super Pit.

First they check you out to make sure you are suitably attired: no T-shirts, shorts and things here. They even insist on wrap-around sunglasses or they give you safety glasses. They also give you a hi-vis vest, bright orange, just Judy's colour.

Judy. Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

The bus is full, there really is little else remotely interesting to do in town, and off we went to the big pit, our driver and guide an ex-miner naturally. He gave us the history, a continuous stream of facts and figures and told us what was happening at the various stages of the mine. Everything is BIG or maybe even HUGE. And expensive. The highlight for everyone seems to be the haul trucks or dump trucks. They are big of course, each one carrying 200+ tons of rubble in their bucket, 4 1.2 million each, use 175 litres of diesel an hour, use 6 tyres every 6 months at $40,000 a pop and last about 8 years even though they spend 1.5 mill on maintenance on each one every year. After that they just scrap them.

We drove round through the workshops and the 'stick' yard and then down to one of two lookouts, down about 3 levels of the mine. From the viewing ramp, you can see right down into the pit and see the diggers and the ant-trail of dumpers crawling up and down. Something like only 1 in 8 truckloads is actual ore, the rest is spoil or rubbish. The mine currently goes down over 600m. In the walls you can see the holes which is where the old underground mine were, they go down to 1.6km. and are a total of something like 4000km in length. Talking of the old mine shafts, they are full of timber and old railway lines and pipes and all kinds of things that will jam up the crushers and which definitely aren't gold. This stuff, when they dig it out all ends up in the 'stick' yard, because its full of sticks. One digger thing sorts through it and makes stacks of the rubbish, the rest of the rock goes back for processing.

The mine works around the clock, never stops, except if there is an electrical storm and then they get all precious about all the metal about the place. The all work shift-work: 5am -5pm, 5pm - 5am, 7 days on, 7 days off.

Some snaps, keep in mind many are taken from inside the bus and of course it's almost impossible to get the perspective of the relative sizes: man, 4x4, dump truck, big hole.

CAT 793C rumbling past our bus window.Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

4x $4.5 = $18m. CAT 793Cs. Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

A happy snappy chappy. Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

The big and the not so big. See picture below to see who wins if they go head to head. Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

Another load crawls out of the hole. Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

The big digger drops one of 4 scoops into the dump truck. Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

Toyota Hilux - completely destructible. Top gear didn't go this far. Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

$40K each. Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

Super Pit. Kalgoorlie WA

After lunch, we went and found the business end of the 600km pipeline from Mandura. Theres a place called Mt Charlotte, after whom the new princess was named, which is where it ends. You go there and follow the path up to be greeted by a circular fence and inside the fence a metal floor, which is actually a cover over the original tank. I am reminded immediately of the water tank on Cooleman Ridge, about 5 minutes walk from home...

From there its only a few minutes up the road to the place where a Irish bloke called Pat Hannan started it all by finding a few chunks of gold just lying about on the ground. They have turned the remains of the Hannan North mine into a bit of a museum. Judy and I had fun fooling about in the big truck. No one is allowed on the big tractor, perhaps we might break it? We wandered about the site a bit and sat and watched the interpretive video in a pseudo tent / shed. Its got some old junk and a face of someone claiming to be Hannan beamed onto a dummy thing, and it talks and tells a story, but in three parts with a break in between, as if you can't handle all the wonderful information in one sitting and well the 'ting is, the 'ting is that it's quite, well, bad. Pretty awful really, to be sure to be sure.