There's gold in them those hills....

Kaloorglie is the gateway to WA's goldfields. Kal, as it locally known (but we nick named it testosterone town) is the sort of town you wouldn't pick a fight in as it feels a little bit like the Wild West. A frontier town where the bush meets brash. In town if you saw one grubby looking man in a high-vis and rigger boots you saw a hundred! This is a town where man does everything and anything in a pair of ovies.

Gold was discovered in these yer hills back in 1887 when Paddy Hannams pulled in from neighbouring Coolgardie in search for gold. As the story goes as he pulled up into town his horse broke the ground which exposed a rock fragment that turned out to be gold. Gold I tell you no less. This find led to the discovery of the 'golden mile' and the settlement of Kalgoolie was born resulting in the richest square mile of gold bearing in the world. It triggered one of the biggest gold rushes in Australia's history. Men came in their thousands, many unprepared for the harsh conditions they encountered with inadequate food and scarcity of water. There was no sanitation and few medical supplies. Thousands died from thirst or disease. Nevertheless stories of fame and fortune spread rapidly and within a few short years 93 hotels and 8 breweries had been established.

All said and done though a stroll down the main strip you couldn't help but think back on how life must have been at the height of the early gold rush days. On one of the traditional veranda fronted hotels a red LED sign streams up to the minute price of gold, nickel and local shares. A modern twist within a historic looking high street.

Ok cool kids, admittedly this won't rock everyones world but here goes, our info on a visit to Kals 'suuuuuuper pit'..... and she's a big'un. In mining terms think the Rhonda Valley on viagra, ,lots of Viagra. This suuuuuuuper pit is 3.7 km long and 1.55 km wide and 460 metres deep and has approval to go to a total of 660 metres deep. This will make the final pit almost twice the height of Aryes Rock.

All this can be viewed from a platform high on the south rim and the view is just staggering, honestly! Huge trucks zigzagging up and down the pit.  From a distance these huge trucks looked like kids toys.

Blasts happen 3 to 4 times a month which produces hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rock to shift. Each blast is given 12 hours to settle. Then machines known as face shovels, ($10 million each, 4 on site) remove rock from the blast area and load onto the haul trucks. The haul trucks take 45 minutes to climb out of the pit! Once the blast has been 'dug off' graded and levelled the whole process starts again.

Within the town there were various mining exhibitions, we chose to don a couple of hard hats at the aptly named 'The Mining Hall of Fame' which involved going underground with some bloke called Les. Les will stick in our minds for sometime a very very funny retired local miner.  The pit lift shaft (the size of a telephone booth holding a max of 5 people, cosy) took us down 120ft to one of Kalgoorlies oldest gold mines. We only travelled to the first level, for safety. Les informed us there were another 44 levels below. In total that would be roughly one mile below ground all manually dug.  From the start Les displayed some real ozzy characteristics, he had been mining since he was 15. We understood about every fifth word he said, but the poor German couple with us stood no chance at all as the ozzy mining slag flowed at a machine gun pace (the lack of teeth didn't help either). He had some real tales stretching back some 60 odd years of mining where he duly following in his father and grandfathers foot steps.

There were plenty of occupational hazards back in the day, you could see Les enjoyed his career. Unlike Les though miners normally were lucky to reach the ripe old age age of 50. No wonder that one particular drill was nicknamed the widower. This beauty though is now banned from the mining industry. Breathing through our noses was recommended, not our mouths. The hairs in you nostrils collect all the bad stuff and then should be picked out at regular intervals (a practice we were both used to from our time renovating our old victorian house). The banter continued for another hour and then we took that cosy lift back to the bright sunlight.

Back at ground level the museum attempts live daily demos of gold pouring. We took our seats with apprehension, the melting pot up front glowed away in the furnace which contained a mixture of silver, gold and glass, (glass is added to aid the pour, all in the name of tourism hey) good old Les let out all the museums secrets !! The melting pot itself was made of graphite and carbon, this was heated to a temperature of 1600 degrees. The kiln takes 2 hours to heat up, (today's demo was slightly delayed as someone forgot to light up first thing, that's what's great about the ozzies the whole 'she'll be alright' honest approach). The kiln runs on standard bottled LPG with a cost of $5500 a month to run. No wonder the museum runs at a loss. Another snippet from Les! The bar was finally poured when the molten materials reach around 1062 degrees. The poor guy out front was sweating cobs as he had to wear a rather fetching silver spacesuit. 

Prior to staff escorting Fe out of such a thrilling attraction we did have a bash at gold panning. It was back-breaking stuff and the heat didn't help nevertheless Dave still chose to pocket some sort of stones but neither of us had high hopes that any of them containing any gold. That's right, gold I tell you. As there's gold in them those hills.....
Gold panning technics cracked the excitement now escalated to new levels for Fe when we come across Big trucks. We like big trucks. The mine museum had on show some past and present equiprment that has
been widely used within the minning process. On show was a Catipillar 793C dump truck, worth $3.5 million. The tyres alone cost 26,000 dollars each that's 156,000 dollars per truck. Fuel tanks can hold 3,790 litres. Max speed 55kmh weighing in at 166 tonnes. This one was clearly in retirement but there are another 31 of these babies on site at the super pit !


Museums done for the day it was onwards to town. Now a town like this full of burley men, aside from visits to the pub or gambling at the towns race course there was one other booming business......brothels. Seems like these minning folk saved a little bit of energy for the end of the day (or the beginning, depending on the shift).  We took a tour round Questa Casta, the worlds oldest working brothel. The Madam showed us round and boy did she have some stories to tell (not fit for the blog, maybe more suitable over a cold beer). Dave had a few questions but she seemed pretty keen to want him to come back later with his wallet to find out the answers.

130kms north of Kalgoorlie you reach the small town of Menzies.  Menzies is famous for the Antony Gormley art installations on Lake Ballard. He of fame for the Angel of the North and the iron statues at Crosby beach in Liverpool, up north basically. The installation is at the end of a unbelievably dusty, pothole littered unsealed road where you then reach the Lake Ballard exhibition known as 'Inside Australia'. A display of 51 iron statues on an eerie salt lake setting 51 kms (the link to the number of statues 51) East of Menzies. These are derived from laser scans of some of the Menzies locals. I asked the girl at the roadhouse if she was one of the chosen ones but I didn't receive a warm reply so I filled in the beeps and guessed no. She was good value though and gave us both the low down on the time Antony actually visited Menzies to view his work. From what we can repeat he sounds a bit of a demaning diva.