KALGOORLIE’S SUPER PIT & EUCALYPTS

The hole is so big, it can be seen from space! When you visit Kalgoorlie, you must see the super pit. You can drive up the overburden to the designated lookout where interpretive boards explain the history.

In the 1980’s, Alan Bond was systematically buying up all the individual mining leases to combine them so that bigger equipment could be brought in to ‘open-cut’ the area, to dig deeper and also salvage what had been missed. He never completed this enterprise. In 1989 Kalgoorlie Consolidated Mining Group was formed to manage this enormous task for the new owners. Eventually the super-pit, as it’s become known, will be 3.8 kms long, 1.65 kms wide, and 600 metres deep.

It’s hard to visualize the enormity of the pit, and the piles of tailings, which have been created in the past 25 years. This pic only shows a small portion of the pit, but those little dots on the far side are great big haul-pacs shifting the spoil.

Millions of ounces of gold have been extracted from this richest gold mine in the world.

Growing up in Seville, Vic., i.e. the cold Yarra Valley, we had a eucalypt on our nature strip. Mum always referred to it as a “West Australian Gum” – she wasn’t into botanical names. It struggled to survive there but eventually became a nice specimen tree … just as the road needed widening so the Roads Board hacked it down. At the Kalgoorlie Arboretum today we saw these lovely specimens.