Kalgoorlie-Boulder

What an interesting town to visit. Of course you can’t see everything or know everything when you visit a town but we got a good taste for life out here. 

It is here because of the gold and was a thriving town of 30,000 back in the 1800s and is now a thriving town of 30,000. 

Modern machines make life much more comfortable and when the pipeline with water arrived in 1903 it must have been brilliant. The original pipe was 569km but has been extended south to Norseman and north. I have added a map of the lines which add up to 8000km and supplies H2O to 100,000 people.
We took a drive up to the reservoir on top of a hill and there was so much info we couldn’t spare the time to read it all. 

Prior to that we happened on a guided tour of the Council Chambers and Town Hall. It was very elaborate and the main performance room has hosted Dame Nellie Melba and Lamb Chop, poker tournaments, PMs etc….. a very varied mix. 

It is hard to get into a mine tour as they are usually booked out but we went along to see if there was a chance of getting tickets. All tours had been cancelled as their bus has broken down and they are waiting for parts. It happened that the Indian Pacific was in town and they had a tour on a private bus so at the last minute they decided to run an extra tour at 1pm. And we got tickets. The guide used to work at the mine and gave us a whole lot of information including costs of the machines, amount of ore and things you can find out on the internet. 

A few bits I found worth remembering about the mine owned by Northern Star Resources. 

- 3500km of underground mines are being re-mined into the super pit
- 1100 workers 50% male, 50%female
- All are residents of Kalgoorlie and they don’t allow FIFO
They all have to do a drug and alcohol test every day when they arrive at work. No missing or you don’t get to work there anymore. 12 hour shifts. All do Night Duty.
- Tyres cost $40,000 on the big Cat Trucks and takes an hour to pump them up (dump truck is $5.4m)

Diggers are Komatsu and cost $17.5m

The pipeline construction included an upgrade of Fremantle Port, building of the Dam near Perth, construction of a Railway and the pipe itself. It took 5 years and came in on time and under budget. 

Now all they need to do is fix the road which wasn’t built for the heavy trucks.