Kalgoorlie

We made a detour to see the town of Kalgoorlie which we missed the last time we went around Australia. Kalgoorlie is a gold mining town and was the centre of the Australian gold rush in the 1890s.

The Superpit

The Superpit is the largest open-cut mine in the southern hemisphere. It was enormous (the photos don’t do it justice!). The huge mining trucks look like tiny Tonka toys from the lookout. It was interesting to learn all about how they mine, how much they spend on fuel, how they extract the gold, etc. You can learn more from their website (which is also where the aerial shot below is taken from).

The kids (and Teddy) also enjoyed looking at some of the mining gear that they had spread around the lookout.

The Superpit advertised when they were going to do an explosion (several times per week). We went one evening and it was a disappointment. No ‘bang’ or anything, just a bit of smoke and dust… We didn’t bother going back for another one.

Kalgoorlie City

About 10 years ago, National Geographic published an article claiming that Kalgoorlie had the largest number of millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world. So, I was expecting lots of spectacular homes here, but actually, they were very average (or below average). The town itself seems to be past its heyday – which was probably in the early 1900s. There was some interesting architecture around town – both victorian and art deco.

Kalgoorlie Museum

The Kalgoorlie museum was really interesting – it had a lot of history of the town, samples of gold found in town and some of the original buildings preserved. It also had some interesting stories about the town and people in the town.

Hannan’s North Tourist Mine

We really liked this museum – we spent several hours here! This area was one of the first mines in the area and was a working mine until the 1960s. It was opened up to tourists in 1972.

They had two mining trucks – one dump truck and one digger. It’s amazing just how big these trucks are!

They had a display of what the early gold rush camps looked like:

They had tons of mining equipment around:

And finally, the museum ends with an opportunity to pan for gold and gems. The kids didn’t have much luck in the gold ponds, but were able to find a whole vial full of other gems (e.g. amethyst).