In the Pits

This morning we were off early.  We had a mission.

Tony and Val had told us about a tour of the super pit they had found out about.  A private company runs tours every day of the super pit, but once a month on market day in Boulder, KCMG (Kalgoorlie Consolidated Mining Group) offers free tours,  and the day is today!  That is so cool.

We arrived at 8am, chatted to Hal (a guy waiting at the door too), and Tony and Val until the shop opened at 8.30am.  Hal pointed out that the reason Boulder looks like it is run down and in need of restoration, with scaffolding over a lot of the buildings, and big cracks in their facades, is because of the big earth quake in Boulder last year.  Another gentleman pointed out the pub across the road, that was surrounded by scaffolding, and said it was the only pub in the world with a gold mine in the bar! He said you could look down through a grill in the ground at the underground shaft.  The pub was built before they realised how rich the area was, so then they mined underneath it! 

We got on the bus at 9am for our value tour.  We drove onto the super pit site, past some enormous trucks that could flatten us without even noticing, and stopped at a lookout inside the pit itself.

The super pit is about 1.5km wide and about 3.5 km long.  It is about 500 metres deep at the moment, but they are in the process of enlarging one end, and by the time they completely finish digging in the super pit in 2018, it should be 4.5 km long and 650 metres deep.  That is huge. That is still only half as deep as the deepest shaft from the old mines the super pit consolidated.  Our guide said they are investigating starting underground operations once they have reached the size limit for the pit.

We drove past the processing plant where they roast the ore, crush it, soak it in water and bubble off the gold from the top.  The current price of gold makes the whole operation very profitable.

After the tour of the super pit, we drove to the Kalgoorlie Baptist Church.  The pastor gave us a message on Jesus coming down at Christmas, we didn't have to meet him halfway, he came the whole way down, even to the lowly place of a stable and manger.  It is good to remember how much God loves us, and that he was prepared to do it all to get us back into relationship with Him.

After church we visited the market day, had some lunch, went to the camping store for a hurricane lamp, had a shower at the free showers in the train park, then drove up to the Mt Charlotte lookout where the reservoir is for the water in Kalgoorlie.

Mountain might be stretching it, but Mt. Charlotte certainly gave a great view of Kalgoorlie.  It is very close to where Paddy Hannan made the first discovery of gold in the area in 1893 and started the whole gold rush thing off.  The area has become the largest producer of gold in the world.  The main problem with the gold rush, though, was there was no water here.  People used to cart water by camel train and sell it at huge amounts.  It tasted disgusting, and if there was any rain that pooled on the ground, running off buildings or rocks, people would grab it.  Having no concept of germs carried in dirty water, they would drink it, catch typhoid, and die.  I think almost one out ten prospectors died of typhoid in the early days.

CY O'Connor, the Engineer-in-chief in WA at the time, came up with the idea of piping water from a reservoir near Perth.  A reservoir in Kalgoorlie was not tenable because the evaporation rate was higher than the rainfall.  Water had never been piped so far or uphill so high, and a lot of people were very skeptical and criticized him greatly, however the whole thing worked, and is still working.  He was very clever.  Instead of one long pipeline, it is really eight smaller ones.  The steel pipeline is 566km long, and originally had eight steam power pumps along it, moving the water to successively higher reservoirs.  They are now electrical pumps, remotely operated from Perth, but in 1903 when the pipeline opened, people lived at the eight pump stations along the pipe to keep the steam pumps working.  Pump number seven or eight was so remote it was known as Siberia.  The train didn't stop there, they just threw any mail or supplies off as they whizzed past.  The pump master grew veggies and killed rabbits and pigeons for fresh meat.  The water took (and still takes) two weeks to arrive from Perth.  It has been extended, painted, parts replaced and moved from underground to above ground, but it still has over half the original steel pipes.

The sad part about the pipeline is that CY O'Connor was so severely criticized and lambasted for this project that no one thought would work, as well as being criticized for his design of the Fremantle harbour, again that everyone thought wouldn't work, that ten months before the opening of the pipeline he killed himself.  The validity of his designs, however, has been proved through over one hundred years of use of both of these innovative structures.

Coming back to our camp at Douglas Lake, we had a good chat with Tony and Val.  They told us lots of great stories about the places they've been on this trip.

In Fremantle (the port city very near to Perth) they also visited the jail.  They went on a tour and heard a few stories about people who escaped....

Some Irish troublemakers had been deported by the British to Fremantle, however one managed to escape and sail to America.  There he rallied some support (I understand there was a large disgruntled Irish population in America) and headed back to Australia in a whale boat.

At a pre-arranged date, he anchored off shore, in international waters, then rowed in to the beach.  His friends in jail had by this time been put to work on road-building duties, and they managed to run away and meet him at the coast.

The police were in hot pursuit as they paddled out to their whaling boat, and when the convicts got on board, the police threatened to fire shots at them.  They hoisted the American flag and said they were in international waters and if they fired shots they'd be declaring war on America.

The police backed down and they got away.  On their arrival in Boston, there were 100,000 people on the wharf to greet them!

The other interesting thing Tony and Val told us about was about a little place south of Kalbarri and north of Geraldton on the west coast, called Hut River Principality.

Technically, this 30,000 acre area of land has not been part of Australia since 1971.  The maps we've seen of WA don't really advertise this!  We drove down that part of the coast on our way to Perth, but Tony and Val drove in and had a great chat to Prince Leonard (Princess Shirley was away).  He is over 80 but is still incredibly switched on.   Val was sure he has a photographic memory.  They have around 100,000 visitors a year, and you can even get your passport stamped, or buy some currency to take with you.

Prince Leonard was so annoyed at grain quotas in the 1960s, that he complained, and to avoid having his land taken off him he used old and forgotten laws to secede from the Australian nation.  He pays no tax, but has to make his own electricity and has no government health benefits.  The whole story is very interesting.  Apparently he printed his own postage stamps for the CHOGM conference held in October in Perth, and Prince Phillip found out and bought a complete set.

The weather is fine and hot.  37 degrees.  The stars are clear and bright.  For some reason the open cut mine behind us is quiet tonight, so we can hear the crickets singing.  Surrounded by peaceful, snoring Woolstons, it is a lovely place to be.
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Vicki