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Saturday, 17 December 2011

Kalgoorlie

It is 10.50pm on a Saturday night, and there is still the sound of jack hammering and rock moving in the not so distant distance!  The recreation reserve where we are camping is surrounded by open cut mines, and although it is very peaceful here, and the stars are shining brightly, at night the sound of the mining operations carries a long way.

Some of the Excavations around where we Camped in the Recreation Reserve

Head frame in front of Kalgoorlie Museum We visited the museum in Kalgoorlie today, where we saw a mine head-frame, some restored buildings, and displays of gold nuggets.

It was very interesting, particularly the big gold nugget that wasKatie in front of nugget found in 2010 with a metal detector found near here last year....we really need to go get ourselves a metal detector, who knows what we are camping on.

A little restored cottage they had in their grounds used to be the home of a nurse in the area.  Her father was a gold miner, and apparently had the lease on the land where the golden eagle nugget was found.  Unfortunately he got sick, and while he was in hospital in Perth, someone jumped his claim.  I think most gold miners ended much the same way!

Cooper and the golden eagle replica There was a display about the wood used by the mines in Kalgoorlie, and how, after 1900, when the trees around the town were all used up for stabilising tunnels in mines and burning for cooking and heating, they had to travel on trains to bring in the wood they needed to keep the mines in operation. Some failed miners found this more profitable. It was called the wood line, and at one stage they were bringing in 1500 tonnes of wood a day for the town.  That's lot of trees!  After they consolidated all those little mines, and dug the super pit, the wood all had to be picked out by hand from any ore that was excavated.  There are now big piles of wood pulled from the super pit. DSC03553

We had some lunch, did some Christmas shopping, and came back to our little spot in the dirt. Cooper is a true three year old and had had as much sightseeing as a little dude can take.

We have been camping for a few nights now near Tony and Val, the couple we met near Hopetown, who are following much the same route as we are.  We had a nice chat this evening.  It’s nice to have some more company sometimes.

dom demonstrating the outhouse at the museum     Jo on the outhouse at museum

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Vicki

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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous21 December 2011 at 12:45

    Jo and I went there.... the put has to be seen to believe it doesn't it! didn't happen to find any gold either ....

    con

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  2. Tas21 December 2011 at 17:07

    We used to live on the pit before it was a pit. There were heaps of poppet heads: Perseverance, Lake View and Star, etc. all pulling gold ore out of the ground. It was a place called Fimiston and it is still on the maps. I used to walk from Fimiston to Boulder to go to the Presbyterian Church. I doesn't look that far now but it is about 1 km. We used to go to the Boulder State School. A little van on the mine would pick up all the mine kids and take them to school and pick them up in the afternoon.

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  3. Peter B25 December 2011 at 13:37

    Ever considered the geological history of the goldfields? The volcanic lavas, the pyritic black shales, the volcaniclastics, the glacigene sediments and drop-stones, the planing flat of the landscape by a continental-scale ice-sheet (yes, there are moraine remnants), the dolerites, the ultramafics and associated nickel-sulphide ore deposits, the deep weathering and associated gold nugget and nickel-laterite ore formation, the incision of the palaeodrainage channels and back-filling of the up to 80 metre deep canyons by fluvial and lacustrine sediments (including brown coal), the change from mid-latitude humid to semi-arid climate and salt lake formation, the tailoring of the vegetation to the soils and climate?

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