Kalgoorlie 25/2 to 28/2

We arrived at Kalgoorlie or as the locals pronounce it Kal'GOOLIE'.

Kalgoorlie is the home of the Golden Mile, which is the richest square mile of gold bearing earth in the world. We visited the 'Super Pit' gold mine which is 3.5km long by 1.5km wide and 500m deep. You can just about spot some of the 34 $4 million giant trucks on the pit face here.



Here's Jayne looking like a puppet sitting on one of the spare wheels that each cost around $20,000.



And here's David standing on a Face Shovel which belongs to a vehicle costing $13 million, of which there are 4 on the Super Pit site.




This is a view of the Super Pit from a distance and it still hasn't captured the full size of the mine.



We visited a local park and found a group of Emu's who had just been provided with some lettuce for lunch. David hand fed some of them and these are the resulting pictures.



This Emu was running towards us to see if he could join in the lettuce fest.



We visited the museum and rode to the top of an old mining Poppet Head for a view of the town. There was also a number of old buildings in the museum grounds including the Western Australian Bank, some old Miners Cottages and the narrowest two storey hotel in the southern hemisphere at only 3.2 metres wide, The British Arms Hotel.




As Kalgoorlie is an old gold mining town it has many elaborate original buildings, most of which are hotels and pubs. Some of them still provide the type of entertainment carried on from the old mining days including 'Skimpies' behind the bars.



We travelled out of town to Coolgardie a rich mining town of the past. It was now a one road town but the quality of the buildings showed it's importance and wealth of days gone by. The roads were extra wide to allow for the Camel Trains to turn around and manouvre the gold through the centre of town.