Kalgoorlie is 550km East-North East of Perth in the Eastern Goldfields known as Kalgoorlie-Boulder. This Western Australian city is located close to the “Golden Mine” which was founded in 1893 during the Yilgarn-Goldfields gold rush.
Kalgoorlie-Boulder was officially granted the status of a city in the year 1989 the Town of Kalgoorlie was merged with the Shire of Boulder. A population of 28,246 makes Kalgoorlie-Boulder the largest urban center in the region and fifth-largest in Western Australia.
One of the things that Kalgoorlie-Boulder is famous is for its Super Pit, which is an open-cut gold mine approximately 2.2 miles long, 1.0 miles wide and 1,680 feet deep. A number of old mine leases were bought by Allan Bond, in order to create the Super Pit. Several of the old shafts containing abandoned equipment and vehicles are found every now and then from the continuous digging that is carried out in the super pit.
The work at the mine never stops even for a minute. The mine is operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The blasts at the mine are timed at 1:00 pm every day, unless the winds are in such a direction that it would carry the dusts over the town. The massive trucks employed at the mines take 225 tonnes of rock per trip and each trip takes about 35 minutes. All the workers and employees of the Super Pit live in Kalgoorlie. The current plan is to abandon the mine at year 2017, when it loses its productivity. Then the groundwater will be allowed to seep in the mine and fill it completely in about 50 years.