After breakfast and after packing up the van, we headed off down the street to go on a tour of the Kalgoorlie Mine Superpit. It was quite amazing, the pit was very large and so were the trucks! The mine is run by KCGM (Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mine). Our tour guide used to work in the mines and she also worked with the explosives. She said that KCGM take safety and caring for the environment quite seriously. They have started a revegetation program on some old mining sites, this has been going for about twenty years. Also to work at the Kalgoorlie mines, you have to actually live in Kalgoorlie. This stops fly-ins, and also means that the miners can be home with their family’s each evening. Some of the trucks have cameras that watch the drivers eyes for fatigue. If the driver closes his or her eyes for longer than the average blinking time, then alarms start going off, and the driver’s supervisor is notified. This is also an example of how advanced some of their technology is. They have one blue coloured truck, that raises awareness for male depression, and one pink truck that raises awareness for breast cancer. They have 40 mining trucks on the site, and each costs about $4.4 million. They can carry up to 250 tonnes. Well over 57 million ounces of gold have come from the Golden Mile. Gold was first discovered on the Golden Mile by Paddy Hannan, Dan Shea and Tom Flanagan in 1893. KCGM was formed in 1989 and they are currently leasing the sight until 2029.
After the tour we basically just got in the car and drove for about 3.5 hours, until we got to Burracoppin, where we stayed at a roadside camp. Mum cooked a very nice roast for dinner in the barbecue!

Tara