Days 71-73 - Kalgoorlie (16-19 November)

Left Menzies heading for Kalgoorlie - short trip for us 235kms. The photo on the bottom left is of Paddy Hannan who discovered gold in Kalgoorlie in 1893 starting the largest goldrush in WA's history.  As John hurt his back putting up the gazebo I spent the first afternoon driving around Kalgoorlie tyre shopping (I know nothing about tyres) to replace the one that had the puncture.  Amazing the difference in prices.  Anyway settled on one that and will get it the next day.  The park we are staying at is close to Centennial Park which is great at it has a lot of cycleways for walking near a lake.  Surprisingly there are a few parks in Kalgoorlie considering how dry it is.  I discovered during my travels Kalgoorlie is quite a shopping mecca with a large variety of shops.  Next day we visited the tourist bureau and got some ideas on what to do and see.  Obviously there are a lot of mining tours which we decided not to do as we have both done them before and they are quite expensive.  We did go to the viewing platform at the Super Pit.  The Super Pit is the largest open gold pit mine in Australia and is expected to be producing until 2021.  The Super Pit produces 80,000 tonnes of gold each year.  Currently the pit is 320m deep, 4kms long and 1.4kms wide. Apparently the pit affects the local weather.  Plans are to deepen the pit to 500m by 2017.  Over 550 personnel work in the pit and it operates 24 hours every day.   Quite an amazing site.  The haul trucks look like 'dinky' cars and they are huge vehicles.  4wds are only just able to be seen.  The workers who drive the dump trucks, excavators etc are highly skilled drivers as each tyre on the dump truck for instance cost $26,000 so care needs to be taken to ensure they have a long life!   We observed a blast which they do on average every 2nd to 3rd day.  They blasts are 12m deep.  We were on the viewing platform and could feel the blast.  

We also did a tour at the Royal Flying Doctor Service.  This was really interesting.  Kalgoorlie cover a large area of the state, they have 2 planes, 5 full time doctors, nurses and pilots.  On average the plane goes out twice a day to pick up patients.  The planes can take 2 patients lying down, 1 sitting up, doctor and a nurse so very compact.  Most of their callouts are to vehicle accidents.  Whilst the RFDS is partly funded by the State government they fall $6M short so all centres fundraise to meet the shortfall.  To date they have managed to meet this.