I took a Kalgoorlie Super Pit tour, it was mind-blowing

A visit to the public viewing platform will give you a sense of the enormity of the gold mine, but the guided tour will boggle your mind.

When I think of gold I think of sparkly rings in high-end stores. I don’t think of a meteor-sized hole in the earth. But this is the origin story of gold in Kalgoorlie, supported by a cast of 220-tonne dump trucks and a high-vis army of shift workers.

The Kalgoorlie Super Pit is one of Australia’s biggest open-cut mines. Curiously, it’s also a tourist attraction for the outback WA town. There’s a public lookout but to get a sense of its enormity, nothing beats a guided tour.

Kalgoorlie Tours & Charters’ 1.5-hour tours take visitors inside the pit, boggling their minds with facts and figures. First, we don protective gear, then we are whisked onto a minibus and driven up to the top of the Super Pit’s outer wall, past a shaft tower where workers and equipment are lowered 1.2km into the folds of the earth. From the lookout, the Super Pit – set to become the world’s largest gold producer – looks like an inside-out mountain on Mars. Dump trucks resemble Tonka toys, and the access roads, cut in shrinking terraces, are almost an optical illusion.

The pit is a yawning 3.5km long by 1.2km across and 700m deep. It’s the hallmark of 125 years of mining that began after Irish prospector Paddy Hannan struck gold here in 1893. Since then, more than 63 million ounces of gold have been extracted (that’s 1786 tonnes). And the mine, now operated by Northern Star Resources, will yield that again over the next 100 years.

While the tour doesn’t venture to the bottom of the Super Pit, we do go behind the boomgates, past the mine’s nerve centre and alongside super-sized vehicles, including dump trucks the size of terrace houses. Guide Allen Bennett explains how the trucks ferry 250 tonnes of rock at a time, making the return journey to the base of the pit nine times in a 12-hour shift.

There’s a public lookout but to get a sense of its enormity. Picture: Catherine Best.

We view the Semi-Autogenous Grinding (SAG) mill where 20 tonnes of steel balls process the rocks, see the giant cyanide tanks where the gold is separated, and watch rivers of rock waste travel on conveyor belts. Most of the action is hidden from view, in 3500km of tunnels beneath the town.

The mine uses 55 tonnes of cyanide a day and 4.5 million litres of diesel a month – churning out 9000 ounces of gold a week. “It takes 10 tonnes of rock to make one wedding ring on average,” Alan says. I’ll remember that when I next have my eye on something sparkly.

Where to stay in Kalgoorlie  

Rydges Kalgoorlie is 2km from the centre of town. Rooms range from king studios to two-bedroom self-contained apartments and villas (some accessible).

Kalgoorlie is about 600km east of Perth.

How to tour the Kalgoorlie Super Pit 

Kalgoorlie Tours & Charters runs 1.5-hour Super Pit tours about four times a week for visitors aged four and over. Tours are subject to mine access availability. 

How to get to Kalgoorlie  

Kalgoorlie is about 600km east of Perth. You can drive, take the 6.5-hourProspector Train or fly from Perth.

The writer travelled with the assistance of Kalgoorlie Tours & Charters, Rydges and Transwa.

Originally published as I took a Kalgoorlie Super Pit tour, it was mind-blowing