Alan & Lyn's Huge Adventure: 6/3/24 Kalgoorlie Boulder

Booked into Kalgoorlie for 2 weeks , to get some things taken care of . Cruised up the highway to the turnoff to Kambalda , seemed like a good spot to have lunch before going the next bit up to Kalgoorlie . Arriving at Boulder , we get set up in the caravan park before the rain starts , everything here is wet , there's been plenty of rain over the last week or 2 around the goldfields and it causes chaos with all the gravel/dirt roads . That doesn't help us either , it means we can't get out onto the leases where we can detect . So we do a bit of sightseeing around town , here's one of the murals on the side of a hotel in Hannan St Kalgoorlie .

With all the rain falling , the flood water catchments are full , we've not seen Kalgoorlie like this , so it's a bit of a novelty for us .

Makes for some good photos .

After a day or 2 of semi dry weather , we manage to get out in the bush for some detecting .

This tree amused us , it was blown over , but still kept on growing . The detecting still hasn't gotten us any gold - getting frustrating !

Thought it would be good for a change to get some night shots of Hannan St , here's how we went .

Here's a shot of the Recreation Hotel in Boulder .

Time for a visit to the Superpit Lookout to see the changes . This view to the north has changed a bit , they've taken more out just to the right of centre in the photo . There's a road going from the top down in that area - it will come up better in a later photo .

Here's the covered lookout area and an old excavator bucket - if you zoom in you can see 2 people on the left of the bucket near a black tyre . This thing is huge and will dig out 80 tonnes of material each time it's filled , but more on that later .

Next day we headed out into the bush again . The spot we'd chosen was across a train line , unfortunately we couldn't get across the train line - there was a train parked on it !! It was stationary there for days due to the closure of the rail line across the Nullabor , caused by rain & flooding .

Plans had to change , so we found another spot a bit further out . The ground looked like there should be gold there , all the signs were looking good - shame about the gold though . We did get a visit from a couple of owls - they looked like Tawny Frog Mouth Owls - it kept an eye on me while I was taken photo's .

Back to town again , stopping at an old rail bridge - or what was a rail bridge some years ago . The stockpile in the background is from the Superpit .

Back to the Superpit again , it's an interesting spot to sit and watch the vehicles go back & forth - bit like an ant's nest really . The level is being dug up and cleared out .

This photo shows the haul trucks , a loader , and the little bulldozer - which is the largest bulldozer Caterpillar makes , it's a D11 !! The haul trucks can carry 240tonne !! The scoop at the lookout holds 80 tonne , so it only takes 3 scoop fulls to fill the haul truck!

Back to that track leading down into the pit . If you look closely , at the end of the track are 2 holes , one for ventilation and the other for vehicles to go underground . The small dark object is a smaller haul truck that takes material from the underground mine up for processing .

One of the bigger haul trucks had blown a tyre or got a puncture ??? but it had to be changed on site - they had to dump it's load on the ground so they could jack it up to remove the front wheel . The vehicle to the left is a tyre removal / installation machine , there's also a white ute and people in hivis gear that can be seen .