Touring Western Australia - Kalgoorlie

My Kalgoorlie.net - For detailed accommodation and tourism information - Kalgoorlie accommodation, attractions, restaurants

Kalgoorlie Western Australia, is a city in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, and is located 595 kilometres (370 mi) east-northeast of state capital Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway.

The city was founded in 1893 during the Yilgarn-Goldfields gold rush, and is located close to the so-called "Golden Mile". It has a population of approx 28,000, making it the largest urban centre in the Goldfields-Esperance region and the fifth-largest in Western Australia. The name Kalgoorlie is derived from the Wangai word Karlkurla, meaning "place of the silky pears".

One of Kalgoorlies main attractions is The Super Pit. The Super Pit is an open-cut gold mine approximately 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long, 1.6 kilometres (1.0 mi) wide and 512 metres (1,680 ft) deep.[5] It was created by Alan Bond, who bought up a number of old mine leases in order to get the land area needed for the Super Pit. Every now and again the digging reveals an old shaft containing abandoned equipment and vehicles from the earlier mines. The mine operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and a visitor centre overlooks it.

The mine blasts at 1:00 pm every day, unless winds would carry dust over the town. Each of the massive trucks carries 225 tonnes of rock and the round trip takes about 35 minutes, most of that time being the slow uphill haul. Employees must live in Kalgoorlie; it is not a fly-in fly-out operation. The mine is expected to be productive until about 2017. At that point, it is planned to abandon it and allow the groundwater to seep in and fill it. It is estimated it will take about 50 years to fill completely full.

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Kalgoorlie's Climate

Kalgoorlie is best described as hot and dry in summer and cool and dry in winter. The average annual rainfall is 260 mm on an average of 65 days and, while the average rainfall is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, there is considerable variation from year to year. January is the hottest month with an average maximum temperature of 33.6°C, but temperatures above 40.0°C occur nearly once a week when hot, dry, north to northeasterly winds arrive. Such high temperatures are usually followed by a cool change from the south and occasionally with a thunderstorm.

By contrast winters are cool with July average maximum and minimum temperatures being 16.5°C and 4.8°C respectively. Cold wet days with a maximum below 12.0°C occur about once every winter. The lowest maximum temperature recorded is 7.2°C on 19 July 1961. Overnight temperatures fall below freezing about 4 times in a typical winter. Such events occur on clear nights following a day of cold southerly winds.

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