Video Description
The Fimiston Super Pit gold mine, Kalgoorlie.
The Super Pit
The Fimiston Open Pit, colloquially known as the Super Pit, is
Australia's largest open cut gold mine. The Super Pit is located off the
Goldfields Highway on the south-east edge of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western
Australia.
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. 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.
Source:
Wikipedia, Kalgoorlie
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