Question of the Day

What does the America’s Cup have to do with Kalgoorlie today?

The answer may surprise you, although after thinking about it, perhaps it is logical.

When Kalgoorlie was in gold rush mode, the mining warden was kept busy registering separate claims for all sorts of people. Now I can’t remember exactly what it is you need to do to register a mining claim, and if I remembered anything it would likely be relevant only to Victoria, but I imagine the same rules applied. You had to peg a claim, and perhaps be working it in some way for the claim to be valid. Since the prospectors were almost all individuals initially, the claims tended to be quite small.  A map of the claims from the time thus looked quite similar to a residential development on small lots.

Initially the gold was found on the surface as that was how it was discovered. Soon men were chasing gold down shafts in underground diggings. However, as diggings became deeper, the cost and risks involved in its extraction rose to the point where it was no longer feasible for individuals to continue the search in this manner. Many claims reverted to an open cut manner of exploitation. However, in a small claim, there is a limit to how big a hole you can dig, because the walls need to have a certain slope. As a result, the exploitation of Kalgoorlie languished along with the gold price.

The scene was set for a man of vision to make his mark. The plan was to acquire adjacent leases to amalgamate them into larger lots.  This was to allow more efficient exploitation of the gold vein in a single open pit. The concept of the Kalgoorlie Super Pit was born.

Some 25 years later those individual workings have been consumed into one massive pit, some 3km long, 1.5km wide and 600m deep. The efficiency of the operation is such that each 220tonne load of ore in one truck contains about one golf ball size of gold and the workings are profitable. Only one truckload in six contains ore, the rest is waste. The mine will have about another 10 years of life based on current reserves.

The super pit is undoubtedly a success. The man of vision? You may have guessed it was Alan Bond. All of this plan was being hatched at the same time as his Americas Cup campaigns. The project did however wind up being bigger than him. He ran out of resources to buy all of the leases required. The project however made its own momentum, and the plan was completed. It is now operated by a joint venture including Newcrest Mining.