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Published: April 17th 2009
The Wrights
Brian and Lorraine Wright from Ipswich in Queensland, They drove from all the way to Perth in this 1953 A40 For a rallyeDAY 160
Another warm night and we wake up to a beautiful morning here in WA (Western Australia or as some locals put it “Wait Awhile”).
We were both awake fairly early, Andy made a cup of tea and I stayed in bed for a while drinking it, but then it was time to look lively. We were meant to be moving on today, but we found that we had a lot to do, one important thing was arranging for the Patrol to be serviced at the Nissan Dealer, which there was in this town.
So as early as possible Andy telephoned the Nissan dealership to see if they could fit us in. The good news is that they can do it tomorrow, so that is another good reason for staying here another night, but they don’t know how much. Apparently they have to look it up on the computer database, which tells them how much, it seems weird that they don’t have a standard schedule of charges.
The chap at the garage said he would call back in 5 minutes, but the 5 minutes turned into an hour and as we wanted to go out,
Beauty
This little beauty crossed the Nullarbor, it came from Ipswich in Queensland, 4700 K's each we decided to pop into the dealership to see them instead.
We met a chap from Basingstoke, England who is working as a salesman, he has been sponsored by the dealership, so he has to stay with them for 4 years until he is eligible for citizenship. He likes Kalgoorlie, says it is just a little bit quiet in the evenings, not a lot to do.
Anyway at the Service Reception, we meet up with Arron and get the details sorted out the car is booked in for its 110,000 kilometre service and we then pop down to the main shopping street.
Kalgoorlie is quite a historic town, famous for its gold mines (Super Pit), there are a lot of modern buildings here scattered around, obviously some things have to catch up with a town that is thriving on its main business of mining, however walking down the main street you think you have gone back in time, it is really quite charming.
We have promised ourselves another blanket for those really cold winter nights, so we, on the advice of others, pop into the “Op Shop” and have a look around, we find ourselves a
nice pure wool blanket for $15.00, good enough for camping, all we need to do is take it to a dry cleaners then it will be fit for purpose. I never thought in a million years that I would buy anything from an “Op shop” however people out here swear by them.
We pop into the Post Office, pop into the Super Pit shop and find out what time today’s blast is and soon we are off to the Super Pit Lookout. The blast is not until 5.00 today, but we want to see the pit first and find out where to go for the blast.
Wow, seeing is believing, this pit is HUGE!! You can see really really tiny dumper trucks (they look like ants) at the bottom of the pit, however if you were to stand next to one of their monstrous wheels, you would pale into insignificance.
We watch amazed at the sheer size of the pit. The top is 3.4 Kilometres long and 1.45 wide and at present heading for 440mtrs deep. The Caterpillar 793 mining truck carries 225 tonnes of rock, its is powered by 2 motors, it is GPS tracked throughout
its entire process, driver can see exactly where they can collect their load from and what they are carrying and the destination. The mine has 32 Caterpillar 793’s at a cost of 4 million each nd has a fuel tank of 3790 Litres
For every 1 Million tonnes of rock extracted there is between 250 and3300 kg of gold
This mine is expected to be depleted by 2017 unless they find more gold or can develop new mining techniques (Geologists) to help locate more gold. We wonder what will happen to a town like this should its main source of revenue be removed, this whole town must be reliant on this mine to sustain it.
It is projected that they will find up to 800,000 ounces of gold in its lifespan and for six of the caterpillar trucks that each carry 250 tons of rock they average an amount of gold that would equal the size of a golf ball.
Think of the process of having to crush 1500 tons of rock just to get one small amount of gold the size of a golf ball. This mine is 24/7 these trucks just keep rolling and
Austin of England
The badge on the A30 the diggers just keep digging. It does not seem worth it, but it must pay in order to keep this beast moving and these people paid each month.
Then it is back to getting the chores done and into Woolworths we stock up in fresh food (fruit & veg as we have not had any fresh since having to eat everything before the SA/WA border).
If I was to mention clean skin, you could be forgiven for thinking that I was talking about skin care, well I am not, I am back on the subject of wine. A little bird told me a few weeks back about buying wine in the liquor stores over here. They said to me when you go in look for the plain black and white labelled wine, generally kept at the back or to one corner in the shop, these wines usually come from the good wineries they are unbranded and are termed as “clean skins”.
Clean skin means “Quality wine at a good price without a label”, it was time for me to test this theory, so I popped into Woolworths Liquor store next door. I found a few shelves at
5.00 PM
On the stroke of 5, the compueterised charges go of. the back marked Clean Skins, so I had a rummage around and picked up a bottle of 2008 Shiraz, which I shall be trying out this evening.
Back at the campsite, Andy makes us a sandwich for lunch while I put a load of washing in the machine. We try to have a leisurely afternoon, but for some reason with us it never feels like it, relaxing days are few and far between.
Later in the afternoon, a couple pop into the camp kitchen, they tell us that they have an old Austin A40 and have been in Perth at a rally, Brian and Lorraine have come all the way from Ipswich in Queensland, and the Journey to Perth for them across the Nullarbor is 4700 Kilometres, in this cute little car that has a top speed of 85K’s an hour.
The car is a 1953 and the badge on the front says “Austin of England”, they are staying here a couple of nights before they move on, and already been away 5 weeks. Lorraine said to me she was a little fed up of the tent already.
We intended to leave at 4.00pm to get
Big -ish bang
It was more of a thud than a bang a good position as they say that the blasting is a spectacle and can get busy. The people with the A40 tell us that they are also going to see the blasting.
We go the short drive to the pit and secure our place in the corner, at least we have visibility over two directions, I look over the pit with the Binoculars and see an area that has all been marked out and drilled, so I assume this will be the blasting area, furthermore all machinery has been moved away from the area.
I set the levels on my little camera for the optimum shot as we will only get one chance at this when the charges go off.
Boom! Bang on 5.00pm the automated system detonates the charges and a large area of rock is covered in smoke, as it settles you can see that a large area has all turned to to loosened rock, it was just amazing.
We wait a little while longer as activity starts in the mine again and we head off, back to the campsite.
Its time for our evening meal, so I set about cooking on the
camp kitchen BBQ, steak, potatoes, onions and courgette, and whilst Caroline is typing the blog I am doing the dinner.
When all the boring stuff has been done, like washing up and all that, we settle down and just chat to the people sitting with us. An older couple ask if we would have a look at their laptop as the sound is too quiet when they are playing a DVD, so we sit down and try to improve on the settings they already have. Eventually after trying a number of DVD’s it is found that the settings we have turned on are as loud as we can get it, and unless they go and buy a pair of speakers, they will not do any better.
As we are supposed to be moving on tomorrow, I wanted to tidy the truck and all our stuff so we were ready.
When Andy had finished tidying the truck he came back with the bottle of wine and a glass for me, I needed to test this Clean Skin Shiraz. I tried a small drop, it tasted ok, so I had another and that tasted fine. I had a bottle
Super Pit
Welcome to the superpit, in Kalgoorlie, its a little goldmine of lemonade on standby just in case it was too bad to drink on its own and needed to be a red wine Spritzer. However just to be sure that it was ok I had about 3 small glasses and concluded that it was a pretty good wine. So just to help some of you wine buffs out there I will continue to do my wine research.
Eventually we settle down and have a game of cards, but at 10.00pm they automatically turned the light off so the hand of cards we were playing has to be finished by torch light.
We gather everything up and put it away then eventually fall in to bed exhausted.
It is a warm night and we both fall asleep easily
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