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25 October 2011

Kalgoorlie Gold

On our recent trip to Western Australia, we visited the Gold Mining town of Kalgoorlie where we visited the Gold Mine Museum. There we descended down the mine shaft into the depth of the earth to see how the miners used to have to crawl through the many tunels looking for gold seams.

After we surfaced again, we were taken into the gold toom where an employee cast a genuine gold bar. Unfortunately we couldn't keep it.

Here's a little video of the experience...

6 comments:

  1. fascinating, I remember doing a similar tour when I was a child, didn't really appreciate it much then. I enjoy your videos Bill.

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  2. Very good Bill.
    I don't believe I would have liked being down in those tunnels - claustrophobia would have won the battle!
    However, thanks for the informative video tour.
    Cheers
    Colin (HB)

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  3. BILL B: when Bendigo Mining first started to go down below where the 1890s miners' tunnels & shafts had to finish ---- back then, they didn't have efficient pumps to get rid of the never-ending supply of water --- I took a tour with the Sth. African boss.

    Huggibear would have suffered extreme claustrophobia. We drove down the sloping tunnel 1.5 km to where the drilling and excavating had come to a dead stop.

    They were setting the explosives. So we reversed back up the tunnel to a specially built wall enclosure. BOOM.

    "We wait for the black cloud, then the grey cloud to pass by," we were told. "When the cloud is white we can drive back through it to where the drilling teams have reached currently."

    Not for the faint-hearted. The only way out is the way you came IN. Even tho' it was 38 deg. on the surface, ground water came trickling in from all sides, all the time. We had to wear protective clothing, as well as helmets.

    RICHARD

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  4. Richard
    You are right on the ball with the "extreme claustrophibia" - if I was to be of the underground species, I would have been born a "Meerkat"!!!
    Colin (HB)

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  5. Oh I wish I knew earlier, could've offered you guys a B&B here in Perth! I hope you enjoyed WA and totally fell in Love!

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  6. Great video -- hard to believe it is now -- seems like something out of an old movie. What a way to live, huh?

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