Kalgoorlie Photographers
The Golden Mile, Kalgoorlie c.1890
On the surface, the Golden Mile of old was a photographer's paradise (all towering smoke stacks, ever-expanding tailings dumps, and state-of-the-art processing plants) as captured by the great photographer J.J. Dwyer. But below ground, it was an even more amazing labyrinth of shafts, tunnels and stopes. To sustain the mines, thousands of workers were required, along with vast quantities of timber for the lining of the underground workings, as well as to power the steam turbines that provided the electricity.
By the 1980s, the underground mines that were still operating were no longer considered financially viable. An audacious scheme was hatched by Alan Bond to amalgamate all of the surviving mining leases into a single entity and to undertake open pit mining. While Bond himself didn't achieve this goal, others did, and today Kalgoorlie-Boulder is home to the massive Super Pit, one of the world's largest open pit gold mines.
Original Image by JJ Dwyer.
Modern Image captured by Dan Rossitter
The Golden Mile, Kalgoorlie c.1890
On the surface, the Golden Mile of old was a photographer's paradise (all towering smoke stacks, ever-expanding tailings dumps, and state-of-the-art processing plants) as captured by the great photographer J.J. Dwyer. But below ground, it was an even more amazing labyrinth of shafts, tunnels and stopes. To sustain the mines, thousands of workers were required, along with vast quantities of timber for the lining of the underground workings, as well as to power the steam turbines that provided the electricity.
By the 1980s, the underground mines that were still operating were no longer considered financially viable. An audacious scheme was hatched by Alan Bond to amalgamate all of the surviving mining leases into a single entity and to undertake open pit mining. While Bond himself didn't achieve this goal, others did, and today Kalgoorlie-Boulder is home to the massive Super Pit, one of the world's largest open pit gold mines.
Original Image by JJ Dwyer.
Modern Image captured by Dan Rossitter