Kalgoorlie – Center of Gold Mining

Visitors frequently put the question to Kalgoorlie gold miners; "Why don't you concentrate your mining operations?" A mine may be drawing ore from over a hundred different working places which are spread out over several thousand feet of strike and on many different levels. The answer to this question is that "finished" can rarely be written for a section of the mine. The intricate web of mineralization in faults, shears and fractures is an endless puzzle, each solution opens up new avenues to be explored. After the last ore is taken from a stope, a program of drilling may continue for several weeks on different possibilities. Perhaps no ore is discovered and drilling is abandoned, but it is not unusual for another search to begin later in that same area on a new theory with successful results. Wherever a slightly richer mineralization is found, it is needed to "sweeten" the mill heads. Over seventy years ago gold was discovered in the dry wastes of Western Australia. Rich deposits of alluvial gold were found at first and as these were worked out they led to the discovery of the lode ores, which were leaner and harder to extract.