Video Description
The Super Pit open cut gold mine at Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Managed to catch the blasting it's at the end of the clip.
Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie, alternatively known as Kalgoorlie-Boulder,
is a city in the Goldfields-Esperance
region of Western Australia, and is
located 370 miles east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway, the state capital. The city was founded in 1893 during the Yilgarn-Goldfields
gold rush, and is located close to the
so-called "Golden Mile".
The Super Pit
The Super Pit is an open-cut gold mine approximately 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long, 1.6 kilometres (1.0 mi) wide and 512 metres (1,680 ft) deep. It was created by Alan Bond, who bought up a number of old mine leases in order to get the land area needed for the Super Pit. Every now and again the digging reveals an old shaft containing abandoned equipment and vehicles from the earlier mines.
The mine operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and a visitor centre overlooks it.
The mine blasts at 1:00 pm every day, unless winds would carry dust over the town. Each of the massive trucks carries 225 tonnes of rock and the round trip takes about 35 minutes, most of that time being the slow uphill haul. Employees must live in Kalgoorlie; it is not a fly-in fly-out operation. The mine is expected to be productive until about 2017. At that point, it is planned to abandon it and allow the groundwater to seep in and fill it. It is estimated it will take about 50 years to fill completely full.
Source: Wikipedia, Kalgoorlie
KCGM
The Super Pit is managed by Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) and owned (50/50) by Newmont Australia and Barrick Gold Corporation.
Source: SuperPit.com.
Rock Blasting
Rock blasting is the controlled use of explosives to excavate or remove rock. It is a technique used most often in mining and civil engineering such as dam construction.
The use of explosives in mining goes back to the year 1627, when gunpowder was first used in place of mechanical tools in the Hungarian (now Slovakian) town of Banská Štiavnica. The innovation spread quickly throughout Europe and the Americas.
Source:
Wikipedia, Rock blasting.
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