Video Description
Flying Over the Super Pit
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.
CAT 797F Haul Truck.
The 797F is the next step in ultra-class mining trucks,
designed and built by Caterpillar using components and systems that have
evolved through years of rugged mining applications. It delivers excellent
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for downhill or flat/uphill applications and oil-cooled multiple disc brakes
on all four wheels. Source:
CaterpillarInc.
Komatsu Crawler Excavator PC8000
Machines used for excavating earth and
rocks and loading them on a dump truck. The size ranges from small ones
(PC78MR-6) used in civil engineering to super large ones used in mines
(PC8000-6). Crawler excavators are capable of a wide variety of work by
changing a front attachment. Source:
Komatsu.com.
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