Kalgoorlie Boulder - site of the Golden Mile. Attention was drawn to the state's south-east when Arthur Bayley discovered gold near Coolgardie in 1892. The following year Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Daniel Shea discovered alluvial gold nuggets near Mount Charlotte when they were forced to camp out unexpectedly after their horse lost a shoe.
Hannan's find drew attention to an area which was home to an ore body that later became known simply as the 'Golden Mile'. Hannan's claim was not part of this reef. It was miners, forced to move further south, who stumbled upon this lode. Central to the discovery were a South Australian syndicate who, hearing the news of the gold around Kalgoorlie, moved from a settlement called Boulder, taking the old name with them to their new mining operation.
By the end of 1893 over 100 leases had been taken out in the Kalgoorlie-Boulder area. The great challenge of the area was that the local quartz deposits, which are usually accepted as the rocks most likely to contain gold, did not produce high yields. In fact by 1894 the results from mining these quartz reefs were so disappointing that the field began to experience a small depression. Investors were less than enthusiastic and returns were not what had been hoped for.
It was a Canadian miner, Larry Cammilleri, who discovered that the quartz in the area was not carrying most of the gold. Years later he recalled: 'I sank on the leader and where she junctioned with the lode material she carried nice gold. I dollied some ounces. I found that the lode matter carried a little gold so started a shaft. This shaft led me to be the first to discover what later proved to be the lode matter which made the Golden Mile famous. The lode was composed of ironstone, with small quartz veins, greenstone, diorite and porphyry, all decomposed in the shallow workings.'
Others, including Paddy Hannan, were sceptical about Cammilleri's discovery but Cammilleri replied with the old Cornish saying 'where it is, there it is'. At first, the lack of good gold-yielding quartz in the area continued to keep investors away. It was not until the establishment of the first battery, on 10 April 1894, and some of its early yields (2008 tons of ore from the Great Boulder Mine yielded 15 000 ounces of gold) that confidence was restored in the field.
In his book In Search of El Dorado the Scottish writer Alexander Macdonald gives a description of Kalgoorlie at this time:
'When my party stepped from the train at Kalgoorlie, we saw before us a scattered array of wooden and galvanised iron houses...In the near distance we could see the towering poppet heads of the widely known Great Boulder mine, and the din created by the revolving hammers of the ever active stamping machinery assailed our ears as an indescribable uproar. But beyond the dust and smoke of these Nature-combatting engines of civilisation, the open desert, dotted with its stunted mulga and mallee growths, shimmered back into the horizon.'
As with all of the gold mining towns progress was almost instantaneous. The first post office was established in 1894. The following year the town was surveyed and proclaimed while some entrepreneur provided the new settlement with a daily newspaper. The railway arrived in 1896.
By 1897 the population in the area had grown so rapidly that two towns had been established: Kalgoorlie (it probably comes from the Aboriginal word 'karlkurlah' meaning 'silky pear' which was a common plant along the Boulder ridge) and Boulder which was declared in August 1897 when miner's shacks and tents were moved to be closer to their workplace around the Great Boulder Mine.
Kalgoorlie peaked in the early years of this century with an estimated 93 hotels, 8 breweries and a population of 30 000 people. By 1903 the School of Mines had been established and the town had fresh water from Mundaring Weir in Perth.
The city centres, which were built at this time, are still largely intact. Hannan Street in Kalgoorlie and Burt Street in Boulder are thick with gracious buildings which announce that here are two centres built on the wealth of gold. By 1910, both were thriving inland cities with fresh water, electricity, a tramline running up Hannan Street, and every possible comfort for men who worked hard for very rich rewards.
Today there are still about 50 mines operating in the goldfields district. About half of those are gold mines, including the massive Super Pit, which exploits the most productive square mile of gold-bearing ore ever discovered anywhere in the world.
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no not me, my son does though. It is a big place and he works during the week at Norseman
tr500 3 years ago
do you know if theres any jobs going in the town??
kallypink 2 years ago
gold is the highest price it ever has been...gold mines are still working but there are almost never enough jobs to go around and it is hard work.
I don't live there so can't really say what ya cahnces are.
tr500 2 years ago
Nah...the pic I have is not so good
tr500 3 years ago