We began our exploration of the Kagoorlie Boulder twin cities with a visit to the Main Street of Boulder
Burt Street is the historic, tree-lined main street and renowned for its well preserved Federation-era gold rush architecture. It’s now a quiet, picturesque, and charming country-style street that feels frozen in time compared to the wider, grander thoroughfares in neighboring Kalgoorlie. The central block houses grand two-storey former banks, administrative offices, and storefronts with ornate decorative parapets, wide verandahs, and classic recessed display windows.
The Boulder Town Hall was opened in 1908. It features a prominent clock tower, wrought-iron balustrades and pressed tin ceilings. It operated as a theatre for many years and singers, including Dame Nellie Melba performed on its stage.
Today, its great attraction is a rare surviving stage curtain (complete with original pulley system) by Phillip Goatcher who was famed in his day for his lavish drop curtains. He was reputedly paid £50 for the 6.25m x 8.45m curtain which was restored in 1997 at a cost of $200,000.
From Boulder, we drove to the Super Pit Lookout , just a few kilometres way to see this enormous hole in the ground.
The pit is one of Australia’s largest open cut mines. It is oblong in shape – approximately 3.5 kilometres long, 1.6 kilometres wide and over 675 metres deep. I suspect that new work near the observaton area will soon make it larger. It produces over 500,000 ounces of gold each year, that is around 14,000 kg. For every 1,000,000 tons of ore, there are between 250 and 300 kg of gold.
Mining is done by conventional drill and blast mining with the ore removed by enormous excavators and dump trucks.
There are 40 caterpillar ore trucks on site, each costing $5.7 million. They weigh 106 tonnes and carry 3,790 litres of fuel. Each load weighs a little over 200 tonnes. Every round trip to the mine face and the then to processing works takes about one hour.
There are three excavators on site, each worth $18 million. They weigh 750 tons and each bucket weighs 68 tons. Around 15 million tonnes of rock are moved in any given year.
Employees work alternative fixed shifts of seven days on and seven days off, each of 12 hours.
I don’t think that there is anywhere else in Australia quite like Kalgoorlie. Unlike most goldmining towns only last for a short time. Kalgoorlie sits on the edge of the famous Golden Mile and has an economy which has been driven by gold since 1893. The main street, Hannan Street, is awash with glorious buildings all bearing testament to the wealth that has been generated.
I walked almost the full length of Hannan Street (to the end and back), Kalgoorlies’ main street, taking photos of some of the beautiful historic buildings. Most were built in the gold rush of the 1880s. In its heyday, Kalgoorlie must have been quite a town. There is a pub on every corner, as well as some in between.
The Palace Hotel is located at the main intersection, built in 1897 and famous for its opulent wrap-around iron lace verandas. It has lavish marble bars and an historical connection to Herbert Hoover who stayed there as a mining engineer and donated a mirror that still hangs on the wall in the lobby.
The Exchange Hotel is a prominent two-story corner pub facing the main crossing. It acts as a social centre for both locals and visitors. The hotel was built in 1900 and has been listed by State Heritage which increases its importance:
Kalgoorlie Town Hall is a grand civic building featuring an ornate facade and an interior featuring rare pressed metal ceilings and historic theatre boxes.
The York Hotel is a state heritage-listed hotel with its classic goldfields commercial architecture.
In some of these hotels, the bars still feature women working in lingerie or topless (skimpy bars) – a long time tradition with the miners here.
I don’t have a great penchant for cemeteries although I guess that eventually my day will come and I’ll spend a long time in one. I took this photo simply because, the trees and red soil remnded me of the way Pro Hart (a Broken Hill based brushman of the bush) used to paint an outback scene.
Another feature of Kalgoorlie is Questa Casa, sometimes known as ‘The Pink House’. It is the only remaining brothel from a time when there were over 30 of them operating in Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Questa Casa opens for a daily tour that takes visitors through the workings of the bordello and explains the historic origins of this legal brothel which has been operating for over 100 years.
We had read about the corrugated iron houses that provided accommodation for early miners and railway workers. We set out to find some of them but the ones we could find all had high front fences so we couldn’t really see anything but their roofs. These buildings would have been simple homes and not insulated – iceboxes in winter and furnaces in summer!
