Kalgoorlie

Kalgoorlie is a city in the Goldfields of Western Australia, in the dry interior east of Perth. It sits beside the Super Pit, an open-cut gold mine that runs along the Golden Mile, a belt of gold-bearing rock mined since the 1890s.

Paddy Hannan, an Irish prospector, found gold near the site in 1893, and the rush that followed brought thousands of miners to the dry scrubland. Water was scarce, and the engineer C. Y. O'Connor designed a pipeline from Mundaring Weir near Perth that began carrying water to the Goldfields in 1903. Kalgoorlie and its neighbor Boulder grew together, with grand hotels and banks built in the boom years, and they were merged into one city in the late 1980s. Boulder keeps its own main street of gold rush buildings south of the Super Pit.

Northern Star Resources runs the Super Pit and the underground mines of the Golden Mile, where gold is mined and processed around the clock. Nickel mines to the south and north of the city also send ore through Kalgoorlie, and the Western Australian School of Mines trains engineers and geologists for the industry.

Hannan Street, the main street, was laid out wide enough for camel trains to turn, and it is lined with pubs and buildings with iron lace verandas. The Museum of the Goldfields, entered through the old Ivanhoe headframe, shows nuggets and the history of the rush. The Kalgoorlie Town Hall, finished in the early 20th century, has a pressed metal ceiling and a theater upstairs. A statue of Paddy Hannan holding a water bag stands on the main street.