The Kalgoorlie-Boulder area was first explored in 1863 by HM Lefroy, with further expeditions led by CC Hunt during 1864-68. Both men were seeking pastoral land and rode over the gold bearing earth oblivious to the riches below.

It was not until the gold rushes of the north-west of the state declined that miners began to explore the tracks established by Hunt. To stimulate searches the Government offered a reward of 500-1000 pound for the first discovery of payable fold in a new region.

In 1892 Arthur Bayley registered his Reward Claim with a find of 554 ounces of gold from Fly Flat in Coolgardie. The WA Goldfields were born.

In June 1893 three Irish prospectors, Patrick Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Daniel Shea rode out east of Coolgardie in their quest. They were forced to camp overnight at Mt Charlotte, 20km short of their destination, when one of their horses lost a shoe. It was a stroke of luck - in the next few days they collected 100 ounces of alluvial nuggets. Hannan registered the Reward Claim in Coolgardie on June 17 1893 and Kalgoorlie was born. Two other prospectors soon located further large gold deposits 5km south discovering the world famous "Golden Mile".

The goldrush that followed was staggering in size. Men came in there thousands from all over the world and hundreds of mining companies were floated to speculate on the rich reefs. In the space of a few years, the Goldfields were the economic and political centre of Western Australia.

But the human cost was high. Many were ill prepared for the harsh conditions they encountered with inadequate food and serve lack of water. Living conditions were appalling with most miners living in hessian or canvas huts. There was no sanitation and few medical supplies. Life was incredibly strenuous and lonely. Diseases such as scurvy, dysentery and typhoid were common, claiming the lives of many.

Water soon became more valued than gold and sold for 1 shilling a gallon, equivalent to 50c per litre by today's standards. Many thousands died from thirst or from drinking contaminated water.

Water shortages were finally solved in 1903 with the completion of the Perth-Goldfields Pipeline, planned and supervised by the brilliant State Engineer in Chief "CY O'Connor". Just months before completion, unable to cope any longer with the widespread criticism of his scheme O'Connor tragically shot himself.

His visionary plan of water in the Goldfields came true on January 24, 1903 when having travelled through 557km of pipeline driven by eight steam pumping stations, water overflowed into the Mt Charlotte Reservoir, transforming the quality of life overnight and guaranteeing the survival of the region.

Whilst the early 1900's saw the easy gold being worked out, the big companies soon went deep underground. Headframes sprouted along the Golden Mile and with the tailings and mullock dumps, became the symbols of the Goldfields.

Since 1893, the Kalgoorlie gold deposits have produced over 35,000,000 ounces (993.125 tonnes) of gold, by far the most to be extracted from any one source in Australia.

In their heyday, the combined population of Kalgoorlie and Boulder reached 30,000 with 93 hotels and 8 breweries.

Today, Kalgoorlie-Boulder is living history, with the past conspicuous in every part of the City - the public buildings, the pubs, the cemeteries, the wide street, the houses in the suburbs and the tourist attractions. All providing a piece of the chequered whole which is the history of this famous gold mining town.

Patrick Hannan (known affectionately as Paddy Hannan) was born in county Clare, Ireland in 1843.

At the age of 20 he came to Australia and worked for some years around various gold diggings at Ballarat and Bendigo.

He then mined in New Zealand for years, returning to Australia to prospect in New South Wales and Southern Cross rushes. (there is a shaft a little distance out of Southern Cross which is known as Paddy Hannans Shaft).

When Bayley and Ford found and report their rich discovery at Coolgardie on September 17 1892, Hannan and his mate Tom Flanagan travelled to the new find and took up claims on one of the gullies of Coolgardie. This venue was not very successful.

In June 1893 news of the Mt Youle rush resulted in a general exodus from Coolgardie. Included in this were Hannan, Flanagan and another mate Daniel Shea.

At a point 25 miles to the east they were delayed and during their enforced stay they found gold in the small gullies close to the findings which are now called Mt Charlotte, Hannan's Hill and Mt Gledden.

On the 17 June 1893 Hannan rode back to Coolgardie to register the new find and to apply for a Reward claim, taking with him about 100 ounces of gold nuggets.

His arrival at Coolgardie caused intense excitement and nearly the entire population of the town packed up to move to the new find. It was not thought to be much at first but things improved a great deal after discoveries a mile or so further south.

In the early days the town was simply named Hannan's or Hannan's Find and within three days an estimated 700 men were prospecting in the area. This was the goldrush to beat all goldrushes with potential prospectors believing that a few weeks of hardship would be rewarded with a lifetime of untold affluence.

Neither Hannan nor his mates made very much out of their discovery and Paddy, needing a holiday badly, left the area in 1894.

When he returned in 1897, Kalgoorlie had become a very busy bustling place and he found himself very warmly welcomed and a great fuss made of the discoverer of a rich find.

A function was arranged and a tree planted near the site of his first find. The original tree has not survived but the latest replacement was planted in the year of the Centenary of Paddy's discovery, 1993.

Although Paddy Hannan made little out of the fortunate find, he was granted a Government payment of three pounds a week for a number of years.

After some years in Western Australia, Paddy retired to Victoria and died at Brunswick on 4th November 1925 at the age of 82 years. He is buried at Melbourne Cemetery.

Hannan's contribution to the area was that he had discovered the edge of an ore body, which later became known as the 'Golden Mile'. Hannan's claim was not part of the 'Golden Mile'. It was other miners, forced to move further south, who stumbled upon this solid ore body.

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'. The lack of good gold-yielding quartz in the area still kept 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.

"Centuries hence the most enduring monumental records of man in the 19th and 20th centuries will be his engineering achievements."

For O'Connor the Fremantle Harbour Works; the two lighthouses (Rottnest and Leeuwin) some portion of the Railway System; the Mundaring Weir and the Goldfields water scheme will be regarded as achievement of great merit.

Born at Gravelmouth, Ireland in 1843, O'Connor was first apprenticed to a Civil Engineer J.C. Smith M.I.C.E who was an engineer to the Waterford and Limerick Railways. He served on Irish Railways until 1865, and went to New Zealand as an Assistant Engineer on the construction on the coach road from Christchurch through the Otira Gorge to Hokitika on the West Coast. From 1865 to 1870 he was an assistant engineer to the Province of Canterbury; then district engineer for the Westland and on 1883 under secretary for Public Works for seven years, after which he was appointed as Marine Engineer for the whole of the Domination.

In April 1891, O'Connor became Engineer in chief and Acting Manager of Railways for Western Australia. After some time he was relieved of the responsibility of Railways to devote himself to a number of engineering enterprises then contemplated. WA with few people and no money, even then "on the move". In 1891 he published his scheme for the construction of the Fremantle Harbour Works, meeting some criticism and opposition from Sir John Cook (consultant) and others; but he convinced the Government of the correctness of his views. In March 1892 the first stone was taken from the Rocky Bay Quarries and used to form the 'Moles'. Six years was occupied on the construction and on 4th May, 1897 the "Sultan" steamed in across the bar; in March, 1898 the "Gera" entered the Harbour and tied up at Victoria Quay.

Sir John Forrest's confidence on his Chief Engineer is worthy of noting; and he saw also the absolute necessity of rushing ahead with the Goldfields Water Scheme; he lost no time in sanctioning a loan of $2 ½ million stg. to cover the cost. The population of the state was about 100,000 at that time. A storage reservoir at Mundaring Weir on Helena River had to be built - with a wall rising about 100 feet above the bed at a site 340 feet above sea level; there were to be eight pumping stations and 325 miles if 30" pipe to deliver the water to the ultimate destination on the West Australia plateau. Planning had been in hand for some time before the actual work commenced in 1898. Criticism was plentiful and often blistering. O'Connor stated under my plan I will pump five million gallons of water to the Goldfields and Kalgoorlie, using eight pumping stations and 30" steel pipes the wall to the Weir to be 750 feet in length and the dam to hold 4650 Millions gallons. ( It has since been extended to 17,000 million gallons.)

John K. Ewere wrote "for four years the pipe line moved slowly eastwards. Like a great black snake, gangs of hard working men toiled through scorching sun of summer or the cold days of winter, digging trenches and pits, unloading the handling pipes and caulking joints. There was no great comfort in the rough camps which were soon again on the move as the miles were put behind the gangs. The pipes (and the water) reached to Southern Cross, then to Coolgardie and finally to the Charlotte Reservoir at Kalgoorlie, where the scheme was "opened" by Sir John Forrest on 24th January, 1903 on a day of great heat of 106 degrees - in the presence of great and excited crowds among whom were many important visitors from the Eastern States."

The original planning called for five million gallons per day; this figure has been maintained over most years, and on many occasions recent years exceeded; the great demands of the new enterprises at Kambalda and Norseman have been met and the whole scheme and system has grown to become an engineering epic; still expanding.

It is believed that, to date at least 100,000 millions gallons of water has been pumped from Mundaring and used in the mines and town at Southern Cross and Bullfinch: at Coolgardie, Spargoville and Norseman; and even out to Kanowna or Ora Banda; the greater amount if course being used during the seventy years or so of the working life of the Golden Mile Mines.

In 1897 O'Connor received the C.M.G and was commissioned to visit London in connection with his great scheme and to confer with their Engineers on the construction of the Outer Harbour Scheme.

Statue on the North Mole of the Harbour, a bust at the Weir site and the O'Connor Museum at Mundaring Weir remind us of the work; the pipe line is almost never out of sight when travelling by rail to Kalgoorlie from Perth; while the two million gallon tank at Mount Charlotte may be said to dominate the scene at the Goldfields end. These two towns and others have enjoyed the availability of some of the purest water in the world for the last sixty seven years and genius of Charles Yelverton O'Connor is recognised by his work.

Today, water is supplied to over 100,000 people and six million sheep in an area covering 44,000 square kilometres (two thirds the size of Tasmania).

Gold is one of the heaviest metals known to man, being exceeded in weight only by the platinum group of metals. In it's natural state gold is found either as native metal or in a combination with the element tellurium forming gold tellurides (sylvanite,calaverite,petrite).

It can also occur in sulphide minerals.

The native minerals may be up to 99.8% pure gold, but more commonly is 85.95% pure, containing small amounts of impurities: generally silver, copper and platinum. Gold is most commonly found in alluvial (water lain) or eluvial (residual) deposits and is associated with gold-bearing sulphide ore bodies. It also occurs as veins in massive quartz. Free fold found in alluvial or eluvial deposits ranges in sizes from microscopic particles to large nuggets. The largest found in Western Australia was the "Golden Eagle" which was found at Larkinville in 1931. When found it weighed 35.326kg. Gold is frequently obtained by special treatment of sulphide ores, such as pyrite (iron sulphide) and arsenopyrite (iron arsenic sulphide).

The gold occurs in these minerals as minute segregations.

Primary gold occurs in crystalline rocks, which have commonly been affected by heat and/or pressure. In Western Australia these rocks are very ancient, often being more than 2,500 million years old. Much of the state is underlain by ancient granitic rocks within which are found remnants of metamorphic rocks known as greenstones. In the Yilgarn block, where most of the State's gold has been mined, the greenstone belts extend in a NNW-SSE direction. They rang in width from a few kilometres to a few tens of kilometres and in length up to several tens of kilometres.

Gold deposits occur generally within, or near to the edge of, greenstone belts. Occasionally they are found in adjacent granitic rocks.

Tellurides were first discovered at Kalgoorlie in 1896. Specimens were sent to the Paris World Exposition in 1900 and may indeed be some of the specimens included in the gold display. Tellurides tend to occur in veinlets and small segregation's filling cracks which cross the line of gold-bearing bodies. On weathering, tellurides liberate free 'mustard' gold.

Tellurides were deposited at a late period of ore formation at relatively very low temperatures, around 150oC.

During the early part of this century the Geological Survey of W.A. had an active policy of acquiring fine gold specimens. Many of these had been sent by various goldmines to exhibitions in Europe, such as the Wembley Exhibition in London and the Paris Exposition, and were subsequently acquired by the Geological Survey for it's collection.

The specimens displayed here from this collection illustrate a variety of forms of gold: nuggets, flat sheets, leaves, veins and crystals.

They are all from the Western Australian Goldfields. The most spectacular leaf gold specimens are from Queen Margaret goldmine, Bulong. Other specimens are from Coolgardie, Mulgabbie, Cue, Norseman, Kalgoorlie, Mt Egerton and Meekatharra.

The W.A. Museum wishes to thank the Director of the Geological Survey of Western Australia for the loan of these specimens for display.

Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd has open 2 open pit mines on it's leases in the Goldfields area.

The Mt Percy open pit on the Northern leases has ceased operations but did until recently produce up to a million tonnes per annum (tpa) of free milling oxide and sulphide ores. The other mine, the Super Pit, is essentially an aggregation of the Judd, South, Paringa, Croesus/Eclipse, Central, Brownhill, Drysdale and Horseshoe pits into one continuous large scale operation. When completed it will be some five kilometers long, 2 kilometres wide and up to 450 metres deep. In it's expected life of 20 years, it will produce more than eight million ounces of gold.

The concept of open pit mining is the bulk mining of high tonnage, lower grade ore deposits, processed by high capacity treatment plants to achieve low cost gold production.

Open pit mining depends on four major factors to make it profitable:

• the ability to accurately delineate and evaluate the ore body;
• the ability to mine and haul the maximum amount payable ore with the minimum amount of waste by the shortest route to the processing plant;
• the ability to extract the gold from the ore efficiently;
• the ability to carry out the entire operation safety.

• the slope of the pit walls for wall stability;
• the provision of 'berms' (steps) so that rock slides can be controlled;
• the width and height of 'benches'(layers) which are to be formed as the ore is removed;
• blast design and it's effect on the rock;
• the width and route of the haul road.

Currently mining is carried out on 10 metre high benches using hydraulic excavators with bucket capacities of 13-20m3 to load 130 to 200 tonne haul trucks.

The use of such large equipment allows for economies of scale, and enables the economic recovery of low grade ore that once was considered waste. Open pit mining on the Golden Mile is complicated by the presence of stope voids, shafts, drives and cross-cuts of workings from original underground mines that date back to 1893. There are more than 2000 kilometres of old mine headings under this area.

To maintain control of costs and efficiency, open pit mining requires close attention to geology, planning, scheduling of earthmoving equipment, drill and blast technology and safety. Through constant control and reduce costs and improve the extraction of ore from the ground in the most efficient and safest manner.

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