Kalgoorlie
Well the weather has not improved much, very cold 13-16 I guess with biting wind. Went unto Kal.. This morning and the girls done the shops while Stan and I looked for a good pie shop. Found a beauty!
Kalgoorlie is a city with a population of 30,000. Wonderful old turn of the century architecture. It is a typical workers town with friendly people and few signs of an idle youth culture save the obvious gatherings of groups of aboriginals sitting in what looked like clan or tribal groups around small camp fires on the verge of open grounds.
The city has had it's booms and busts as is the case with most mining towns but seems to be thriving at the moment. To me, two events stand out that gave stability to Kalgoorlie's gold mining, firstly PM Menzies devalued the currency and introduced on bounty on gold production. This stabilized the town and gave the industry certainty. The second was the controversial move by Alan Bond to buy up all the mined out leases on the golden mile amalgamate them into one giant lease! Well Bondy sold the super lease to a public listed mining company and the rest is history. The Super Pit is now the worlds largest open cut gold mine and is in the process of mining all the area between, above and below the original leases,and cashing in on the record world gold prices of recent years.
Bondy was certainly a man of vision!