The world's largest mining hole

Honestly, only yesterday I fully realized WHAT people are generally ready to do for the sake of gold.

Well, yes, someone sometimes kills someone because of money. They steal, rob, squeeze ... It's all after.

See what a person does to get him out of the ground!

It is hard to believe that people dug a giant hole in the ground to mine, think about it, 7 grams of gold per ton of ore !!!

7 grams per ton of rock taken out of the ground!

Now think about it, the depth of this largest gold mine in the world is 570 meters, the dimensions are 3.5 by 1.5 kilometers and every year 28 (!!!) tons of gold are mined here! Remember, 7 grams of gold per ton of ore. Count how many rocks are taken out per year in this mine.

It is called Super Pit and is located in the Australian city of Kalgoorlie. It was from here in 1893 that the Australian gold rush began, when the first rich gold deposit was found in these places.

When I googled on the Internet about the Super Pete mine, I found several posts in 2010 and 2014.

Do you know what is the most interesting? That in 2010, the depth of the mine was 360 meters. For 6 years it has become deeper by 40%! And they plan to deepen and deepen it.

Now take a closer look at the bottom of the mine in the picture. See the dots?

This is a technique working at the bottom of a mine.

These machines are drilling rock for laying explosives.

In general, the Kalgoorlie field is considered unique in the world.

I don’t know what exactly. So they say. Who understands, here is a little copy-paste.

The ore field of the mine is located on the dive site of the Kalgoorlie syncline, complicated by the Golden Mile longitudinal fault and the dolerite sill of the same name. Zones of gold-bearing sulfide impregnation occur in the Upper Archean stratum of volcanic rocks of the main composition and intercalations of schists. At the deposit, approx. 300 steeply falling ore bodies with a thickness of 0.6 to 24 m, controlled by fractures of several systems. The largest area is the Golden Mile (approx. 5 km2).

The main ore minerals are pyrite, gold tellurides; minor - chalcopyrite, galena, sphalerite and to a lesser extent other sulfides; non-metallic ones - quartz, calcite, albite, sericite. Gold is present in the form of submicroscopic dissemination (0.5–20 μm.) In pyrite, 15–20% is represented by tellurides and partly free native. To a depth of approx. 60 m. The ores are oxidized.

Loading already blasted rock onto huge dump trucks. It seems in the picture that they are not so huge.

Now I will show something for comparison.

This is an excavator that loads dump trucks with rock. Well, you understand, yes ...?

In the early years, gold was mined here in an open way, simply sifting through the rock. Then, when there was almost nothing on the surface, they began to go deep into the ground and build mines (the famous mines, “Timiston” and “Charlotte”). At the mines, development systems were adopted with ore collapse and laying of mined-out space. The average gold grade in the ore was 7–9 grams per ton. About 5 tons of metal were extracted annually !!! In general, since the discovery of gold, about 100 million tons of ore with an average gold grade of 10-12 g / t have been mined in Kalgoorlie, from which more than 1,100 tons of gold have been extracted.

The maximum annual gold production - 33 tons - falls on the period until 1917. In subsequent years, production decreased due to a decrease in the capacity of ore bodies, with depth and a decrease in gold content in ore: from 35.3 grams per ton in 1903 to 7.7 grams per ton in 1962

Super Pete is owned by Newmont Mining and Barrick Gold, and there are 550 people working directly in gold mining and about as many as specialists serving the transportation system.

Gold mining at the Super Pit mine is not only the largest, but also one of the most difficult in Australia. The thing is that the precious metal in the processed rock is contained in the form of telluride. This mineral cannot be processed in the usual way of purification - cyanidation, so a lot of money and effort is spent on its multi-stage processing and purification of gold from impurities.

On the edge of the mine for many years there has been a special viewing platform, which is visited by about 150 thousand tourists a year!
I respect people who manage to make a point of interest by attracting tourists.

And Kalgoorlie, for a moment, is located in a rather remote part of Western Australia ... But people go and fly to distant lands, in heat and dust!

And so the top of the mine looks from the city side. One can see how millions of tons of rocks formed a giant embankment along the entire perimeter of the Super Pete.

Like this ... For the sake of gold, a man turns mountains and picks the earth, sparing no strength and money ...