Kalgoorlie


Kalgoorlie–Boulder, commonly known as just Kalgoorlie, is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder as the surrounding urban area includes the historic townsite of Boulder and the local government area is the City of Kalgoorlie–Boulder.
Kalgoorlie–Boulder lies on the traditional lands of the Kapurn People. The city was established in 1893 during the Western Australian gold rushes. It soon replaced Coolgardie as the largest settlement on the Eastern Goldfields. Kalgoorlie is the ultimate destination of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme and the Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail. The nearby Super Pit gold mine was Australia's largest open-cut gold mine for many years.
During August 2021, Kalgoorlie–Boulder had an estimated urban population of 29,072, a slight decline from the recent peak of 32,966 in 2013.

Toponymy

Kalgoorlie

As of 1894, when the government decided to declare a townsite for the place now named Kalgoorlie, the area was known locally as "Hannan's Find", which was also the local preference for any official name. However, the name proposed for the official townsite was "Hannans".
In suggesting that name to the Commissioner of Crown Lands, the Under Secretary for Lands, R Cecil Clifton, observed that the "native name of the place is 'Calgoorlie' but this is rather too much like Coolgardie and if adopted is, I fear likely to lead to postal mistakes". Despite that observation, the Forrest ministry selected "Kalgoorlie" in August 1894, and that name soon came to be accepted.
The name Kalgoorlie has its origins in the Wangai language spoken by certain Aboriginal peoples of the Eastern Goldfields sub-region.
Various sources have given the name a variety of meanings, including 'an Aboriginal dog chasing a kangaroo', the name of a local shrub and the name, or place, of the edible silky pear .

Boulder

The townsite of Boulder, gazetted in 1896, is named after a gold mining lease, "The Great Boulder". The name of the mining lease, in turn, alludes to a discussion in 1893 between four men in Dashwoods Gully, South Australia. That discussion was about a local mining lease known as "The Boulder", which featured large sandstone boulders with a few wiry stringers of gold.
Two of the men, W.G. Brookman and Charles de Rose, had been working the Dashwoods Gully lease without much success. The other two were George Brookman, their backer, and Sam Pearce, an experienced prospector. During the discussion, George Brookman said that he might be able to raise funds in Adelaide to send a small prospecting party to Coolgardie.
Later, the Adelaide Prospecting Company was formed. In July 1893, it sent W.G. Brookman and Pearce to Coolgardie. On arrival, the two men decided to move on to the new field at Hannan's Find, near which they eventually camped at Ivanhoe Hill. There, Pearce discovered a first lead, later known as the Ivanhoe lease, and then a second, much richer lead. In August 1893, he and W.G. Brookman registered a lease of the second lead named The Great Boulder, in memory of the Dashwoods Gully lease.

History

Kalgoorlie–Boulder lies on the traditional lands of the Kapurn] people. Languages including Kalaamaya, part of the Kapurn language family, continue to be spoken there today.
In the winter of 1893, prospectors Patrick Hannan, Tom Flanagan, and Dan Shea were travelling to Mount Youle, when one of their horses cast a shoe. During the halt in their journey, the men noticed signs of gold in the area around the foot of what is now the Mount Charlotte gold mine, located on a small hill north of the current city, and decided to stay and investigate. On 17 June 1893, Hannan filed a Reward Claim, leading to hundreds of men swarming to the area in search of gold, and Kalgoorlie, originally called Hannan's Find, was born.
During the ensuing gold rush, significant deposits of calaverite were discovered, but ignored as it was believed at the time that this was a mineral akin to fool's gold. The calaverite was subsequently used for construction in the town, including for buildings and paving. When it was realised in 1896 that calaverite is a compound of tellurium with actual gold, there was a rush to demolish any such structures in order to extract the gold therein. Nearly every structure created in the previous three years was scrapped in the process.
The population of the town was 2,018 in 1898.
The mining of gold, along with other metals such as nickel, has been a major industry in Kalgoorlie ever since, and today employs about one-quarter of Kalgoorlie's workforce and generates a significant proportion of its income. The concentrated area of large gold mines surrounding the original Hannan's find is often referred to as the Golden Mile, and was sometimes referred to as the world's richest square mile of earth.In 1901, the population of Kalgoorlie was 4,793 which increased to 6,790 by 1903.
The narrow-gauge Government Eastern Goldfields Railway line reached Kalgoorlie station in 1896, and the main named railway service from Perth was the overnight sleeper train The Westland, which ran until the 1970s. In 1917, a railway line was completed, connecting Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta, South Australia, across of desert, and consequently the rest of the eastern states. The standardisation of the railway connecting Perth in 1968 completed the Sydney–Perth railway, making rail travel from Perth to Sydney possible; the Indian Pacific rail service commenced soon after. During the 1890s, the Goldfields area boomed as a whole, with an area population exceeding 200,000, composed mainly of prospectors. The area gained a reputation for being a "wild west", notorious for its bandits and prostitutes. This rapid increase in population and claims of neglect by the state government in Perth led to the proposition of the new state of Auralia, but with the sudden diaspora after the Gold Rush, these plans fell through.
Places, famous or infamous, for which Kalgoorlie is noted include its water pipeline, designed by C. Y. O'Connor and bringing in fresh water from Mundaring Weir near Perth, its Hay Street brothels, its two-up school, the goldfields railway loopline, the Kalgoorlie Town Hall, the Paddy Hannan statue/drinking fountain, the Super Pit, and Mount Charlotte lookout. Its main street is Hannan Street, named after the town's founder. One of the infamous brothels also serves as a museum and is a major national attraction.
Kalgoorlie and the surrounding district were served by an extensive collection of suburban railways and tramways, providing for both passenger and freight traffic.
In 1989, the Town of Kalgoorlie and Shire of Boulder formally amalgamated to create the City of Kalgoorlie–Boulder, adjoining the two towns into what is now the fifth most populous city in Western Australia.
On 20 April 2010, Kalgoorlie was shaken by an earthquake that reached 5.0 on the Richter scale. The epicentre was 30 km north east of the town. The quake caused damage to a number of commercial hotels and historic buildings along Burt Street in Boulder. The entire Burt St. precinct was evacuated until 23 April. Work in the Superpit and many other mines around Kalgoorlie was stopped. Two people suffered minor injuries as a result of the quake.

Population

According to the 2021 census, there were 29,072 people in the Kalgoorlie–Boulder Significant Urban Area:
  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 7.7% of the population.
  • 66.6% of people were born in Australia. The next most common countries of birth were New Zealand, Philippines, England, South Africa and India.
  • 76.2% of people spoke only English at home. Other languages spoken at home included Afrikaans, Tagalog, Filipino, Mandarin and Shona.
  • The most common responses for religion were No Religion and Catholic.

    Geography

Climate

Kalgoorlie has a hot semi-arid climate bordering both a hot desert climate and a cool semi-arid climate with hot summers and mild winters. The average annual rainfall is on an average of 68 days and, while the average rainfall is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, there is considerable variation from year to year.
January is the hottest month, with an average maximum temperature of, but temperatures above occur nearly once a week when hot, dry, north to northeasterly winds arrive. Such high temperatures are usually followed by a cool change from the south, and occasionally with a thunderstorm.
By contrast, winters are cool, with July average maximum and minimum temperatures being and, respectively. Cold, wet days with a maximum below occur about once every winter. The lowest maximum temperature recorded is, on 19 July 1961. Overnight temperatures fall below freezing about four times in a typical winter. Such events occur on clear nights following a day of cold southerly winds.

Industry and commerce

Kalgoorlie–Boulder is a regional centre and has a Chamber of Commerce and a Chamber of Minerals and Energy.

Mining

Since 1992, Kalgoorlie has been home to the Diggers & Dealers conference, held annually in August. It is Australia's premier international mining conference.
The Fimiston Open Pit is an open-cut gold mine about long, wide, and over deep. Originally consisting of a large number of underground mines, including the Paringa, Oroya, Brown Hill, Chaffers, and Hainault mines, they were consolidated into a single open pit mine in 1989. A visitor centre overlooks the mine, which operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The mine blasts at 1:00 pm every day, unless winds would carry dust over the town. Each of the massive trucks carries 225 tonnes of rock and the round trip takes about 35 minutes, most of that time being the slow uphill haul. Employees must live in Kalgoorlie; there's no fly-in, fly-out operation. The current life of mine plan covers operation until 2035, with investigations for mine extension ongoing.