Kalgoorlie Suburb Overview
Kalgoorlie, known as Kalgoorlie-Boulder, is a town in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, and is located 595 kilometres east-northeast of state capital Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. The town was founded in 1893 during the Yilgarn-Goldfields gold rush, and is located close to the so-called “Golden Mile”.
As at the 2006 census, it had a population of 28,250, making it the largest urban centre in the Goldfields-Esperance region and the fifth-largest in Western Australia.
The name Kalgoorlie is derived from the Wangai word Karlkurla, meaning “place of the silky pears “.
In January 1893, prospectors Patrick Hannan, Tom Flanagan, and Dan O’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, and decided to stay put. 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, was born.
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 find is often referred to as the Golden Mile, and is considered by some to be the richest square mile of earth on the planet. The town’s population was about 30,000 people in 1903 and began to grow into nearby Boulder.
The narrow gauge Government railway line reached Kalgoorlie 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 standard gauge railway line was completed, connecting Kalgoorlie to the city of Port Augusta, South Australia across 2,000 kilometres 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 it possible for rail travel from Perth to Sydney
Places, famous or infamous, that Kalgoorlie is noted for 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 was serviced by an extensive collection of suburban railways and tramways, providing for both passenger and freight traffic.
Since 1992, Kalgoorlie has been home to the Diggers & Dealers conference, held annually in August. It is Australia’s premier international mining conference.
The Super Pit is an open-cut gold mine approximately 3.6 kilometres long, 1.6 kilometres wide and 512 metres deep. It was created by Alan Bond, who bought up a number of old mine leases in order to get the land area needed for the Super Pit. Every now and again the digging reveals an old shaft containing abandoned equipment and vehicles from the earlier mines.
Both GWN7 and WIN maintain newsrooms in the city. The GWN7 bureau provides coverage of the surrounding area for the station’s nightly 30-minute news program, GWN7 News, at 5:30pm on weeknights. The WIN bureau provides coverage for sister station STW-9 ‘s Nine News bulletins at 6pm each night and 4:30pm on weekdays, which are simulcast on WIN.
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