| Explore Kalgoorlie-Boulder |
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Kalgoorlie-Boulder is home to a wide range of businesses servicing the community and the mining industry. As the financial and administrative centre of the Goldfields and the location of many State and Federal government agencies, the town is now home to a significant workforce. The Goldfields Cultural Centre, opened in 1993, provides access to exhibitions of national significance as well as coordinating artistic endeavour on a local and regional level. Mining remains the principal focus of the town, however as is demonstrated by the success of the Goldfields Mining Expo; first held in Kalgoorlie-Boulder in 1984, it has grown to become the biggest event of this nature in the Southern Hemisphere. |
| The Early Years |
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On the 10th of June, Hannan and Flanagan discovered small fragments of gold in the red dust and quartz deposits near Mt Charlotte, a mere 25 miles from Coolgardie; by this time they had been joined by another fellow countryman, Dan Shea. Hannan left his partners to guard the site while he rode back to Coolgardie with over 100 ounces of gold and laid claim to the site on the 17th of June. Among the earliest arrivals to the new claim, were George Brookman and Sam Pearce from Adelaide, later joined by George's younger brother Will. While Hannan and his partners were content to search for surface gold, Brookman and Pearce had formed a syndicate in Adelaide to finance the mining in the area. Brookman's business acumen and Pearce's skill in identifying gold reefs in an area a few miles south of Hannan's find, led to the establishment of the region's most important early mines: Ivanhoe, Great Boulder and Lake View. Their attempts to raise capital through selling shares in individual mines had limited success in Adelaide but South Australian shareholders were quick to sell to British investors when the new gold field inspired a speculative boom on the London stock exchange. Kalgoorlie was proclaimed a municipality on the 16th of February 1895. The name of the town is a corruption of the Wongkatha word 'Karlkurla', a sweet pear found in the area. The remarkable pace of its growth facilitated its links with the outside world. The telegraph line reached the town in 1894, followed by the railway in 1896. This was the year the local gold output surpassed Coolgardie's (figures for the September quarter show that Coolgardie produced 19,883 ounces of gold compared with the Golden Mile's 39,867 ounces). As the major town of the Eastern Goldfields, Coolgardie attracted the lion's share of investment in public and commercial buildings at this time, but the "old Field" lost its ascendancy in 1896, when Kalgoorlie won the battle to become the rail head to Menzies. On January 1903, Premier John Forrest honoured his pledge to solve the field's ongoing water shortage when he opened the pipeline to supply the town with fresh water from the newly constructed Mundaring Weir. The pipeline was at that time the longest in the world with eight pumping stations sending water from Mundaring Wier 566 km across the elevated ground of the Western Australian Plateau. A symbol of the Kalgoorlie's early progress, the town hall was built in 1908 and remains today a commanding structure on Hannan Street. The sister city, Boulder, also grew at the southern end of the field; by 1897 it had its own municipal council and a railway line connecting it to Kalgoorlie. By the early years of the twentieth century, the two towns could boast 28,000 inhabitants. Sport was the first popular entertainment and in 1894, the Hannans Football Club was formed, the first race meeting was held and a cricket match took place between teams representing the two towns. The first concert was held in the same year to raise money for the building of a hospital. 1894 also saw the establishment of a progress committee and a weekly newspaper, "The Western Argus". The first two pubs, The Exchange and The Club, were also built during this year. The Exchange was rebuilt in 1898 and is still currently operating as a hotel. The Golden Mile soon became famous (or infamous) for its number of hotels which, at its height, was 139. In the early days the hotels were not the only ones competing to satiate the public thirst, there was also a thriving trade in unlicensed, "sly grog" shops.
Gambling was rampant in the early years despite the efforts of the authorities to curb it. Kalgoorlie-Boulder is famous for a form of gambling known as "Two-Up" which flourished throughout its history despite only being officially legalised in 1983, and allowed to operate at a locality seven kilometres north of Kalgoorlie. The two-up school closed down in 2001 but, at the time of writing, discussions are under way to have it re-opened in the heart of Kalgoorlie. |
| The Lean Years |
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Paradoxically, the Great Depression brought relief to the Goldfields as mining costs decreased and the federal government introduced a gold subsidy of one pound per ounce of gold. Further relief came with the devaluation of the Australian pound in 1931, thereby producing extra earnings for all exports and particularly gold, which was Australia's most profitable commodity in the depression years. The 1930s saw a reversal of the negative trends of the previous decade but it was not until the second half of the century that these gains were consolidated by technological innovations to improve the productivity of the Kalgoorlie mines. |
| The Post-War Years |
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The mining industry responded to the post-war boom with new techniques of extracting ore, such as tungsten-carbide drills, battery operated ore trucks and more efficient explosives. These innovations quadrupled output, but there was a dramatic reduction in employment when the mines switched from wood to diesel to generate electricity. The Kalgoorlie Electric Power & Lighting Corporation followed this trend in 1953 converting to coal powered generators. Progress and deforestation put an end to the Kalgoorlie Woodlines, which finally closed in 1964. The woodlines had been second only to mining for employment and were the largest employer of migrant labour. The discovery of nickel in Kambalda by The Western Mining Group in the mid 1960s saw Kalgoorlie emerge as the centre of another mining boom. This time the city prospered while gold production went into decline. The high gold prices of the 1980s, and the speculative boom of that decade, culminated in the scheme initiated by Alan Bond to merge the surviving independent leases into one large open cut mining operation. After Bond's fall from grace, his Goldfields interests passed to the Kalgoorlie Mining Association and Gold Mines of Kalgoorlie; the two companies merged to become the largest mining venture in Australia. As a result of this merger, a number of smaller open cut mines disappeared to make way for the Fimiston super pit and treatment plant, which allows for the efficient mining of low-grade ore in Kalgoorlie. The super pit consumed the original Boulder Block, the infamous "dirty acre" which pre-dated the Burt and Lane St developments that became the town of Boulder. Later, the Fimiston block housed many Southern European migrant workers and became the focus of the racial tensions that consumed the towns during the 1930s. Bond's company, Dallhold, purchased the block, which included a post office and a fire station, in 1989 for 1.6 million dollars. On November 15th 1998 the towns of Kalgoorlie and Boulder merged. This had first been proposed at the turn of the century for the reason that the two urban centres are only three miles apart. Boulder residents maintained however that as their shire contained the majority of mining leases, it had a separate character from the administrative and commercial town of Kalgoorlie - and there are still many Boulder residents who cling to this opinion. In 2001, Kalgoorlie-Boulder celebrated the national history of mining by opening the Miners and Prospectors Hall of Fame. The Museum's opening coincided with another event of historic significance - Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines closed Mt Charlotte, the longest operating mine in the precinct of the Golden Mile. The efficiency of modern mining methods have allowed abandoned fields to be re-opened. This is the case with Broad Arrow and Paddington, they have been revived as open-cut mines, worked by residents of Kalgoorlie who commute daily to the job. Gold is still the major source of prosperity for the region, but the second most important mineral resource, nickel, is also produced in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Coolgardie. |
| Statistics |
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Kalgoorlie-Boulder Street Maps:
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The winter of 1893 was a good one for rainfall in the Goldfields and many prospectors who had withdrawn to Southern Cross, now returned to brave the more primitive conditions of Coolgardie. The makeshift hessian town soon had a population of around 1000 men. The competition for surface gold was intense, many had no hesitation in leaving when a rumour circulated of gold to be found at Mt Youle to the north-east (the existance and locality of "Mt Youle" has subsequently been an issue of conjecture). Two Irish prospectors, Paddy Hannan and Tom Flanagan pooled their resources to join the exodus, though they were not amongst the first to leave; it took them three days to purchase a horse (costing around one hundred pounds) and supplies.
The enormous disparity in numbers between the male and female population on the Golden Mile soon led to its being noted for another illicit occupation, and the first arrests for prostitution occurred in 1896. The women were Japanese and although only one conviction resulted from the charges, the result was the expulsion of Japanese residents to Kanowna. The French were the next group of immigrants to become synonymous with the brothels, which were initially located at the lower end of Hannan St before becoming the main claim to fame of Hay St.
The pace of Kalgoorlie's economic growth slowed by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century as the cost of labour and materials increased while the price of gold had not changed for over a century. More and more mine mergers occurred but profits continued to decline along with the increasing costs digging ever deeper to maintain the output of gold. These problems were exacerbated during World War I, as many of the experienced workers rushed to join the war effort. German-made engineering supplies were popular and because of the war could no longer be obtained. The war years also saw a strike on the Kalgoorlie woodlines, which led to the closure of the three larger mines. The post war years continued to bring hard times to Kalgoorlie as wages, share dividends and population continued to decline, to make matters worse, in 1928, the region suffered the worst cyclone in its history.
In the early years of the 1950s, the Menzies government, recognising the importance and the fragility of Australia's richest goldfield, increased the gold subsidy to a maximum of two pounds per ounce.
Distance from Perth (km)
Kalgoorlie-Boulder Photo Gallery