Kalgoorlie Day 1: Cloudy with a chance of flight problems

So the first day of the weekend field trip started off with a little bit of trouble. We made it to our 6:15am flight out of Perth without any issues. The flight to Kalgoorlie went pretty smoothly, that is until we got to Kalgoorlie. Now I'm told that it rarely rains in Kalgoorlie, and that fog almost never occurs. On this day, however, both were out in full force. So as I was watching us pass through the thick clouds on our way down land, I was quite taken aback when the pilot abruptly gunned the engine and sent the plane swiftly back upwards into the sky. A few minutes later, the pilot informed everyone on board that it had been too risky to attempt a landing, given the weather conditions, and that he would "give it another go." After circling around again, the plane began its descent. The same thing happened. The plane bailed out and went back upwards again. Then the pilot announced that there would be a third attempt but that would be it. So after a third try which produced the exact same results, the plane headed to a different airport. That airport was, of course, Perth. We landed in Perth, and they refueled the plane while we waited patiently. Now having had to wake up so early in the morning for the flight, some of the members of our group had taken the opportunity to catch up on their sleep. Alex was one of them. Although, no one realized just how much sleeping Alex had been doing on the plane until after about 20 minutes of waiting, when he remarked, "This Kalgoorlie airport sure does look a lot like the Perth airport." He had slept through the entire flight, including the time spent circling Kalgoorlie and the extra 40 minutes to fly back to Perth! Nobody had told him that we'd come back to Perth! The whole group had a pretty good laugh.

Eventually, we got back on the plane and successfully landed in Kalgoorlie around noon. However, we were about 5 hours behind schedule. Worst of all, we missed the thing I was looking forward to the most, the Super Pit tour. It had been scheduled for that morning and our plane problem had caused us to miss it. Martin, one of the professors leading our trip, did inform me however, that even if we had landed the first time, the rain would have canceled the tour anyway. Bloody weather!

Fortunately, we did get to do all the other stuff that had been scheduled for the day. We visited the Departement of Ecology and Conservation (DEC), where we learned about the use of the land around Kalgoorlie. Interestingly, there are large quantities of government owned land which are not used for any purpose at all. There isn't really any use for this land, as it is all considered to be desert anyway. The government has set aside large areas within this land for the DEC, as a means to preserve the unique ecosystems in each area. There is one area, for example, that contains over 130 different species of eukalyptus trees. Although you wouldn't notice just driving by. Apparently, even the first British explorers fasliy categorized the region's vegetation as boring and unvaried. The eukalyptus is a thin, sad-looking tree with a lessthanaverage leaf count. You'll probably be able to pick it out in some of the pictures. Anyway, I learned that the Australians carry very much about the preservation of their land, ensuring that a sample of every single one of their ecosystems is set aside and maintained. The next perspective we got was from a group of Aboriginals who are trying to legally regain their ancestors land, thanks to a precedence which was recently set in the first case to award Aboriginals their former land. All you have to do is prove that your tribe lived in the area of question for more than a hundred years ago and that they've made good use of that land during all that time. Easy right? Well mostly, the Aboriginals gave us an insight into their struggles with the racist government growing up. They shared with us about the pride they took in "surviving" as a culture even though the government tried to "breed the black out of them", by putting the children in missionary schools. They also took us on a tour of a hill which was a former mine, but had been shut down when the Aboriginals determined it was a holy site for their ancestors. The mining company agreed to protect the land, but also built a tunnel underneath so they could access something near this hill, something big. I could first see it when I reached the top of the holy site hill. I could see the walls of dirt and rock that had been piled high, like mountains, along its edges. It was the Super Pit! And it was our next stop.

I was really excited to hear that we would at least be going to the tourist lookout because I'd heard even that might have been canceled. We did go, however, and nothing could have prepared me for the sight of it. As the bus pulled up to the top of the lookout, near the edge of the pit, you had to gasp. From the bus you could only see the walls of the pit, not the bottom yet, but it still looked like they were digging to the center of the earth. Someone in our group compared it to the Saurumon's giant industrial pit from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (if you're into that sort of thing). It was quite an awesome thing to take in. Unfortunately, I imagine much of the awe is lost in the photographs I took of it. Nevertheless, the idea of these massive trucks carrying tons of rock out from the bottom of the pit, each truck containing maybe a few ounces of gold per load, is just insane.

Here's a picture of me at the lookout in front of just a portion of the Super Pit.


I'll talk about days two and three coming up.
For now I've uploaded my day one pictures.
And Andrew was again kind enough to supply me with some of his pictures.