More Digger adventures down under

by Nick Drew | Tue 24 Nov 2015

More Digger adventures down under

As the first real cold snap of the year drifts across the UK we head back down under to the sunnier climes of Australia to catch up with more adventures of our Englishman in Oz Michael Bullock.

Last time we caught up with the lads they had left the Collie mining region in Western Australia and headed on to the gold mining towns of Coolgardie, Westonia and Kalgoorlie to see the legendary “Super Pit”. On arrival at the Super Pit Michael and William headed for the lookout point and Michael had a photo taken of himself stood in a 32 cubic metre bucket which once graced one of the Komatsu PC8000’s in the pit.

An information sign next to the bucket gives visitors some interesting statistics about the mighty PC800 machines. The pit uses four of them in production and Michael said a further two were parked up in a “boneyard” area close to the workshop, with one of the machines appearing to have suffered some fire damage. A seventh machine was high up on a stockpile outside of the pit area.

Looking down into the pit a pair of PC8000’s get a quick check over as Cat 793 trucks drive past. A Caterpillar D10T dozer stands by and gives you a great idea of the scale of the monster excavators.

The following two photos show one of the Komatsu machines loading the precious gold ore onto waiting Cat trucks.

The massive and somewhat staggering KCGM “Super Pit” is Australia’s largest open cut gold mine, its 3.5km long, 1.5km wide and produces 850,000 ounces per year.

Later the lads visited The Hannon’s tourist mine, which has static displays of a Cat 994 wheeled loader and a Cat 793C rigid dumptruck, plus numerous displays from the early pioneer days of gold mining in the area.

William checks out the Caterpillar 994, which looks tidy after a lick of paint, even with a bit of overspray on the tyres!

The intrepid explorers also had a quick drive around the industrial estate areas of Kalgoorlie which is always are good place to visit in any country if you are on the lookout for heavy plant and machinery. The local Caterpillar dealer had numerous 657G motor scrapers parked up.

While the Hitachi dealer had no less than 6 Zaxis 470’s and a Zaxis 870 which was parked next to a big Bell B50D articulated hauler.

Look out for more photos from Michael here on the Digger Man Blog again soon.

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