The Fimiston Open Pit, colloquially known as the Super Pit, was Australia's largest

open cut Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of minin ...

gold mine Gold Mine may refer to: * Gold Mine (board game) *Gold Mine (Long Beach), an arena *"Gold Mine", a song by Joyner Lucas from the 2020 album ''ADHD Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characteri ...

until 2016 when it was surpassed by the Newmont Boddington gold mine also in Western Australia. The Super Pit is located off the

Goldfields Highway Goldfields Highway is a generally northwest–southeast highway in central Western Australia which links the Great Northern Highway at Meekatharra with Coolgardie-Esperance Highway south of Kalgoorlie. The highway is approximately in leng ...

on the south-east edge of

Kalgoorlie 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 sometimes referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder, as the surrounding urban area includ ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...

. The pit is oblong in plan view and is approximately 3.5 kilometres long, 1.5 kilometres wide and over 600 metres deep. The Fimiston Open Pit is owned by

Northern Star Resources Northern Star Resources is an Australian gold mining company with operations in Western Australia, Northern Territory and Alaska. History Northern Star Resources (NSR) was founded in December 2003 to search for and develop ore deposits in the ...

. The mine produced of gold in 2019, and employs around 1,100 employees and contractors directly on site.

Earlier stages

Originally consisting of a large number of underground mines, including the Paringa, Oroya, Brown Hill, Chaffers, and Hainault mines, consolidation into a single open pit mine was first attempted by

Alan Bond Alan Bond (22 April 1938 – 5 June 2015) was an English-born Australian businessman noted for his high-profile and often corrupt business dealings. These included his central role in the WA Inc scandals of the 1980s, and what was at the time ...

, but he was unable to complete the task. The Fimiston Open Pit was eventually created in 1989 by Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines, a 50:50 corporate joint venture between Homestake Gold of Australia and Gold Mines of Kalgoorlie (a

Normandy Mining Normandy Mining was an Australian mining company which predominantly mined gold. Normandy was, during much of the late 20th century, Australia's largest gold miner.

subsidiary).

Barrick Gold Barrick Gold Corporation is a mining company that produces gold and copper with 16 operating sites in 13 countries. It is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It has mining operations in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Côte d'Ivoire, Democra ...

acquired its share of the mine in December 2001, when it took over

Homestake Mining Company Homestake Mining Company was one of the largest gold mining businesses in the United States and the owner of the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota. Founded in 1877, it was acquired by Barrick Gold in December 2001. Homestake was the longest-l ...

Newmont Newmont Corporation is a gold mining company based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, United States. It is the world's largest gold mining corporation. Incorporated in 1921, it owns gold mines in Nevada, Colorado, Ontario, Quebec, Mexico, the Domin ...

became part-owner of the mine three months later, when it acquired

Normandy Mining Normandy Mining was an Australian mining company which predominantly mined gold. Normandy was, during much of the late 20th century, Australia's largest gold miner.

in February 2002. Saracen Mineral Holdings Limited acquired its share of the mine on 28 November 2019, when it purchased

's 50% stake.

acquired its share of the mine on 3 January 2020, when it purchased Newmont's 50% stake.

Geology

Most of the gold mined in the Fimiston Open Pit occurs within ore lodes formed by ancient shears in a rock unit called the Golden Mile

Dolerite Diabase (), also called dolerite () or microgabbro, is a mafic, holocrystalline, subvolcanic rock equivalent to volcanic basalt or plutonic gabbro. Diabase dikes and sills are typically shallow intrusive bodies and often exhibit fine-grain ...

. The gold mining area of Kalgoorlie-Boulder-Fimiston has long been called the ''Golden Mile'' because of the geographical concentration of rich mines in that area, even though the lodes occur in an area over 2 km in length and 1 km in depth.

Production

Mining is via conventional drill and blast mining via face shovels and dump trucks. Around 15 million tonnes of rock are moved in any given year, consisting primarily of waste rock. Gold within the Golden Mile lode system is unusual in that it is present as telluride minerals within

pyrite The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Iron, FeSulfur, S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic Luster (mineralogy), lust ...

. In order to recover the gold, the ore must be crushed, passed through a gravity circuit to recover the free gold present in some of the higher-grade lodes, and then subjected to flotation to produce an auriferous pyrite-telluride concentrate. The concentrate is then treated at an IsaMill Ultra Fine Grinding (UFG) mill at Fimiston and then cyanidised, or trucked to the Gidji Processing Plant, 20 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie. At Gidji, the concentrate is treated in ultrafine grinding (UFG) mills, and then subjected to cyanide extraction of gold. Prior to the installation of the UFG mills, concentrate was treated at Gidji in two circulating fluid bed roasters. Roasting ceased in 2015. Gold mines Kalgoorlie 2

Figures

Past production figures were:''The Australian Mines Handbook - 2003-04 Edition'' page: 127

References

Bibliography

External links

*
MINEDEX website: Golden Mile / KCGM
Database of the

Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety is a department of the Government of Western Australia. The department was formed on 1 July 2017, out of the former Department of Mines and Petroleum and Department of Commerce The ...

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