St Barbara’s Festival
December 2nd, 2006 | 4 Comments
St Barbara is the patron saint of mining and each year a festival is held in her honour and to celebrate the mining industry in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia.
A highlight is the big parade down Hannan Street, held this year in the late afternoon on Saturday, December 2, 2006.
Our kids loved seeing the floats and machinery, especially the big trucks from KCGM (pictured).
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I’m 46, and *I* love the big trucks.
We might have one of those festivals in Bright (Victoria) soon; they’re looking at re-opening the gold mining over here. They might as well, all our other industries are stuffed!
I’m not a revhead but the big trucks had me in awe, I must say. A lot of towns have parades but not many others, if any, have the big machines associated with open-cut gold mining.
Ray, I saw a gold mine near Harrietville for sale recently. Most of the early gold in the alpine region was alluvial, so you’d have to think there is some more below the ground.
I’m not a geologist but I think there must be some potential there. The problem would be getting approvals to explore and mine in the Victorian regulatory environment, which I doubt is industry friendly.
The mining companies have known for years that there’s more gold in the ground here than was ever taken out.
It’s just a matter of the gold price being high enough to justify the costs of extracting it, which it now is.
They’ve been doing aerial surveys for the past ten years and now they’re drilling core samples.
It won’t be long, I’d say, before there’s a new mine or two, although I’m not sure what method of extraction they’ll use.
As for the State Govt, they couldn’t care less about what people in this area think (no votes in it for them) so if there’s money to be made they’ll OK it.