A history of mining

Sunday, March 20th, 2011 at 10:23pm

Today was a very slack day. We got up late and headed over to Boulder for the Market Day, but we arrived just as it was all packing up. Also, due to the earthquake last year, a number of the other possible attractions are still closed. After a brief look around we headed again up to the Super Pit lookout, but this time with much more available light.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent over at the Mining Hall of Fame where we viewed many old pieces of mining equipment, a gold pour, and went in the cab of a Cat 793C dump truck.

When I was here 18 years ago we definitely watched a gold pour and I am pretty sure we did one of (possibly only at that time) the underground mine tours. Since then they have built a large modern building that contains the actual hall of fame along with other displays and a small theatre showing a variety of area related segments. The 793C dump truck is a recent (mid 2010) addition and while it isn’t a complete truck (no chassis or engine) it was quite interesting looking in the cab and seeing normal wear and tear damage to the tray above the cab.

Tomorrow we are going on the two and a half hour superpit tour before getting back on the road, destination Balladonia.

Tagged with: road trip