Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
How It All Got Started
Really, mining is old news - this is a frontier land founded on mining money. Although in
the 1800s Western Australia (WA) was once quietly focused on acquiring more modest for-
tunes from wheat, meat and wool, gold was discovered in Coolgardie in 1892, and in Kal-
goorlie in 1893. And so the transformation to riches began. Today, gold mining is still go-
ing strong, albeit with incrementally diminishing returns. In Kalgoorlie you can visit the
Super Pit, an open-pit gold mine the size of 35 football fields sunk 360m into the ground.
Copper, nickel, oil and gas are also a steady source of state income, with uranium mining
(slated for Wiluna, in the midwest) a current aspiration.
But iron ore is today's multi-billion-dollar blockbuster industry. Karara mine in the mid-
west, for example, sits on just under $100 billion worth of iron ore. All this magnetite dug
up out of the ground, later to become iron ore, is expected to generate $3 billion per year in
export revenue for the next 30 years. Most of it will go to China.
Of course, foreign investment is big business. And while such major investment has now
been criticised for exposing the state to the twisting fortunes of the Chinese economy, the
boom would never have occurred without it. For an iron-ore mine, for example, about $1
billion must be available up front just to develop the extraction machinery. These biscuits
are just too big for the Australian economy alone.
