The Gold Mine of Peak Hill

in #gold4 years ago

Did you know that Australia holds almost 10% of the world's known gold deposits? In terms of gold production volumes, it's second only to China.

What do you imagine when you think of gold mining? Probably tiny grains of gold hidden deep underground, waiting for dwarves with picks to come and find them. Or perhaps American cowboys next to a gold-bearing river, panning the sand in search of nuggets.

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Things are very different in Australia: the gold mine near the town of Peak Hill is mind-bogglingly massive. The quarry looks more like a multilevel stadium, with gigantic trucks constantly going down a winding road, only to come back up filled with gold ore. Every day you can hear explosions, the sound of rock being drilled, and the deafening noise of the heavy-duty equipment. The small shafts made by the pioneer gold hunters turned into an enormous pit that resembles the crater of a volcano.
Peak Hill is 400 kilometers (250 miles) to the north-west Sydney, in the state of New South Wales. You wouldn't call it a town: the population is only 1,400 people. One cafe, one art gallery, and a single tourist office – that's about all that you can find here. The only attraction is a long-abandoned gold quarry located just 200 meters from the houses on the very edge of the town.

The story of Peak Hill began in 1840 when the white colonists chased away the Aborigines and founded a village called Paddie's Flat. By 1889, gold was discovered here, and soon, a veritable gold fever began in Australia. Hundreds of people arrived in town every day in hope of becoming rich. The population quickly grew to 9,000.

At first, gold was mined by hand, but this was made very difficult by the dry and hot climate. Eventually, the production process became more efficient: the ore was loaded onto handcarts and pushed up the rails to town.

By 1896, the near-surface gold deposits were exhausted. Gold diggers were replaced by large enterprises, which dug shafts going down 30 meters (100 feet). The ore was lifted up via vertical pipes that were connected to the gold-bearing vein. By 1917, all the gold from these deposits had been extracted, and for a long time, the mine remained abandoned.
Almost a century later, in 1996, Alkane Resources Ltd began extracting the ore using the most advanced technology of the time – deep drilling and cascade explosions.

In 2006, the 130ha quarry was officially classified as a cultural monument, and now you can easily visit it as a tourist.

Website : https://gold.storage/
Whitepaper: https://gold.storage/wp.pdf

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I did some Gold Panning and found that it was much easier just buying Nuggets from the People who found them...
October 12, 2020... 12.4 Hollywood Time...

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