Down in the hole: A photo tour of Australia's largest open-pit gold mine, the Super Pit (pictures)

Over two mileslong, nearly a mile wide and currently almost 2,000 feet deep. It’s a pit that is massive.Some would say…super.

For the fullstory, check out Take a tour of the Super Pit: The largest open-pit gold mine in Australia.

The town ofKalgoorlie has the feel of an Old West mining town…which I guess isappropriate.

There’s an odd feeling of money here, with many new and expensivecars, and lots of shops and restaurants.

That mountain inthe distance is actually just some of the dirt, rock and detritus dug out ofthe Super Pit in the hunt for gold. Over 200,000 tons of rock gets hauled out per day.

Not an actualaccident, but a staged reminder of what could happen if people don’t payattention. This truck was actually driven over by one of the gigantic dumptrucks you’ll see in the next image.

Here one of thedump trucks heads to the repair yard. The glowing number on the back is also onthe sides, and lets anyone nearby use the radio to contact the driver, withoutknowing specifically who’s driving.

How big is big?Check out the next image.

Yeah, like Isaid. Big. Over 20 feet tall and 42 feet long.

Note the mechanic near the wheel(which are nearly 12 feet tall).

Sporting a 69-liter engine, the Caterpillar 793C has a cool 2,300 horsepower.

This massivemachine is just for changing thetires on the dump trucks.

What do you use to fill a house-size dumptruck? How about a garage-size scoop?

The Super Pitwasn’t always a pit. For 90 years the area had over 2,000 miles of traditional(and hand-dug) mine shafts and tunnels. The wood and metal from these must bedisposed of separately, lest the chemicals (like arsenic) leach into the environment. (Check out the state government's plan for future sustainability of the Kalgoorlie area, and a more in-depth look at the environmental impact of open pit mining.)

The Pit ismostly goldless rock. To get at the gold, they have to dig down to it, andthat means terraced steps and roads.

The red topsoil,one of Australia’s more iconic colorings, comes from a high amount of iron.

This image also gives a good perspective of how huge the Super Pit is.

Those trucks fromearlier images? That’s them as dots down the bottom.

The gray rock is some of the oldest rock in theworld, at around 2.8 billion years.

See the tinysquares? Those are old mine tunnels the Super Pit exposed as it was dug deeper.

This image is anoverview of an area of rock they blasted while I was there. The rows of dots in the middle left (see closeup on the next slide) are the charges.

The charges areset.

Normally they schedule blasts during shift change or lunch breaks. Theyget everyone out of the mine, blast, then everyone goes back in.

The blast itselfwas unremarkable. Just a puff of smoke. Granted, I was clear on the other sideof the mine.

To keep dust incheck, an immense quantity of water is sprayed on the roads and piles of rock.

Since most of the people who work at the mine live nearby, they have ample motivation to keep dust and noise to a minimum.

Though spreadout, there’s always something going on. Trucks both loaded and empty move up anddown the ramps. Pumper trucks spray water on roads. Excavators dig out loosedirt and rocks.

This is anothershot to give you an idea of scale. Note the white pickup truck on the right.

The excavatorsare way too slow to come out of the Pit during shift change, so the operator headsdown in a pickup truck to relieve his day (or night) shift counterpart.

At the depththey’re at now, there are roughly six trucks worth of useless rock for everyone that has gold in it. As they near the bottom, that will be closer to 1:1.

Each 793C costs around AU$4 million, but they help the Super Pit generate about AU$3 million a day.

Eachshift is 12 hours. After a few weeks on, you get a break, then you do nightshifts. Then a break, then day shifts. There’s no penalty for being tiredthough. If you get woozy, you can call your boss, and a relief driver will comedown and take over for you. Too much money and too many lives are at staketo risk tired drivers.

Each of thosetires weighs 5 tons and costs $40,000.

With a top speedof 33 mph…on flat ground, the 793C isn’t exactly a Hennessey Venom GT.

Norwould you want it to be, since even at those slow speeds, even a slight contact with a wall would mean tremendous damage.

At the top ofthe Pit is this cistern, which supplies the pumper trucks their water so thedust doesn’t get out of hand.

The water for the town is actually piped in from Perth. On the ride to the Pit, we paralleled the white-painted tube all the way.

All that rockgets brought up here and has to be processed to get the gold out of it. That cylinderin the middle is one of several involved in crushing the rocks into dirt.

Hundreds ofsteel balls get fed into the crusher, along with tons of rock. As it all spins,the balls pound the rocks into submission. Different size balls are used atdifferent stages of the process.

You want to know what it takes to extract gold from rocks? It takes steel balls to extract gold from rocks.

These hoppershold the soon-to-be-crushed steel balls. You see, rocks don’t turn to dust easily, andthese steel balls will make the supreme sacrifice for the cause.

Over time and constant tumbling they get worn out to the point of being useless, so there needs to be asteady supply.

These are aboutthe size of a grapefruit.

Finally, after all that, gold! Tiny, tinytraces of gold, mixed in with pyrite. The ground around this conveyerbelt was sparkly with “gold.”

This will be processed further to separate out the fool's gold from the real.

The gold actually gets made into bars on site. Unfortunately, we weren’t even allowed to show the building where it happens. I can tell you it was completely non-descript, which is probably the point.

Just take amoment and imagine barreling down an Australian highway at 80-plus mph, oncomingtraffic a few feet to your right, and one of these road trains blows past you.

In case there’san issue in the mine, the processing goes on so there’s no downtime with therest of the operation. Here, you can see one of the storage areas that holds orewaiting to be processed. The metal teepee cover is to help keep the dustcontained.

There’s actuallyanother mine next to the Super Pit called Mt.Charlotte. Its ore is also processed at the Super Pit’s plant, and brought to the site using a really long conveyer belt.

The Super Pit is active 24 hours a day,every day of the year. It only shut down once since it opened, right after anearthquake in 2010.

For the full story behind this tour, check out Take a tour of the Super Pit: The largest open-pit gold mine in Australia.