T’was about 1953 that iron ore was discovered at Mt Newman. But a federal embargo on iron ore mining (or was that exporting) meant that it did not get dug up for a couple of years. Since then they’ve kept on digging, now at a rate of over 200 million tonnes per year and the mountain (actually Mt Whaleback) is no more. This is just the BHP Billiton site. Gina and Twiggy have more of the same in the neighbourhood but we couldn’t get to see their operations.
We thought the super pit in Kalgoorlie was fairly impressive and indeed it is but this hole in the ground is apparently bigger but is not as impressive. Nor does it seem to be the same hive of activity that we noted in Kalgoorlie. The township of Newman is a mining town – it is barracks and dongas and caravans and common design houses spread over an architecturally sanitised streetscape. Virtually every accommodation facility is surrounded by white cars/trucks with yellow stripes down the sides, extra rear (high) lights and a pole with a flag on top. You’d easily believe that everyone in town had a company vehicle. Even the traffic on the highway down was constant mine vehicle traffic including 4 trailer road trains which service the minor miners.
But its BHP we came to see……
That wheel and tyre weighs over 6 tonnes and a tyre costs around 40 grand. Each “bench” in the ore pit is approx. 13 metres high and each bench is the consequence of blowing up the floor with fertiliser (ammonium nitrate) and diesel as an explosive mix then the consequential rubble being excavated. The rubble is then carted in the ore trucks, each carrying around 230 tonnes, to the primary crusher from where it is then moved on conveyors to a second and third crusher to be resized to small pebbles and then onto the train which carts it to port 426 km away.
This is a bit of an oversimplification of the process because there are some chemical stages also along the way to seperate the ore from the chaff. Newman has its own power station comprised of 3 gas turbine generators, 3 heat recovery steam generators and 2 steam turbines. The gas comes from Karratha by pipeline and it then travels on to Kalgoorlie. The power station pumps out 198 megawatts. I’ve no idea how much that is but it sounds good and we could run the NEW aircon in the truck which is a lot more than we’ve been able to do in some other places.
to appreciate the length of an ore train these photos are each taken about 15 seconds apart – it goes on for 2.7 km travelling at around 65 km/hr. We took a guided bus tour around the mine site and it was worth every cent of the $25.00 each when it concluded with a devonshire tea.
A couple of dusk shots from the town lookout back to the mine and over the township.
Newman was very interesting but it is just a mining town. Onwards to Karijini.
One Response
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Love the trains!
Regards,
g@z.