The Kalgoorlie Super Pit, 1986 to 2025

Forty years, frame by frame

One clear picture every five years, all on one grid, 15 km across. Pick a frame to open the viewer on it, drag the timeline, or press Play. Compare puts any two years side by side under a divider you drag.

What happened here

1. 1893 Hannan's find. Paddy Hannan, Thomas Flanagan and Dan Shea found about 100 oz of alluvial gold near Mount Charlotte in June 1893, and Kalgoorlie grew from the rush. [1][2]
2. 1903 Water arrives. The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme pumped water 566 km from Mundaring Weir to Kalgoorlie, lifting it 390 m. It opened in January 1903. [3][4]
3. 1989 One pit for the Golden Mile. The Golden Mile leases were combined in 1989 and KCGM was formed to run them as one open pit, the Super Pit. [2]
4. 2014 The 16 millionth ounce. KCGM poured its 16 millionth ounce of gold from the Fimiston open pit in March 2014. The pit was then about 3.5 km long, 1.5 km wide and more than 600 m deep. [2]
5. 2021 Fourth in Australia. The USGS lists the Super Pit fourth among Australian gold mines in 2021, with 15,200 kg, behind Boddington, Cadia East and Fosterville. [5]

More on the mine's history is on Kalgoorlie Super Pit in the history of mining, and on the gold page and mining in Australia.

Gold output by year

Gold output from Kalgoorlie Super Pit in the years with an open, mine-level figure: the Jasansky et al. open database of mine production (CC BY 4.0) and the operators' own filings. Years with no open mine-level figure are left out rather than estimated. The timeline under the pictures shows the same bars.

The figures

Year	Output	Basis	Source
2000	788 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2001	770 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2002	720 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2003	872 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2004	888 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2005	834 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2006	604 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2007	571 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2008	557 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2009	613 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2010	686 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2011	682 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2012	620 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2013	604 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2014	599 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2015	576 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2016	696 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2017	669 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2018	580 koz	gold, contained	[6]
2019	416 koz	gold, contained	[6]

Photos

Pictures from the ground and from orbit, openly licensed. The viewer slips each one in near its year.

How this was made

Pictures. Landsat 4 and 5 (to 2011), Landsat 7 (before its 2003 scan-line fault), Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 (2017 on), surface reflectance read from Microsoft's Planetary Computer. For each frame we take the clearest picture within a year or so of the target year, in the same season where we can, checked against each scene's own cloud mask, and cut it to one grid. One colour stretch serves every frame, and each older frame is colour-matched to the newest over the whole picture, so a change in colour is mostly a change on the ground. Landsat pixels are 30 m and Sentinel-2 pixels 10 m, so the newest frames are sharper. The date of each picture shows under the year.

Worked ground is our own estimate from the pictures. Within a box drawn round the mine, leaving the towns out, a 30 m cell counts as worked once it has lost its vegetation or changed strongly in brightness and short-wave infrared against the first frame, and the next frame sees the same change. Ground stays worked once it is worked, small specks are dropped, and holes inside the footprint are filled. It traces pits, waste dumps, tailings and plant, but it can miss ground that looks like its surroundings and catch a road or a cleared paddock. Treat the areas as a guide, not a survey. The worked ground starts in 1986 with the old Golden Mile workings and tailings already there, so the first frame is not bare ground.

Tenements are today's live and pending mining tenements from the Western Australian Government's open tenement layer (Mining Tenements DMIRS-003, via SLIP and data.wa.gov.au, CC BY 4.0), each drawn from the year it was granted. Tenements that have lapsed are not in the layer, so earlier years show fewer than were held then. Holder names are left out.

Output and milestones. Each figure and fact is linked to its source below. We report what operators and governments published and do not estimate missing years.

Sources and credits

1. State Library of Western Australia: Patrick Hannan (Mining and Energy Western Australia exhibition)
2. Australian Mining Review: Kalgoorlie's greatest asset (16 July 2015)
3. Western Australian Museum: Building a Pipeline (WA Goldfields)
4. Government of Western Australia: CY O'Connor's Golden Pipeline celebrates 120 years of service (media statement, 24 Jan 2023)
5. US Geological Survey: Minerals Yearbook 2020-21, volume III: The Mineral Industry of Australia
6. Jasansky, Brauneis, Maus et al. (Vienna University of Economics and Business): Open database on global coal and metal mine production (Zenodo v1.0.3; paper: Scientific Data 2023)

Satellite pictures: USGS/NASA Landsat (public domain) and contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-2 data 2025, via Microsoft Planetary Computer, processed by Prospector Trails. Photos: The Golden Mile: William Edward Fretwell (1874–1958), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain; Golden Mile, 1934: Walkabout magazine, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain; The pit, 1999: Rr2000, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0; Lookout, 2010: Corrie Barklimore from Parkes, Australia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0; The pit, 2016: Bahnfrend, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tenements: contains data from the Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (Government of Western Australia) via SLIP / data.wa.gov.au, licensed CC BY 4.0. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0.