Precious metals

Since the dim dark ages of pre-history man has used precious metals for personal adornment or as a means of commercial exchange. Gold is by far the most common precious metal, but silver and platinum are also classed as precious because of their beauty, rarity and resistance to oxidisation.

Pure (24 carat) gold is too soft for making jewellery, so it must be alloyed with other high-grade metals such as silver, copper or palladium. Besides adding strength, alloying can also give the gold a white, yellow or pink hue.

Kalgoorlie Gold

Kalgoorlie is the hub of Western Australia's gold mining industry, producing approximately eighty percent of the nation’s gold. In the early days the tales that abounded of overnight fortunes attracted many intrepid adventurers to these shores and the resultant 'gold rushes' were largely responsible for the exploration of inhospitable tracts of our state.

Today's gold prospector, equipped with metal detector, pick and shovel still occasionally find valuable gold nuggets, but the industry is the most modern and efficient in the world and profits from extracting as little as three grams of gold per tonne of earth.