Wallaby mine granny smith

The Wallaby gold mine 20 kilometres south of Laverton in the Western Australian Northern Goldfields has been owned by the worlds largest gold miner, Barrick Corporation, since March 2006. Open pit mining for gold at Wallaby ceased the same year when Barminco were called in to develop an underground mine at the site to mine gold reserves found at deeper levels.

Often Referred to as the Granny Smith Mine
The Wallaby mine is often referred to as the Granny Smith mine as the ore processed by the Granny Smith plant 10 kilometres to its east, is retrieved from what is known as the Wallaby ore deposit. Many of the gold mining pits in the same vicinity of the Wallaby mine are now becoming underground mines as the underground deposit is substantially large and the price of gold during the recent global financial crisis has risen substantially making underground operations quite viable once again.

A part of the Australia Pacific Barrick Group
The Wallaby mine, being part of the Australia Pacific Barrick Group, directly employs 350 employees and approximately 300 contractors carrying out services such as accommodation management and catering, as well as those involved in highly specialised trades such as shotcreting the mine walls for safety purposes and exploration drilling. Because of the isolation of the project all staff work under a fly in and fly out roster that entails them working for eight days straight and six days off. Accommodation supplied for workers, when on the job, contain 760 bedrooms, recreational facilities that includes a bar, tennis courts, swimming pool, squash courts, gymnasium and WiFi, dining room and a modern kitchen. The arid semi desert country surrounding the mine is magically transformed every spring to a sea of colour when the wild flowers bloom as a result of the spring rains arriving.

Miners and Their Families are well Looked After
Staff members also enjoy a family health package that covers their families as well as themselves plus a competitive superannuation scheme that incorporates a quarterly incentive scheme for the larger workforce and annual bonus's for senior management. The Wallaby mine is also proud of the fact that 10 percent of its mine site workforce is made up of women, where most mining companies only have a women to men comparison of between three and five percent.

A Large Processing Capability
The Granny Smith processing operations include a 25 megawatt power generator and a tailings dam. The processing plant is capable of handling 3.5 million tonnes of ore annually but is currently only handling 1.2 million tonnes, a figure that includes ore from the adjacent Crescent Gold Mine. However, Granny Smith's future planned expansion will produce enough ore to take the processing handling facility to full capacity.

Employee Initiative Strong at the Wallaby Mine
Employee initiative is always something encouraged by the Barrick Corporation and the workers at the Wallaby mine have already shown leadership in this area as mine site workers have been working in close relationship with a Perth company, Austin Engineering, in the development and trialling of a low profile tyre handler. It has always been a problem in underground mining when it comes to changing tyres because of limited space allowed in the wheel arches. So far the trials have proven to be successful and the idea is already spreading to other mine sites as the Wallaby mine tyre handler has the potential to significantly reduce mine accidents in this area.