Step into the Goldfields Vault, where the rich and glittering history of Western Australia’s gold rush comes to life. This secure space, once used to safeguard precious metals, now showcases remarkable gold specimens, including the famous ‘Golden Eagle’ nugget. Discover the stories of the fortune-seekers who flocked to the region, the ingenuity of miners, and the craftsmanship that turned raw gold into intricate treasures. As you explore, you’ll uncover the immense impact of gold on the Goldfields and the lasting legacy it left on the community.

The Vault

Okay, here we are. As I said, where all the good stuff is. And it must be good, because up there it says the vault. And what I can tell you about it is actually a real vault. And I guess my main job here is to make sure it&#39;s locked up at night. And If I ever forgot to do that, believe me, I&#39;d be in an enormous amount of strife.It&#39;s probably the safest place in Kalgoorlie, actually. All the gold in here is real, except for the model on the wall there.And at the moment, it&#39;s valued just over five million dollars. So, let&#39;s go in and have a bit of a gander.

Golden Eagle Nugget

This, nugget here, this is a model of the biggest nugget ever found in West Australia. It was called the Golden Eagle.When it existed, it weighed 1135 ounces or 35 kilos. It was actually found by a 17 year old, thank you very much, in January 1931. And unfortunately, it was actually illegal to hold gold back then. So the government confiscated it off him and gave him 5, 400 pounds for it. Which would have been quite a bit of money in those days.And then, unfortunately, 11 months later, in December of that same year, the government melted it down. So, that&#39;s why it no longer exists.

Quartz Rock

This, rock here is obviously a piece of quartz.A lot of the gold around here does come in quartz veins, but they get it, take it away, crush it up, and get the gold out. And here&#39;s why. It says here there&#39;s 1,540 grams of gold in that rock, and gold&#39;s at the moment over 130 a gram. So incredibly, there&#39;s almost 170,000 worth of gold just sitting in that piece of quartz there.

Leaf Gold

Probably the most unusual nugget we got is this one here, this leaf gold. And it&#39;s so unusual looking. To me it&#39;s sort of never looked real. It looks like a piece of tin or a bit of chocolate wrapping. But it is real, and that&#39;s exactly how it was found.It was created under enormous amount of pressure, as you can see.

Near Surface Gold

This is near surface gold. This is the sort of gold we all dream about. We&#39;re walking along one day, we pick up a rock, and it&#39;s loaded with gold. And we&#39;re all rich. It sounds pretty good, doesn&#39;t it?It doesn&#39;t happen too often, but it does happen. But this is the sort of gold they first found here. So gold was found here, June the 14th, 1893, by three Irishmen, Hannan, Flanagan, and O&#39;Shea. And they came through here, just about where this museum is now, and then they just got up the back there. And there&#39;s a lot of stories of what happened next, but the main one is one of their horses threw a shoe.They looked down and they picked up a hundred ounces of gold. It started a huge gold rush, it quadrupled the population of Western Australia, brought enormous wealth, but it also had a huge political effect. Back in the late 1890s, Western Australia was not sure whether it wanted to join the rest of the country or not.In fact, to be perfectly honest, it&#39;s not sure nowadays, if everyone knows. But when they had the vote, it was actually the Kalgoorlie vote that tipped it over. So when you go and see that site, Paddy Henry&#39;s tree, Just think, if they hadn&#39;t found gold there, we could very well be standing in another country at the present time.

Jamie's Find

This, beautiful nugget here is, Jamie&#39;s Find, and I have met Jamie a couple of times over the years. This was found at a place called Mount Percy, and that&#39;s only two kilometres north of here. So, only two kilometres. Well, you&#39;ve got to wonder what&#39;s underneath here.There could be millions of ounces of gold underneath here, for all we know. In fact, a few years ago, they drilled under Hannan Street, the main street of Kalgoorlie, and apparently found a lot of gold underneath there. And just three or four years or so ago, they actually dug a trench, to put electrical cable in, in the Museum yard, and when they panned off the dirt, there was a huge amount of gold in it.So this museum could be very well built, built on a fortune, for all we know.

Paved The Streets With Gold

One of the great stories of Kalgoorlie is actually how they paved the streets with gold. And it&#39;s absolutely true. It&#39;s true. This silvery stuff here is called telluride and the golden mile is one of the few places in the world it exists.And when they first come across it, they didn&#39;t think it was any good and they actually mixed it with a bitumen concrete to pave the streets with. And then a while later they realised when they heated it up, they could extract a huge quantity of gold out of it. So that story is true, they did pave the streets with gold.And even today, occasionally you can walk through the streets of Kalgoorlie and pick up a bit of gold out of the bitumen and that is absolutely true.

Miner's Brooches

Here&#39;s some lovely miner&#39;s brooches here. So when a miner struck it lucky, he often had the nugget converted into a brooch, and often it was named after the lease that it was found on.Probably the most famous brooch we&#39;ve got here is the number six brooch, the Norseman brooch. Norseman is a town 200 kilometres south of here, and it&#39;s claimed to fame, it&#39;s actually found by a horse called Norseman. So the horse was tied up one day, scratched the ground, dug up a nugget, and started a huge gold rush.So they named the town after the horse, and put the statue of the horse in the middle of the town. But what they did with that nugget that horse found, is they actually made it into that brooch. So that&#39;s why that&#39;s so valuable and famous, just because of that incredible story behind it.

Jewellers &  Claude de Bernales

Here&#39;s some beautiful bracelets and pendants and watches here. You can imagine when they found all this gold, it attracted a lot of jewellers here.And there&#39;s one that&#39;s still going strongly in Perth today called Mazzucchelli. If you&#39;re from Perth, you&#39;d be pretty familiar with that. The number six watch there, that used to belong to a gentleman called Claude de Bernales. And he was the tycoon of the area some hundred or so years ago. He&#39;s a hero who&#39;s created a lot of work during the Depression, but he&#39;s also a villain as well, because like a lot of tycoons, he did probably rip off at least a couple of people.In fact, out near Museum Yard, we&#39;ve got a big red shed, and in there&#39;s two of de Bernales&#39; offices. Hopefully you&#39;ll go there and see it later on. The first office you&#39;ll see was his Perth office, and even the ceiling is made of Jarrah. It&#39;s got beautiful chandeliers in there, portraits of him up on the wall.And, yes, it&#39;s even got his gold dentures in there to show how really well off he was. And, of course, in the foyer there, it&#39;s got the story of him. And the one thing it does say about him is that the police will open their records up on him in 2025. Not that long to go. And I think that&#39;s to protect all the important people.Politicians, we know this, but who knows, maybe even royalty as well.

Crime on the Goldfield

Okay, there weren&#39;t too many Ned Kellys around here, but there was at least one. Uh, this guy used this to hold up a couple of gold shipments near Coolgardie. And you can imagine wearing that in 45 degree heat. you&#39;re just about faint, I think. But, most of the, crimes here in the early days had to do with gold stealing.And the miners used to smuggle the gold up in their shoes or crib bags and sell it later on. One other thing they used to do is have their own lease out the bush. Get their dirt from their own lease, put it through the crusher, and then throw the stolen gold in. At the end of it you say, look what I got out of my own lease.And back then there was no way of proving otherwise. But nowadays they&#39;ve got what they call DNA in gold. Get a little piece of gold and tell them almost exactly where it comes from. So science has finally caught up with gold stealing. But the most infamous gold stealing case, and probably the most infamous crime in Kalgoorlie history, It was back in 1926, and that was when two gold detectives, Pickman and Walsh, went out the bush.they found these guys smelting stolen gold. These guys killed them, cut them up, and put them down a mine shaft. And later on they found out who did it, and they hung them. And unfortunately one of the policemen actually left his gun at home. That gun there. So if he&#39;d actually taken it with him, it probably would have saved his life.

K00001 Gold Bar

Okay, so if you could take anything home from this vault today, it would definitely be this thing here. I&#39;ll call it a thing, and it&#39;s certainly not a thing, it&#39;s not a block of chocolate either.That&#39;s actually a genuine gold bar. It&#39;s 400 ounces, or 12 and a half kilos. In pure gold terms, it&#39;s probably worth around about 1.7 million dollars. But because it was the first bar minted at the Kalgoorlie Mint, you can see K0001, for that reason it&#39;d be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars more.So yes, if you could take it home, I&#39;ve got no doubt you would. I always thought it probably would make a great doorstop, actually.

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