{"id":526799,"date":"2026-01-19T05:45:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T05:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/526799\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T05:45:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T05:45:24","slug":"explosives-discovery-in-kalgoorlie-reno-sparks-memories-of-time-when-gelignite-was-sold-in-shops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/526799\/","title":{"rendered":"Explosives discovery in Kalgoorlie reno sparks memories of time when gelignite was sold in shops"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sack of explosives unexpectedly found<\/a> on a WA Goldfields building site has left locals reminiscing over the days when they were as easy to buy as a hamburger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, builders found a hessian sack full of antique explosives under the deck of an office under renovation in Kalgoorlie, 600 kilometres east of Perth.<\/p>\n

The antique explosives were gelignite, an explosive used for rock blasting in the mining industry, predominantly in the 19th and 20th centuries.<\/p>\n

An expert police explosive team was dispatched to the desert city and the explosives were removed safely.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Kalgoorlie police cordoned off the building on Boulder Road, after old mining explosives were found by workers. (ABC Goldfields: Katrina Tap)<\/p>\n

‘That’s pretty dangerous’<\/p>\n

Kalgoorlie-Boulder historian Tim Moore said the antique gelignite discovery was “pretty dangerous”.<\/p>\n

“You don’t need much to actually set that off,” Mr Moore said.<\/p>\n

“If it gets old and sweaty, that’s when you’ve really got dramas, because that stuff is pretty much unstable.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Tim Moore says he is surprised more packages of explosives have not been found. (ABC Goldfields and Esperance: Macey Turner)<\/p>\n

According to Mr Moore, control and ownership of explosives had been heavily regulated since the 1980s.<\/p>\n

However, that was not always the case.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Mr Moore said gelignite was “freely available” in Kalgoorlie shops throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries.<\/p>\n

“You could buy explosives over the counter \u2026 everything you needed to blow something up was just freely available at the shops,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

he said.\"A<\/p>\n

McKenzie and Co, a general store in Kalgoorlie that sold explosives, traded from the late 1800s to about 1940. (Supplied: Eastern Goldfields Historical Society)<\/p>\n

Nobel’s Explosives Company<\/p>\n

The gelignite found under the Kalgoorlie deck was stamped with Alfred Nobel’s Explosives Company label, a popular explosives manufacturer that supplied Goldfields traders.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An 1896 advertisement in the Kalgoorlie Miner Newspaper for Nobel’s Explosives Co. (Supplied: National Library of Australia)<\/p>\n

Mr Moore said gelignite was by far the most common explosive used by prospectors.<\/p>\n

“It was quite common throughout the whole Goldfields,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So common, Mr Moore said, that there were “plenty of stories” about misuse of gelignite causing injury and death in the Goldfields.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got plenty of stories where kids were playing with gelignite, or blasting caps especially, and they would lose great portions of their hands.<\/p>\n

“So, as time progresses, the ownership and control of gelignite becomes tighter and tighter.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Gelignite was sold in dovetailed wooden boxes by Nobel’s Explosives Company. (ABC Goldfields and Esperance: Macey Turner)<\/p>\n

Despite the dangers, Mr Moore said it wasn’t until the late 20th century that the purchase of explosives was prohibited.<\/p>\n

‘As complicated as ordering a hamburger’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Veteran prospector Mike Charlton said even after explosives were taken off the shelves at general stores, they were still easily accessible well into the 1980s.<\/p>\n

\"Prospector<\/p>\n

Mike Charlton remembers just how easy it was to get and how necessary explosives were for professional prospectors. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

“You just went to the local mining register in Kalgoorlie or Coolgardie \u2026 [then] you wandered off to the explosives reserve,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It was as complicated as going into McDonald’s and ordering a hamburger.<\/p>\n

“It was just a tool that prospectors, farmers, everybody used. It wasn’t considered a threat to the public.”<\/p>\n

Mr Charlton believed the restrictions came in following the rise of organised criminals in Australia’s capital cities and incidents like the Russell Street<\/a> bombing in Melbourne in 1986.<\/p>\n

“The dynamics changed enormously.”<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Examples of shotfirer’s kit packaging supplied to professional prospectors in the 1980s. (Supplied: Michael Charlton)<\/p>\n

He said prospectors were then required to start engaging professional shotfirers who had the vehicles and permits to undertake explosive works.<\/p>\n

“That was very expensive \u2026 that’s where a lot of prospectors decided it wasn’t economical to do that,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It became not worth the gamble because there was no guarantee you were going to get yourself some gold.”<\/p>\n

‘Not surprising’ if more explosives remain\u00a0<\/p>\n

Much of the outer parts of the city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder were built on old mining leases.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Tim Moore says much of the outskirts of Kalgoorlie and Boulder were built over old prospecting shafts. (ABC Goldfields and Esperance: Macey Turner)<\/p>\n

While Mr Moore said it was rare to find explosives under a Goldfields deck, it “wouldn’t surprise” him if there were explosives left in old mining areas.<\/p>\n

“These old shafts were just shut up \u2026 either backfill or just leave it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There could be stacks of explosives. Nobody cleaned mines out after they finished, they just walked out and left everything there.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sack of explosives unexpectedly found on a WA Goldfields building site has left locals reminiscing over the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":526800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[233879,4740,4437,233880,35034,233878,9401,472,131609,16530,50,233881,15959],"class_list":{"0":"post-526799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alfred-nobel","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boulder","11":"tag-dynamite","12":"tag-explosives","13":"tag-gelignite","14":"tag-gold","15":"tag-history","16":"tag-kalgoorlie","17":"tag-mining","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-prospector","20":"tag-renovation"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115920183499793318","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}