500 Dollars - Elizabeth II 6th Portrait - Super Pit Australia - Gold

The Super Pit — formally the Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mine — is one of the largest open-cut gold mines in the world, carved into the Western Australian goldfields first worked during the 1893 rush that transformed the colony. At its peak the pit consumed entire former townships, including the historic mining settlement of Hannans, swallowed progressively as the open cut expanded through the twentieth century. The mine produces enough gold annually that a commemorative of this weight is, in a quietly ironic way, sourced from the very subject it depicts.