Kalgoorlie is located in the Goldfields-Esperance area of outback Western Australia about 595 kilometres east of the state capital Perth. Prospectors Paddy Hannan, Dan O'Shea and Tom Flanagan discovered gold in the Kalgoorlie area in 1893, and the area soon became known as "Hannan's" or "Hannan". Kalgoorlie today has a population of over 28,000, making it the fifth largest city in Western Australia. The name Kalgoorlie is derived from the local Wangai word Karlkurla which means "place of the silky pears".
Gold mining, along with the mining of other metals such as nickel, has been the major industry in Kalgoorlie since 1893. Today, mining accounts for about 25% of Kalgoorlie's workforce and a major proportion of the town's income. The concentration of large gold mines located in the original Hannan area is known as the Golden Mile, and is reputedly the richest square mile of earth on the planet.
During the 1890s, the population of the Goldfields area as a whole grew to over 200,000, consisting mainly of prospectors. By 1903, Kalgoorlie's population had grown to about 30,000 people and the town began to merge into the nearby town of Boulder. Today the city is officially known as Kalgoorlie-Boulder. In 1896, a narrow gauge railway line reached Kalgoorlie, with the overnight sleeper train The Westland running from Perth until the 1970s. In 1917, a standard gauge railway line connecting Kalgoorlie with the city of Port Augusta in South Australia was completed, stretching across 2,000 kilometres of desert country. In 1968, the standard gauge railway was completed to Perth, making it possible to travel directly from Perth to Sydney without a change of gauges. Soon after, the iconic Indian Pacific rail service commenced. The Kalgoorlie-Boulder was serviced by an extensive network of suburban railways and tramways providing both freight and passenger transport.