Here's a bit of a left turn: I had dinner with some miners last night. That's right, miners, as in bauxite miners. Alcoa miners who work in the Darling Range of Western Australia, one of the world's richest and largest deposits of bauxite, the ore from which we get aluminum.So I found myself tagging along at a dinner meeting with some of Alcoa's (actually the world's) best authorities on mining and refining bauxite, and on reclaiming land and restoring biodiversity in Australia's unique and fragile ecosystem (see the photo). Naturally, the question came up, did the A380 come from here?
Aluminum doesn't grow on trees. It doesn't fall from the sky. It either comes from recycled aluminum or it comes from the ground. And if it's Alcoa aluminum, there are just a few places in the world it could come from: West Africa, Suriname, Jamaica, Brazil, or here, the Darling Range. Alcoa's system of mines, refineries and smelters is big and vast, and it's not always easy to trace a particular piece of metal back to its origin. But still, we figured there's a strong possibility that some of the A380's aluminum is from the Darling range.
I liked the poetry of this: that my historic plane ride could have circled back and ended in the very spot on Earth that the A380's elemental parts were born.
