The Kalgoorlie Magistrate's Court ordered the owners of a mothballed Western Australian gold mine to pay $150,000 over the most recent death of a worker.

This came three years after 60-year old boilermaker Lindsay Bridges was fatally crushed when a corroded gantry bridge collapsed on him while he was working beneath it at the Norseman gold mill, owned by Kevin Maloney's Central Norseman Gold Corporation.  Mr. Bridges was ordered to remove a rake shaft beneath the bridge.  But the decrepit structure was terribly corroded to the point that its weight was being held up by the rake shaft - when Bridges did his job the bridge crashed down.

"Central Norseman Gold Corporation was aware that its processing plant was old and was in generally poor condition," said Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety director Andrew Chaplyn, as quoted by the ABC.  "If they had implemented, maintained and enforced an appropriate system of work, or a structural integrity review, a thorough condition assessment of the bridge would have been undertaken before Mr Bridges was tasked with removing the rake shaft.

"The condition assessment would have determined that the bridge's bottom truss chords had corroded and fractured, and there was a risk the bridge was in danger of sudden collapse if the rake shaft was removed," Mr. Chaplyn added.  "This tragic consequence of the company's lack of attention to an issue, which should have been identified, highlights the need for vigilance by management in ensuring that safety protocols are strictly observed."

This wasn't the first worker death at a Central Norseman operation.

Central Norseman was fined $140,000 last year over the death of machine operator Wayne Fowlie who was caught under an 18-ton rockfall.

The company also paid $15,000 for the 2010 death of 59-year-old Rene Ponce who died when he fell 10 metres while working at the company's OK Decline.