About Mining for Opals in Outback Australia, Coober Pedy, Part-2

This is my Blower when I first bought it, needed some work as it had been standing around for while, I bought it from a person who owned a opal shop here in Coober Pedy although he is not here anymore and he got it along with a Dugout he bought as a Deceased Estate and this came with it, the miner who owned this died from a overdose of fumes he got underground while opening up a shaft, apparently he did not die straight away from this but about 3 weeks later down in Adelaide as he was taken to Hospital here in Coober Pedy after his partner got him up the shaft hanging unconscious by a foot from the winch seat, when he got him to the hospital, the man booked himself out the same day and would not stay to get treated, he went home so I was told and drank a bottle of scotch and it was some time later, more than a week that he got sick so bad that he had to seek medical treatment, he was sent to Adelaide and put in hospital there but died some days later from the equivalent of the bends.

What happened as I was told was that they had one of the winches here that are operated with an electric motor connected to a reduction gear box that is operated by thin ropes hanging down the shaft, a friend of mine now uses one of these winches and I have used it, also I have used this with 2 other miners here so they are very common, but what happened in this case was this and I am only surmising as I was not there, but when we light a shot and have no room underground we have to leave the fused long enough so we have plenty of time to get back up top before they start to go off.

What has happened in this case is that he used short fuses trying to save on the expense's and as he was starting to come up the bombs were going off, it is believed that he would have been some way off the floor when the first and second bomb went off and the concussion from the blast would have probably made him stop and cover his ears with is fingers and also some dirt from the top of the shaft would have been falling down, after they had all gone off and holding his breath as the shaft would have been full of fumes by then, he would have grabbed what he thought was the rope to go up, but the concussion had in fact blown the ropes around and crossed them over, so as he though he was going up, in fact he was going down.

His partner at the top realized what was going on, that he was going down and not up, but could not reverse what he was doing as this electric motor on this type of winch will not change direction until the motor comes to a stop and this winch was being operated from down the shaft, it was not until the miner lost consciousness that his partner up top could in fact control the winch and bring it back up, it was fortunate that the miner got his foot caught around the seat when he slipped off it after losing consciousness and that he acme all the ay up like that, had he fell off and stayed at the bottom of the shaft he would have been dead in a matter of minutes, and had he accepted medical attention at the time he would probably be still alive today, still it was lesson to me and one I have not forgot to this day and never will, we have our own lives in our own hands most of the time as miners, so we make most of our own mistakes.

Where the number 1 arrow is, I have to drop that inlet pipe down I did not know that when I took this photo as I had not got to Ross Chatfield workshop with it then, when I got there he advised me that this should be done as this in the pipe that the dirt comes from underground and it is to close the top of the hopper and would let more dirt in the fan that it should and where the number 2 arrow is that part is built wrong and is weak, it is starting to bend already under the weight of the dirt put up in the hopper so I have to strengthen it somehow.

And here is the finished product, you can see the pipe has been dropped, this was done by Ross Chatfield and I have run a couple of 2 inch square tubes up from the truck floor to near the hopper for extra strength, I have also painted the blower and had to replace on the back tires, the one that you can see looking at you, it was the wrong size and was not sitting on the ground so was not doing anything, why a person would put this on I have no idea, again lack of brains and common sense.

I have also put what is called a Watch Dog on the engine, in the old days one of the partners would have stayed up top and kept his eye on the engine when the blower was working, there was also a bell system, which is still on this blower below, a rope would have been attached to the handle and the miner below would pull on it a number of times to ring this bell to tell the guy up top what to do like put the revs on the engine or drop the revs off, stop the engine, start the engine etc, they would have had a system worked out, not to hard to do and remember.

What I did was to put this Watch Dog on the engine, and what it does is to monitor the engine oil pressure and water temperature and if any of those items become a problem it will shut the engine down by cutting off the fuel to the engine through the diesel injection pump, one partner less straight ways and more for me when I find something, then I run cables down the shaft going trough pulleys for operating the throttle on the engine and for emptying the hopper, then I put a return spring on the throttle arm on the diesel injection pump so it would shut off the revs when not required, then I also hooked in a dead short so that I could shut the engine off via this watch dog when I wanted to, all I had to do was to push a button, course I would have to come up to start it, but that was not a problem using the winch, so now all was ready to take it out on the field and try to make my fortune.

Then I tried this guy as a partner for a while but did not work out as I had to keep getting him out of bed in a morning to go to work and I will not put up with that, if you want to mine and go to work you have to be ready, so after about 3 or 4 weeks of this I got rid of him, nice guy keen worker when you got him underground but unreliable and that is not what you need in this job, not me anyway.

But he was a self taught electrical technician and this is how I got to meet him, I got him to put the switch operating system on the winch, which he did a very good job on, in this system is a switch that can be operated by someone up top at the truck, but again like the winch I was talking about before the electric motor cannot changed while it is being operated by another person going up or down, so if I am going down the person up top cannot take control of the winch while I have my finger on the button and so it is for all winch motors here.

I had not long had this orange winch now that I could afford to buy it and as the first priority was to buy this blower which I did as you can see, as with this I could hopefully find more money and then we would move on buy other things to make the job easier and this was not going to happen in the short term as it happened, hell I am still here writing this story and still looking for big pocket of opal and I might add also waiting for that big lottery win, I'll take which ever come first.

Not that long after I had tried that guy as a Partner, I have moved back to 11 mile and was starting to open up this new claim of mine and wand as you can see by the date on the photo it is in December 93, so early days for sure, cannot even remember who took this photo as my camera then never put the date on it, but I remember that I was enthusiastic and to some degree I still am just not as fit, if you could call me fit then, but I would love to turn the body clock back for sure.

The area underground was not that large here at this time and I would be still coming up when letting off shots to get out of the way, when I first what we call open up below, what we do is to drill 2 shafts close together, here I drilled the second shaft 10 foot from the first shaft which has the tin round it for safety, it had already been open up to about 10 feet by 12 feet by another miner and left and as I found some colored trace and potch down there and decided that I would learn here by myself and I also had to learn to open up as well.

So then I go down the second shaft which is drilled deeper to around the 85 foot mark, this is so some dirt can fall down when I do a couple of shots later on and then drill in the side of the shaft above and under the level toward the first shaft with what is called a Opening Up Auger, which is only short some 18 inches in length, I drill in this depth and make 9 or 10 holes spaced apart about 2 feet, then when I have finished that job, I make up some very small bombs with long fuses on them, them go down and place then in the holes and get them ready for lighting, I would then come back up for the fuse lighter and go back down after checking the generator for fuel etc, not wanting it to stop while I am down there also have to have my wire ladders down for safety.

Only when I feel safe would I go down and light the bombs in sequence and I would have to hold my breath at times on the way up a the fumes fill the blind shaft very quickly right to the top, in fact when you look up from 65 feet down you cannot see daylight at the top, so thick are these fumes, but the fumes from the fuses cannot kill you, just a nuisance and don't smell good either, but they are thick in a blind shaft as they have nowhere to go but up, anyway I make my way back out of the shaft and go to the blower as I have the pipes down the first shaft, I have already done a shot down there and do not have much thickness left to break though to about 3 feet or there about so this small shot should do it if I have judged it right, if not and it blows out the back of the shaft the front will not come out and I will either have to re-drill or use the electric jackpick and I don't want to do either.

Turns out that the shot was good and had blown the front and back out as it should have, so I had broken though and did pull the fumes out with the blower, from there it is just a matter of hard work cleaning up and a lot more shots to completely open up a small ballroom so I can move around with ease, then we are off starting to do drives and look for opal.

I had finished open up and had done a couple of drives, (tunnels) by this time I had found some opal, a few small parcels in fact and while I was doing a drive I made a mistake, I forgot to pull the rope to empty the hopper on time and this is what happened, as I said I was pulling dirt and all of a sudden I lost vacuum underground, so I had to come up and see what had gone wrong and this was looking at me when my head popped above the top of the shaft, frightened shit out of me I can tell you, I had no idea what to do to get out of this mess, no experience what so ever, but I knew that I was going to damage the truck in getting it back down to earth again, as I had stood right underneath the engine on the truck and looked up at the sump, so it was good 7 foot off the ground.

So packed up for the day and headed back to town, cannot forget it was a Saturday Morning and Coober Pedy was having Council Elections at the time, not that Pat and I could vote as we did not own any property at the time so was not allowed to vote, a lot of people were standing around outside the council building having a beer with some of the candidates, so I parked the vehicle and went up to someone I knew and told them what had happened to the blower and how could I get out of it and I also would want a helping hand, he did not laugh as I thought he would but told me how to get out of it by myself and than lots had done this in the past and probably would in the future, so I also had a beer and went back to the field the next day, now I knew there was no immediate danger with the blower and I had now calmed down, got to tell you the heart was beating double time.

Turns out the truck was not balanced, I later fixed this by buying a small one cylinder diesel generator and placing it on the front at the rear of the cab near the blower fuel tank and that gave the truck enough forward weight so this never happened again, it would after this self dump, which is what it should do if I forget to pull the rope.

There was no damage to anything, the only thing that got broken was a rubber sleeve that I use to seal 2 pipes ends to stop them sucking air and then put a clamp in it to hold them together, what I had to do was get my shovel and move some of the dirt away from around the lid of the hopper, then gently remove the dirt from inside the hopper with my hand bit at a time, doing this the blower slowly came back to earth until the front wheels were about 3 foot off the ground and then it came down with a thud, again no damage, but lesson learned, has never happened again, but as I said I have also put more weight on the front as a counter weight.

I was also learning to use the wires, yep, divining with Bronze Wires, I did not believe in divining when I first came here to Coober Pedy but I got introduced to them and with a lot of practice and leg work I got pretty good with them, but I did not fully understand what they were telling me for sure, so the only way was to use them and see what they told me then to find out for sure what they meant was to do a drive underground and see if they or I was right, I had wired the track that I use to come into the claim on and found that there was 13 slips as I call them on this track and I picked 6 on my level and 7 on the level above me.

So I started a drive that was to be 120 feet long at least and as I had measured with a tape measure where these slips were supposed to be, I got to work on the drive, the wires were right on, I had cut 5 of these slips and could see them as a thin brown line in the side of the drive and on bother side, they were supposed to be facing me and they were, that is that they are on a slant and from the top to the bottom it is slanting towards me, so the wires were exactly correct and as they were on my level it also meant that I could also tell the depth of these things, where they started and finished, now my apprenticeship was finished, I had done the hard yards, BUT.

When I was out some 100 feet and looking for the sixth slip, by the way a slip is a small fault that goes from the level down to the level below or above, anyway I was pulling dirt in this d rive and again I lost vacuum and could not continue to pull dirt so I had to come up top and see what had happened, again what happened last time went though my mind on the way up, but when my head got above the hole I saw a large pool of oil, Oh No now what, when I got off the winch and went to the blower I saw this hole in the engine block, so I knew the engine was finished and again I was in trouble, large Dollars to fix this was required.

This photo above was taken after I had removed some parts and the starter motor.

When I walked around to the other side of the truck, this is what I saw and I thought the hole on the starter motor side was bad enough, not that it mattered as the engine was still stuffed, but on this side the whole number 5 cylinder was taken out from the cylinder head to the sump, turns out that the piston had disintegrated.

It was a very old English 280 horsepower diesel engine, but as long as it worked it was good for me, now I would have to replace it and I doubt if I can find one of these to put back in, this one cannot be fixed, so now I have to take the blower back to this Ross Chatfield and ask him if I can use his yard and workshop again and if he also can help me to locate another engine to replace this heap of scrap.

Again this photo was taken after I had removed some parts including the injection pump that was hanging partly off anyway, I ended up selling this to another miner for parts for $500.00 which was better than nothing and it was worth throwing on the scrap heap to me, so now to find another engine and get on with the job of replacing it, going to be a big job I think, just hope I have the money to cover it.

Well here is the new engine all finished and looking good, did not get it like this had to paint it and it is not the same as I took out, this one is Perkins 6-354 110 horsepower diesel, it is a fully reconditioned engine and cost me $4000.00 plus a $120.00 freight to get it up here from near Adelaide would have been cheaper but I did not have an exchange engine so had to pay extra for it, still I am out of trouble and back in business.

Was not an easy job and took me a couple of months to change it over, I had to move the radiator forward as this engine is small in size as well as horsepower, and I had to make up and drill in a adapter plate to bolt to the flywheel so that short tail shaft at the rear of the engine that drives the large 5 groove pulley, which dives the belts/fan, had to make up and weld in new engine mounts, new hoses and weld pipes together for the radiator as you can see, buy another Air Cleaner for it and that was the easy part.

What had happened after I had fitted this motor and took this photo, I was ready to run the engine and see how it went then I could alter the fuel flow in the injector pump so I could get the revs I wanted on the engine and fan, but when I got it running there was a big oil leak from behind the flywheel, it was pouring out which meant the rear oil seal was badly leaking for some reason, so I had to remove the short tail shaft again and then the flywheel, and behind that is a aluminum cover that contains the oil seal and has a gasket between it and the engine block, it turned out that it was this gasket that was the problem, when the person who put this engine together had fitted this gasket, somehow when he was putting this aluminum cover on and fitting the bolts he had doubled over the bottom of the gasket, which left a large gap between the block and cover, must have been blind when he did this.

So I had to ring this guy up and tell him what I was looking at and that he would have to pay for it and that Ross would be doing the job, he gave Ross permission to do the job and he could charge $35.00 a hour for the time it took which I had estimated at about 11 hours and that including pulling the engine back out, which was not needed and I did the job and Ross made the bill out for $385.00 and he got paid and I got the money for the job, the guy who I bought the engine from also had to send me up a new gasket for it.

What I did not tell you so far was that when I first got the engine sent up to me, all of the inlet manifold had not been cleaned as it should have and was full of old thick black diesel oil and had to be sent back to him to be exchanged also he had sent the wrong injector pipes up with the engine and the wrong rocker cover breather pipe and there was something else but I forget now, so he cost me lost time and the cost of freight of the parts back down to him and as I am a Engine Reconditioner myself and have built many of this type of engine I knew exactly what to do, that is why I said the guy must have been blind that built the engine, turned out to be this business owners son, I told him that the person who did this should have been sacked, that is when I found out, the joys of dealing with people a long long way from home.

Then I got enough money together and I managed to buy this little struck, I then went back down to this Ross Chatfield's and built this winch for the back of it, then I took the A-Frame off the 4x4 and converted it so it went on this winch base, then I pulled the 12 volt winch off the 4x4 and put it on here and bought a large 12 volt battery to run it and I was in business again for going up and down shafts dangerous as it was, but it could not get me killed, the worst it would have done in the motor failed on the way down was perhaps break one or both of my legs when I hit the bottom as thee is still drag on the cable as it was being pulled out front the winch, then later on when I had some more money saved up I bought a 240 volt winch and took the 12 volt one off and put it back on the 4x4, this new winch was a safe winch and made for lifting up to 200 kilos, but not recommended for people so as far as the mines dept is concerned it was still illegal, but it has a electric brake on it and is driven via a worm gear which is very safe and It was the second Orange Winch (the color of it) in this town at that time and cost $880.00, well worth the money.

In the mean time I had bought all of the other equipment I needed to go mining with, electric jackpick, hand lights, electric leads, black light etc so now I was just about there, all I needed was more experience, but that comes with time and moving dirt.

So now I am on my own, hard to find a partner here that you can trust and rely on, so I will go it alone for a while and see how I get on, just have to be more careful as there is nobody to watch my back, so here I am drilling a shot as we call it, I will end up drilling 15 holes in this shot and the hard part of this for me is drilling the bottom 2 holes, back breaking stuff and carrying a bit extra weight around the middle does not help I can tell you and this being wet ground makes it even harder as I cannot just drill the hole as I normally would in dry ground I have to drill in about 3 inches and than I have to clean the hole out as the wet ground sticks to the auger and the side of the hole, if I was to drill to deep I would and have got the auger stuck in the hole.

Where the pick is in the face in the middle hole and the stick you can see in another is my Tamping Stick, this is what I use to shove the explosives (bombs) in the hole with, I also use this stick to line up the direction of the shot, as I lay it on the floor in the middle of the drive and point it in the direction I want to go and drill the first hole using that stick as a guide after that I put it in the hole and drill next to it again using this stick as a guide this way I get all of the holes in the same direction as best a possible.

And most important is that the holes be the same distance apart at the back of the shot as they are at the front where I am drilling, in the beginning I used to be out quite a way and when the holes are too far apart at the back the shot will not come out properly as there is too much dirt for the bomb to move and it is easy to stray off line if you do not have a guide, unless you drill the holes closer together, which some mines do to what they call powder the shot, me I go for more dirt for less bombs if the shot is drilled right, all comes with experience.

Here is a bomb ready for putting in a drilled hole, I normally put them in like this although I can put them in with the fuse facing to the front, but in dry ground I would put them in like this and in wet ground where the hole tends to squeezed back in a bit after it has been drilled, there is not enough room to put them in like this so they have to be put in with the fuse and detonator at the front, but if for any reason I have to pull the sausage back out this is the best way to have it in the hole as if it gets a bit stuck it will not pull the fuse and detonator off the sausage leaving it in the hole, which has happened in wet ground the sausage gets stuck on the way in and I have had to pull it out to try and open the hole up a bit more and the fuse comes off, leaving the bomb half way in.

Which is no good for the shot if the bomb is not at the back of the hole, so I have had to d rill the bomb out, yes it is pretty safe with no Det on it, and them make another and try again, if all of the bombs are not at the back of the holes the shot will not come out properly and I will have to do some jack picking by hand, which is not what I want.


Where things are always on the Hop		And the wheels are always in Motion