About Mining for Opals in Outback Australia, Coober Pedy, Part-6

These are 2 shafts that I have had drilled so I could open up this new claim, right next door to the old one, but across a gully, they were put real close together, in fact they turned out to be too close in fact, the bucket run off drilling the seconded shaft and broke into the first shaft, which as it turned out was not a bad thing for me and in fact helped me in the opening up of this claim, but the driller came back and drilled me a third shaft 10 feet away from the top of the photo, this photos this gives you some idea of what looking up a shaft from 80 feet looks like, you can see that I have the pipes down one shaft and the ladders down the other, the one with the ladders is the one I set up on and use the winch on.

This is the first shaft that I drilled, the one above with the ladders down now, the line I have picked around here is the potch that is in the level and I after I opened the 2 shafts, this photo is taken from the other shaft and I was standing on the bottom, but this shaft had been filled to about 2 feet above the level with dirt when the bucket was drilling the shaft I am standing in, so I had to drop the pipes down and start to clean it out using my hands and the small hand pick pushing the dirt towards the telescope and letting it get sucked up with the blower engine just on idle, which is good enough for this type of job, you can just see the side of the telescope on the left side of the photo.

After I had cleaned this dirt out to the floor I could then start to drill and blast to open up around the shafts to make the small ballroom I need to start the drives from, I hit a nice pocket of opal in the direction of the arrow and not very far from this shaft about 3 feet or so if my memory is correct, then it was on to start looking for more which would take some time.

Now I have to open up, which is to come in the next page........

This is the 3rd shaft I had drilled, the driller came back a few days late and drilled this for me because he had drilled the 2nd one to close to the first shaft and they had connected to each other and because of the wet ground could not drill below 83 feet, so he drilled this for me so I could open up below but again he could not get below 83 feet, what happens is that the ground packs too tightly in the bucket and they have a lot of trouble getting it out when they try and dump the bucket, so they have to quit, not that I blame them for it, hard enough job as it is, without this wet ground.

But this 3rd shaft was still of no us to me as it was not deep enough, but as it turned out the first 2 shafts because they had connected gave me enough room to work in to drill, blast and pull the dirt from, was still not easy but workable, now I have to make a small ballroom so I can start the prospect driving (tunnels) to look for opal.

I came back from holidays in April 2003 and went back to work only to find that I had been flooded out below by a thunder storm that has passed through this area, water had got in the shaft with the pipes down, it had run down the hill from the left of photo and gone past the shaft, it then hit the dump at the back of the blower and run under the far C-Channel that I have the hand winch sitting on, as the workings underground was only about 10 x 12 feet in diameter.

Turns out I had 5 foot of water down there, so I had 2 choices, get it out or pull the pegs and find another spot and as I had just found some opal in opening up, I knew that there must be more around and I was not about to pack it in as yet, so getting the water out became my priority, but how, this was the problem, I had asked a couple of friends who have had this problem in the past and they had used the blower to suck the water out, but they had also had more room underground in drives and not as deep as this, so I came up with another idea.

I got a 20 liter oil drum and cut the top out of it, then I made a handle out of fencing wire, then I got one of my fishing 1lb sinkers and tied it to one side of the drum so when the drum hit the water the sinker pulled the drum over so it sank in the water and filled with water, this drum I was lowering and pulling up with the electric winch, it turned out to be an easy job, just took time, a long time to get all of the water I could out of the claim and the fly's were bad that year as you can see I had to use a fly net to keep them off my face.

This job took around 5 days to get what water I could out of the claim which turned out to be more than 5 thousand liters as I kept count of the 20 liter drums I pulled out, this I could do by myself, but it was not long before I needed a hand to get the rest out from the bottom.

This is what was left when I managed to get down below, the water was so cold and was still about 2 foot deep in the middle and had been up to the line on the right, I did manage to get a bit more water out by myself before I got a friend to come and help me with the rest which took another 5 days working only until lunch time every day, the shovel was under water I spotted the top of the handle and thought it was the pick, but that was directly under the arrow and still under water at this time, I also had other equipment under as well, a small elbow, electric lead, the large elbow that was attached to the telescope that I have already taken apart, the telescope I have brought up top and the elbow is put to the left hand side.

Now I have got what water I could out, now all that is left is to get the mud out, so I have a friend up top handling the winch and me below loading the drum, with mud and a little bit of water so it can be dumped with some ease up top, not an easy job, but getting there slowly, just shows what we will do to try and find some opal, also as you may have noticed I take my camera everywhere with me, invaluable in capturing the moment and even for me this is great for me to look back at and remember what I have done and got up to in the past.

Here is another bucket ready for going up, the control for the winch is down the bottom with me along with the seat that I came down on, the seat is high and dry and the lead with the control on it is hanging on a nail on the side wall to my right, there is another switch on the winch above and all I do is to winch the bucket up till it gets inside of the shaft and then my friend up top takes over when I stop, he empties the drum and sends it back down to a certain depth and then I take over to bring it all the way down.

The electric lead you see here still in the water is still buried under the mud and at the time of the photo I could not get it out as I had to remove a lot more mud, there was also a 500 watt light buried there somewhere which was no longer any good once I found it, as I said it took me 5 days to get the rest of this out with the help of 2 friends as one could only come for 3 days.

This shot is to show you where the 3rd shaft is which is in the direction of the arrow and about four or five feet away , it is going to be hard to get rid of all of this wet through dirt you can see here and I have the same amount on the other side, this is from the last shots, wish I had pulled them now, still what I will do when I have got all of this liquid mud out is the drill and blast a shot in the direction of the arrow, the water would not have penetrated in the walls too far, so I will be bale to pull wet and dry ground together, mixing it up so it does not block the elbows to quick, will be slow work and a bit messy at the start but will get through it and continue open up and connecting to this 3rd shaft, then we can start the driving of tunnels prospecting for opal.

Forgot to mention that those white pieces near the edge of the water turned out to be pieces of opal that had got blown across there for the last shot to the right of photo, there was a few more under the water as it went down, not the dirt or dust has been washed off them I could see them, just shows you what you can loose when blasting, if you don't see it you don't get it, that's opal.

This is the 3rd shaft I had drilled that the driller came back a few days later and drilled for me because he had drilled the 2nd one too close to the first shaft and they had connected to each other and I had told not too, but he went ahead anyway and because of the wet ground could not drill below 83 feet, so he drilled this for me and again he could not get below 83 feet, what happens is that the ground packs so tightly in the bucket and they have a lot of trouble getting it out when they try and dump the bucket, so they have to quit drilling the shaft, not that I blame them for it, hard enough job as it is without this wet ground.

When I drilled the first shaft, which is the one with the ladders down I cut material on the 74 foot level with some color in it, the potch went half way around the shaft, this is where the luck part comes in, if I had drilled the shaft another 2 foot to the left I would have missed the material and probably not continued, but on opening up there was pocket of opal not far from the shaft, in fact there was a few small pockets all around as I continued opening up around the shafts after getting rid of all that wet ground, which we call making a ballroom.

From this ballroom we start making drives out in different directions, which for the most part is called Prospecting, unless we know that we are chasing something that we know is a fault of some kind that is or can be carrying opal or the level that comes off it can be a carrier of opal, sounds complicating, well it is and at the beginning learning this job is like doing an apprenticeship, you get better over time, but not necessarily richer.

Where the arrow can be seen is where I found a pocket of opal, good color and the bucket had just touched the opal but had not exposed it, I use a backlight first then I scrape down the side of the shaft with the point end of the pick just for this reason, and I hit material, when I picked in there was color straight away, I had to get the electric jackpick and dig it out, this is how close we can be to opal and not see it, about 1/8th of an inch, lots of money has been missed by this amount, the very first opal I found was missed again by this much, here when we are mining for opal we have a saying, if your name is not on it you wont find it and you have to see it to get it, so if we don't see it we will never know its there.


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