About Mining for Opals in Outback Australia, Coober Pedy, Part-8

Now it is finished and you can see it is a big hole in the ground, I have to now to bring the blower back out now the tunnel machine is all finished and tested as far as I can above ground, once the blower is back place I can go down and start to pull the dirt that is remaining from the drilling of this shaft which a lot I can tell you, when I went down and checked the dirt was up to the roof and I had a Tourist with me from England Called Bill, who wanted to have a look underground and I could not take him down because of the amount of dirt that was there.

I came back the next day and started to clean up, took a while there was tons of dirt to get out and as the roof was 8 foot high, shows you how much was down there, after this was done and all nice and clean I was ready for bringing out the tunnel machine and putting it down under for its trials and the start of my learning the machine which will be fun and a new experience in mining for me.

The Big Day is here at last October,17 2004, I have just brought the machine out on its trailer and the crane is unloading it, it will then put it on the ground after I have mover the vehicle out of the way, then I will hook the crane up on the cradle ready for lowering underground, bit moment for me as I have never been involved in this procedure before.

The machine is hanging perfectly, far better than I imagined, mind you I have to say that I did do a trial test in Ross's yard when the crane was there lifting the generator on the blower would have been stupid not too, the machine has to hang reasonably straight or we will have some problems when lowing down the shaft, but this is perfect, the crane operator commented on it and said that all tunnel machines should have a cradle like this as it made his job a lot easier having just one central lifting point, so the guy who built the machine got something right, as this machine has what is called an extendable arm on it, that is one of the cutting heads can be removed and if needed this machine can cut a 7 foot diameter tunnel, it is set up to do a minimum 6 foot diameter cut and I have this head removed right now so it takes up less room in the shaft.

As this is the first time I will have to set everything up so it will not be finished this day, but the machine will be under but not working, you can just see the cable on the back of the truck and the other cutting arm is in there as well, so all of this has to be set up today and maybe tomorrow I will start, hopefully.

And here is the machine just starting to go down the shaft, this is being done slowly and the crane operator is trying the keep the machines tracks on the side of the shaft, this stops the machine from trying to spin, I will go down soon to help the machine get on its tracks when it hits the floor, the operator and I have a pair of mobile radios that we communicate through, this way I can tell him when to stop and to lower it by one inch if I have too, so far so good, all is working well, no need to say I am excited at this point, 9 months hard work to get here.

This young lad I have here was starting to work with me for a while, he was a barman at the pub here in the afternoons, but it did not work out as he had told me he was going to leave Coober Pedy to go to New Zealand in about 2 moths time, when he told me this I told him that he would not be needed as I would continue working by myself and I paid him a few bucks to come and help me this day, nice lad for sure and I liked him, but was not prepaid to spend time training him only for him to leave, so better not to start.

Another shot of it about to disappear from site, so far everything is looking real good and is time for me to go down and wait for it to get there, I know what to do as I have talked with my friends on what they do when lowing a machine under and it gets to the bottom, but knowing and doing is two completely different things, I also went underground with a friend of mine who has a round tunnel machine, small than this machine, only cuts 5 foot 7 inches in diameter and weighs in at 850 kilos, but I was with him for a week and a half while he was opening up a claim with the tunnel machine and was just what I wanted to learn, so I have some idea of what I am about to do with this when I get started in a couple of days time.

Here she is what a photo, where else would you get to see photos like this, now to lower it to the floor, turns out it was very easy, when the machine was about 3 inches off the floor I had to push the machine as hard as I could, I was still by myself at this point, then the bottom of that gray cutting head dug in the floor and the machine slowly tipped backwards on its tracks, I had just enough head clearance to the roof, next time I will make the roof a foot higher just on one side for this operation making it a bit easier for me.

Now my offsider for the operation is down with me, now he has hooked the extendable cutter on and we are now going to attempt to put it back on the machine, at this point it looks aright for me to do this, but as I do not have the cable hooked up to the blower or down here I cannot move the tunnel machine to help line it up.

Turns out it was in perfect position, here it is going in with no effort at all, don't know why I was worried, this was I must admit a lot easier than I expected and can be done by one person very easily, not hard at all, there are a few miners here who work by themselves with tunnel machines and I have to say I have bought the machine out once since this for Hydralic oil leaks, could not see much underground so decided on bright sun light was the best thing for my eyes and I managed by myself and the crane operator very nicely and never had a problem in bringing it up or putting it down, although I did still need a helping hand, as someone has to drive the mining truck while I drive my 4x4 with the trailer on, so you see there are times when you cannot work alone and must have some help.

Now I am ready to start doing my first test drive and learn the machine which will take me a few weeks to get on top of as it needed some tweaking here and there, the trouble with modifying a machine up top when you do not know how it operates underground is that you have no idea what will and won't work in real life as I found out when I started working it underground, so it over the next few months I learnt a lot about my machine and how to work it plus I had to re-modify a few items as well to make me happy.

Here I am some 18 months later full on, have learned a lot in that time and found some opal with it, not enough, but we never find enough and even today I am still learning more about the machine, when something goes wrong or I have a breakdown I have to try and make the machine a little bit better for operating if possible, I have to say that I am extremely happy that I bought this machine as it is quicker and far less expensive than hand mining with explosives, which I have already said that I would not be doing right now, so this machine has extended my mining career by quite a few years and I enjoy this mining underground.

Anybody who wants to come mining here in Coober Pedy is most welcome, they will find it somewhat harder to get involved than when I came here in 1992, due to the changes in the mining regulations, but that is only if you want to use explosives, if you have the cash to but into mining equipment, such as Tunnel Machine with all of its extras, blower, generator etc, then you will be in business straight away and would not take you long in learn the game, always someone here for you to bend there ear and pick up a few tips.

There is nothing like seeing opal in the face in front of you, then your juices start to run and you start to wonder if this is going to be the day, the big pay day, until you dig it out you will never know, but always some excitement underground, a lot of disappointments for sure, but as you work for yourself well worth the effort, just takes a lot of patience and some funding, but I would recommend it to anyone.

Thanks for Reading our Story, not easy living in a Mining Town such as this we do not have what they have in the big cities, life is a bit harder for the Ladies, but we make up for it by going on a 9 week holiday during the heat, the women here for a lot of miners are the back bone of our community and I would like to thank my wife Patricia in particular for backing me all of these years in mining, who you see blow sitting on the machine, she still came down this day on the winch after about 4 years off and at the age of 63, so it shows you that anyone can have a go at this at any age, we just have to take it a bit easier and slower.

Here are a couple more photos to remind you what we are looking for, wish all I could find was this quality or better, but will take anything that has color in it to pay the expensive's.

Remember it has taken us 14 years to get to this point, but we did not have the capital needed when we came here to jump right in and buy what was needed, we had to crawl buying bit by bit as we could afford it, then we started to walk a little until we finally got the money together to get this tunnel machine to make life as an Opal Miner easier, now to find our Fortune in the near future.

Should you ever get Downunder, look me up maybe I can take you Downunder for the day and who knows what we will see.


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