November 17, 2002. Opal Mining Update - No 5 My New Claim

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Well I finally got the shafts down, but only 2 of the 5 that I wanted at a cost of $500.00 which is pretty good, George has not changed his price since I have been here in 10 years, good old feller old George, he is 70 years old and still a good hard worker. Here we are just setting up on the first shaft, you can see the little gully in front of the photo, this dirt is from my old claim, you will see better later on.

This is the same as above but from a different angle, you can see at the bottom left one of my corner pegs marking the boundary of my claim, the claim is 100 x 50 meters.

This give you some idea of the terrain this I am in and on the side of a small hill.

Here you can see my blower and mining truck in the background, in the foreground is the some of the dirt from my old claim, it has been noodled and the peg you can see is someone else's.

Here George is just setting up the drill to start the first of 2 shafts for me, you can se that the ground is a bit rocky, I had cleaned the ground up with my front end loader so it was pretty level.

We are off and running, now we keep our fingers crossed and hope that when we reach where the level is we will cut some material, in other words find some potch or colored trace or opal.

This photo is a close up of the shaft starting to be drilled at this point the ground is good.

This what the ground looks like in front of me, this is a small gully and the 3 mounds of white dirt that you can see are old timers from the sixties, these are all hand dug shafts which we call square shafts, these were the hard days to mine in, at least today we have some easy equipment to use.

Here you can just see the start of what is called an open cut, these are done by Bulldozers, today with the cost of diesel this can be very expensive if they don't find anything and they don't go as deep as they used to in the old days when fuel was very cheap.

This is the right side of the open cut, it went down to about 55 feet.

This photo is looking towards my old claim from where the new shafts are, this is of the dirt which is what we call dumps, there is more than you can see here, but that in the background is not mine I was on this claim for 5 years looking for opal, found some but never struck it rich as yet.

And last of all is about me, I have put on some 10 kilos (24 lbs) but I did not know that I looked as bad as I do until I asked Pat to take a Photo me, which I will not show you at this time, boy do I need to move some dirt to get rid of this lot, Oh I forgot to mention My hard working Wife, for with out her all this would not be possible, so I have her to blame for being stuck is this dust bowl, as if she stopped working we would have to move, but to where I have no idea. By the way I have today cleaned all of the dirt away from the holes and have made a pad for the blower to move on, tomorrow I will go down both shafts and check them, then I will drill and put some shots in so I can connect the 2 shafts together, then I will move the blower on the hole and drop some pipes down ready to pull fumes when I blast.  But to start with for the first few days I will have to come up top when I light the fuses to let the bombs go off, until I can get some footage done, I need to have at least a 20ft drive going and a little one at a right angle to the first one in about 8 feet so I can hide around the corner with my fingers stuck in my ears as the bombs go off. Of course as this is happing the blower is working and pulls the fumes up and out as the shots are going off, so I have all of the fumes out in about 30 seconds after they have all gone off, then I pull the dirt, this I will take some pics of later on, I was hoping to have this new camera for all of this, but it wont be long before it is here anyway. I will keep you updated and that trace was potch, but I had 4 small pieces of green crystal in there as well, so we will see what happens in the near future.  Pat says that we might get there in the near future she hopes.

Well the shafts were a disaster, he talked me into drilling them close together because I had cut trace in the first shaft, but as he hit Jasper which is a very hard rock, it can be in very big pieces or small pieces, lucky this was the small stuff, this field is one of the opal fields that is know for it and a lot of drillers do not like the drill where this jasper is known to be. When the drill hits this Jasper if it is the big stuff, then they cannot drill through it as they will not break up and the pieces are to big to get into the bucket, some of the drillers will go down and put shots (explosives) on top of the rock to break it up so it can fit into the bucket to be brought up, which is more cost to the Miner or the shaft is abandoned. Well this did not happen here, lucky for me it was the small stuff and George had no trouble drilling through it, the Jasper went down to 25 feet but what happened was the shafts went off line and did not go down straight, unlucky for me they went in towards each other and met at the bottom, so I have no room to put any shots in and open up, or so I thought. This is how it all starts, just 2 holes drilled about 2.5 feet apart, normally I would drill them some 6 to 7 foot apart, but as I had cut trace (potch and some color) George thought it better if they were closer a bit together to make it easer to open up with.

Here below you can see my Mining Truck and how I set up on a hole (shaft) to go down and check the shaft to see if there is a level, in this case I already know this, to also check to see if there is more that one as there can be up to 5 on this field and to see if the level is carrying any material. Again in this case I already know that it does as the bucket brought it up and I saw it on the dump, but some times it may just be a little bit and can be missed quite easily so you have to go down and check the level by eye if there is one.

So George is going with me on Sunday morning to drill another shaft near the first one, that is the shaft on the left in the photo, but this time I want it about 6 or 7 feet away from the shaft on the right in the photo and in front I think, might change my mind when I get out there on Sunday and have another look. Because it depends which way I can get the blower in, that first shaft on the left was the one the blower had to go on and was very important that it went there so the hopper went over the side of the hill, then when the wind blow's the dust was kept away from the blower engine and my mining truck. I never cut any material in the second shaft, but I have what looks like a diving level in there, across the 2 shafts the level dropped about one foot, but I cut the material at 76 foot, picked some red and 1 piece of green orange out of the wall but very thin, that is why we call it trace, good for nothing else really. But there is a good chance that when this level bottoms out, if it is a diving level, it could make some opal down there and I have a lot of virgin ground (untouched) to prospect in as there is slides (faults) all over the place here so I might be on a good patch again, but wont know for awhile yet. The only draw back here is the ground is on the wet side again, so we will have to see what happens as far as me drilling and pulling dirt. Hate wet ground, makes for very hard and slow work. Well here I am, told you I had put some weight on while sat on my backside for 2 years building my Web Site and getting it to where it is today, I had to learn HTML to do what you see today here and I have one of the Top Ranked Web Site's in the World so I am quite proud of that. Now I have to get back to being a Troglodyte, that is get down and get dirty, I need to do some serious mining to get some of this weight off, will take a while but I will do it, here I am parked outside of the Mud Hut Motel where my Patricia works who took this photo, in the background in the Opal Inn.

Well I got that 3rd shaft drilled, have not been down it but did not see anything on the dump so I don't think that I cut anything in that one, again I can see that the shaft has run off at an angle. The ground was very wet at 83 ft so again I did not get the shaft down to the depth I wanted, so I will not be able to open up the shafts as I wanted, as there is not enough space below to blow the dirt into. So yesterday I moved the blower onto the shaft and checked it for being level and I removed all of the pipes off and put them next to the shafts ready for putting down the hole, I have to now go down the 2nd shaft I drilled, where the first one broke into it, I have to put the pipes down the 1st shaft so the telescope is somewhere near the dirt in the shaft, hope that I can reach the cord so I can let the telescope down. Then with the blower running I can go down the shaft next door, and remove the dirt with my hands to try and clean out the shaft, then I will take the remaining wall between the 2 shafts out with the electric jackpick, until I have the 2 shafts clean and connected, then I will be able to drill and blast to connect to the 3rd shaft. When I have connected to the 3rd shaft I will probably move the blower onto this shaft and them start to drive and prospect for opal. To day I have to put a bit more dirt where the blower is going to sit and to build a bit more of a back wall on the edge on the hill so the blower cannot roll over the edge, then I will put the blower on the hole and put the pipes down the shaft, then put the metal ladders down the other hole, that is the hole that I use to go up and down in, then I will come home. I will take a couple of pic's today of progress so you can see how things are getting on, things are slow with me as I work by myself and of course I am out of condition and under my left armpit there is a sweat rash already, so I just take it easy. Here we are again, this time we are getting serious and I am going setting up my Equipment to start the process of what we call Opening Up, that is to connect the 3 shafts together by making a small ball room, some 20 feet square in diameter from this I have room to keep some of my small equipment underground while I use the explosives, I can then start to make some drives (tunnels) to start looking for opal or trace that might lead me to a nice opal pocket, big one I hope.

Here is the latest, you can see the layout, you can see that I have cleaned up after the drill has finished and made a reasonable flat area for the blower, it has to be like this as I am getting ready for setting up the blower on the shaft and have the hopper hanging over the side of the hill so I need the ground as level as possible for safety reasons.

This is the same as above but from a different angle, is taken from my old claim, the dumps you can see in the background of the blower are not mine, they are from some other mining a few years ago, some opal was found here as I knew one of the miners who is no longer here, but I am on the level below what they were on.

Here you can see the 3rd shaft just in front of the shaft with the hand winch on it, I have covered the 2nd shaft with boards so I can stand over the shaft as I put the pipes down & connect then together, the first one to go down is a pipe with a 7 foot telescope pipe inside of it, then I will remove the boards tomorrow to set the shaft up with what I call a square hole for safety and put the ladders down the shaft. A telescope is a metal tube that fits inside the plastic pipe and can slide in and out of it so the length of that pipe can be varied underground when I have to attach the elbows that I us, more on this later, but you can just see this pipe at the back of the boards the telescope is on the left, just sticking out.

I did not quite do what I said I would do, but I did something anyway, the wind was very bad out on the field this morning and as I am by myself, putting the pipes on was a bit of a struggle in that wind, but I managed as you can see, this photo shows you how I put the pipes down the shaft, but would have been easier and quicker if there was two of us, the pipes are in 10 foot lengths and are quite light being of plastic, heavy duty of course and I have other lengths as well not know just what depth the shaft will be. But being out of condition (if I was ever in condition) and the biggest problem is my knee it got to hurting to much to quickly, so I got the pipes down and I got the dirt built up a bit more on the edge of the hill, which is behind where the blower is going, if you look at the back of Pipes 4 pic you can see the mound of dirt there, this is a small safety barrier as the blower truck only has a hand brake  and if I was to go back to far without this, the truck would possibly go over the edge.

This is just a side on shot of the photo above, at this point I have a lot room to play around with, just in front of the truck to the left there is a old tire, here I will have another shaft drill in the future and one in between there and the shaft the pipes are going down, also there is two more to be drilled to the right of this photo one is near the loader and the other in at the back of it.

This is a close up of the clamp that we use to couple the pipes together with, you can see that we use part of an old truck tube that we cut up and call a sleeve, we place this over the pipe flanges which are there for the clamp to hang on to, this is to seal the joints from sucking any air in so we don't break or lose any of the vacuum while we are pulling the dirt from underground.

I work a bit different underground, this I will show you later on when I get to that stage, what I am looking forward to is showing you how opal looks in the wall as we see it, when it is first exposed after Millions of years, I can tell you that it gets your pulse rate up a couple of notches. This is just a close up view of the back of the blower and the hopper, this hopper will be hanging over the hill, as you will see later. More on the ladders and the rest of the set up in the next Issue.

Not much to talk about today, I forgot to take the camera yesterday, left it on the chair outside the front door. Any way I got the ladders down, but I am one or two short, will take them with me today, not that I want to climb them I can assure you but there are necessary to have down the hole should anything happen with the winch or generator, then I can get out of the hole even if it takes me five minutes or more. I have put the blower on the hole and connected up the pipes so I am ready to start to remove some of the dirt in the shaft, by hand as the second shaft when drilled and broke through into the first shaft filled it with dirt up to the level, which is at 76 feet and the shafts were drilled down to 83 feet. So I have to make the floor at about 80.5 feet, when I have the other shaft cleaned out I have to make sure that the wall, or what is left of it,  between the two shafts is taken out, this I will do with the electric jackpick all while sitting on the seat, until I can stand on the floor, then I will start to drill some holes for blasting and opening up. If I can take some pics of this I will, don't know how my little camera will like it down there, but we will find out. Today when I put the other ladder/s down I have to fix them to the wall so they don't move and also they tend to hang in towards the center of the shaft as the shaft is down on a slight angle, so I will drive some 6 inch nails into the wall on ether side of the ladder and bend them over, this works quite well. Upon starting the engine on the blower yesterday and giving it a run, first in about 2 years, it sprung a oil leak, which on turned out to come from a oil line that is connected from the engine block to the watchdog or so I thought.

What is a watchdog you ask, well it is a box that has a oil line and a electric wire that is connected to engine block, the oil line is for the oil pressure and the wire is for the water temperature, if ether one gets to the preset pressure or temp it will shut down the engine immediately and hopefully stop any damage that would or could have happened, this photo below is the Watchdog, it is the red box and the oil pressure gauge that was faulty has been removed, this gauge is a secondary one and is not the main important one that is connected to the watchdog itself. Anyway I have to go out the field and pull the connections of this box and come back into town to see if I can find the right copper line this time (the last was plastic) to fix it, I do not want to run the engine without this working.

Well we did not get a lot done yesterday, but we have finished putting the ladders down the hole and anchoring them to the wall, there are some extra pipes for putting down the shaft on the ground ready just in case I need them, also you can see that the blower is finally in position and the hopper is well and truly over the side of the hill, ready for action.

I was wrong yesterday the oil leak was not from the Watchdog, it was from the second oil gauge that I have on there, I have got the new copper oil line etc and will fix this Morning, then I will be ready for action. This shows you how I am set up ready for mining, this is how we set every day for the days work all I have to do is turn the winch around and set it over the center of the hole, you will see all of this later on as we get more involved, right now I have to put a cover over the 3rd hole for safety, so I don't forget its there and fall down it, would not be the first time this has happened here in Coober Pedy.

This is the side on photo, this shows you how every thing is set up and ready for action before we start to drill & blast to start opening up down below, the dirt will be dumped on top of that little bush under the hopper, now I am starting to get a little excited as we never know what is to expect underground. Today I will be down the hole and removing the dirt from the shaft with the pipes down and should be drilling a shot today to start opening up, I will try for 4 foot holes if I can the first time, this will make it easier for me to start off the opening up, if not they will be 16 inch deep holes and we use half size bombs that are 6 inches in length.

G/Day Folks Here we are again, today's is a good one! I received a question on the ladders down the hole, as I was having to put nails in the shaft wall to keep the ladders from hanging to far off the wall, because of the shaft not being straight but on a slight angle, the suggestion was to move the ladders around the hole to a more suitable position so they would hang straight down and against the shaft. I know it is hard for people to understand everything that we do or why we or I do it, but there is always a reason, (we hope) in this case I am opening up and do not have a lot of choice on just where I can put the ladders due to the fact, (1) I am on a slight hill so it matters where I park the truck as in keeping it level, (2) the 2 holes so close together and I have a hand winch right next to me for the blower pipes, (3) the hole is not just on a slight angle it is also like a corkscrew and (4) I am very close the edge of this hill. Again I must first apologize, as I did not do what I said I would do yesterday (again) when I got onto the field and set up on the hole, the first thing was to put the new oil line onto the oil gauge and fire up the engine to see if there was any leaks, then I remembered that the oil gauge is shot anyway as it shows the wrong pressure, so I need new one, but as long as there is no oil leak, this does not stop me from working the blower, so off to work we go. Anyway on to today's update, as now we are getting interesting. I get everything ready and hanging from the winch hook, I forgot to take a pic of this for you, but will on Monday, so anyway I have the small hand pick, the electric jackpick and of course the hand light, for without this I would not be able to see Jack Schitt. ( heard of him before somewhere)

So I start up the blower and off we go to do some serious work and when I get down the bottom I then realize that I have no control cords down there for putting on the revs and for dumping the hopper should I need to, so it back upstairs and set things up, this takes about 1/2 hour as I am working deeper that I have before. I didn't quite know just where the ropes were going to end up down the shaft, you can see these in photo below, anyway one was right and one was short, so I had to go back up and add a length of rope and put it back down the hole, then it was to long but this is alright as I tie it or them to a nail on the wall, lucky for me that I carry bits and pieces with me.

I did pull the dirt but again as I am not used to working at this depth, I am not set up for it, in as much I do not have the pipes to reach the bottom of the hole, I thought I just might get away with what I had but I was wrong, I have missed out by about 3 or 4 feet, you see when we get set up for and start to put a drive in, this is what we call it when we start tunneling at the bottom of the pipes we use a large 90% elbow, of course I cannot use this until I have open up a small ballroom around the shafts down the bottom, this at least one shot in (4ft) all the way around, will take about 4 weeks to do this I think. By not being able to use this 90% elbow, I have to get the telescope to reach the floor so I can get it to suck the dirt out and the bottom of it in the telescope is a 7ft length of metal pipe that fits inside the 8 1/4 inch plastic pipe and we lower it or raise it as required as mentioned in a earlier Issue. I use 2 more of these as I am mining underground, one pipe is 7 foot long with a 6 foot telescope inside and the smaller one is a 4 foot pipe with a 3 foot telescope inside, you will see these later on. Not a 5 minute job, not for this old fart anyway. So today which is Sunday, I have to make up another 10ft pipe putting the flanges on so I can use the clamps it, the pipes that I use underground are set up different as I don't use clamps down there. When I get on the claim tomorrow I will remove the top pipe which is 5ft long and put this 10ft pipe on so I hope this will let me reach the bottom, when I start to tunnel for the first few shots I put a very small elbow on the bottom, just so the pipe is not facing the ground this makes it easier to pull the dirt. So today I did NOT finish removing the dirt with my hand and drill and fire, schitt, I was looking forward to making a bit of noise today, oh well always tomorrow.

So that was that was the Bad News, now for the Good News I have some very interesting photo's today for you, the little camera did not do to bad, the new one when it comes will do a better job if I should decide to take underground, we will see! So here we go, when I first got down and started to remove the dirt, as it was just a above the level I could not see anything until I had done a bit of cleaning, then I got a good look at what I had cut in the level, so this is what I first saw, in this photo below of course I have just cleaned it up a bit with the pick and this was taken from just above, don't forget I am sitting on the seat here, that brown line is the ironstone level, a defined level as we call it and you can and I have, found opal where there is no level at all, just a change of ground, that is 2 types of ground, one above and a different one below, from this level I still have 5 feet of dirt to remove, this is a very cramped position to work in.

In this photo you can see that the level is dropping to the right and again you can see the bottom of the telescope here on the left, this level from what you can in front of you to the wall in the shaft behind me has dropped about 1 foot and what you can see in the pic it drops about 2 inches or there about across the shaft, also you should be able to see the material in the level.

In this photo you can see that there is material in the level, material is what we call potch, opal with no color, this is taken just to the right side of the shaft and you get a better idea of the drop in the level, also for all of you that have never seen just how opal is in its natural environment or wonder what it looks like, I know that some people have some funny ideas how opal is found, well this is how it is for real.

This photo is a close up of the material as we see it first hand ourselves for the first time, it is at this point that we hope this will lead to a nice pocket of good opal as this is good thick trace, the marks you see in the wall in the bottom photo are from my electric jackpick.

This photo is after I have jack picked a little from under the level, exposing the material a bit more so it looks better here and I have taken a better photo, I need a bit more practice as the electric 100w light makes a big difference as to where it is but I am still learning with the camera as this is the first time.

This is the result of some of it, if I had looked at it properly underground I would have seen that some of it was trying to make color, if this makes a pocket of opal it will make green/blue, blue/green or green/orange or it could make me a liar and turn and just make gray of any kind or it may just keep throwing potch and potch and color. But I have to honest, I really feel excited about this, with a diving level and in-between slides (faults) this could be big for me, plus I have a couple more slides in front of the blower, one of which I will be driving through in the next few weeks to have a look. This is a shot of the two shafts looking up from underground, showing you how they came together down below and what I have to work in.

This is just showing you the action of the hopper as it lets go of the dirt, getting good at taking some action pics. Hope you have enjoyed this issue and look forward to the next one, hopefully I will have some more good photos to show you in the next issue and maybe some of Good Looking Opal and lots of it, I am still hoping that this will be a good year for us in mining, so stay with us over the next few months and find out what goes on in our part of the world as far as Opal Mining goes. Stay Tuned for the next Issue, who knows what I will have to report. Until the next issue......... and wish me lots of LUCK. Cya Later, Stuart Bird. To return back to the Archived Page for more Updates click, Here!

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