Opal Mining Newsletter November-30, 2002 on Mining Underground for Opals in Coober Pedy

Bit late this morning, but I am having the day off, it is very overcast outside at the moment, was like this yesterday, look like rain might have come, but cleared up mid-morning, but I don't think so today, so I will not be taking any photo's outside today.

Right as for yesterday, I finished cleaning down the bottom but had to go back up top to remove that 10ft pipe I had put on as it was in my way down the bottom for drilling the holes, so I put the 5ft pipe back on so it was above my head and I could also pull the fumes while I lit the bombs and after they had gone off.

I drilled 11 holes, but only 16 inches deep with the small opening up auger, there was not enough room for me to put the 4 foot auger in after as I was hoping to do.

I made up 11 small bombs and went down and loaded them into the holes and when I had got them all ready I got myself ready to come back up and then lit the bombs, just as well the blower was on the shaft and was running so I could pull the fumes, as I made a very serious error in judgment.

Being as I have so long off mining and not usually working at this depth with the winch, I forgot to time the fuses and I used the length that I used before and it was not enough, the winch takes a lot longer to come up from 80 feet than 68 feet and I had noticed this as going up and down the shaft is something that we don't pay attention to in time, except when you are opening up like this and the bombs are just under you.

Well anyway after I had lit the bombs and I was already just about sitting on the seat as it was under my ass, ready for action I started up and about half way up about 40 feet up or down which ever way you look at it the first bomb went off and of course took me by surprise, then the other 10 went off in order.

Well being in a new shaft and this lot being the first bombs to go off the shaft dislodges of any loose dirt or small rocks in the top of the shaft, so the first bomb blew my hard hat off with the concussion from the explosion, which is still down there buried in the dirt somewhere and then all this loose dirt and some rocks came down, I got a couple of small cuts on top of my head and a couple on my left arm, but I keep my finger on the up button all the time so I kept coming up, so all is well that ends well, so they say and I am still here to tell you about it, who said I was an expert.

After the fumes had been cleared with the blower and I had checked to see if I had all my ears and fingers were there to work with I went back down to have a look at my days work.

The blast had knocked down some of the material that was in the level and I may not be able to have look for it as there is not a lot of room yet to work in while I am trying to pull the dirt from this small shot, there will be another 3 or 4 before I can get some decent elbow room down there, never did like opening up, pain in the ass and head I can tell you, especially this time.

Anyway I set up to have a good look and to take down the remaining level that was left, so I put the light on the wall hanging from a nail as we always do and believe it or not a tiny rock fell down and hit the globe dead center and bang out she went, so back upstairs for the spare, did not realize that I had a frosted globe for a spare as they are not very good for me to look at or for opal, I use them as extra lights on the wall when I am tunneling, but that's what I had, so back down we went.

I could see alright but this light is not very good for my little camera, so I apologize for the pic's as the are on the yellow side, but eh we will have some better ones to come in the near future.

Photos 1 to 5 are of the opal in the wall, not good I know but the best we can do for today.

There is some opal in here along with potch, you can see that some of it has color, I was very lucky to get some with the first shot and after nearly blowing myself up, just shows you never can tell your luck in this town, but I need to find a lot more than this to get rich.

This is how it looks when we take it from the tumbler, ready for my cutting room where it is sorted and to get ready for classing if there is enough or I might wait until the next shot or so to see if I can get more to go with this, which is what I am going to do this time, then I will get it classed ready for sale, you can see some pieces in there with some color.

Then we have a Photo of the tumbler, this is what we put the opal and whatever came with it in for the cleaning, sometimes the cleaning has to be finished by hand when it comes out of here and could be put back in for another couple of hours, to finish the cleaning of the opal prior to classing it.

G/Day Folks,

Bit late to day with this latest update, but we are having a lot of problems with our power supply here for the last couple of weeks and it seems to be getting worse as the temperature gets hotter, but it does not matter what time of day it is, the power just goes off, could be 3 pm or 4 pm and we have had it go off a 8 pm, so I have to shut down the computer quite often.

Yesterday I was tumbling what I had brought home and the power went off and then came back on within 10 minutes, then went off again for a few minutes then came back on again, then there was a power surge, I can tell as I have a safety UPS power box on the computer and it beeps when there is a power surge.

Of course I never thought about the tumbler getting into trouble so when I thought about going out to turn it off and empty it, as soon as I walked out of the front door I smelt a very bad burning and I knew than the electric motor had burned out, so now I have to replace that at more cost.

Anyway I went to work yesterday and drilled the holes, they are only 16 inches deep, so I don't move a lot of dirt as yet, but I put the shots in on the left, which is to the right of the last shot and under the trace that was in the wall, there was still some color in the top left hand corner.

I lit all of the 13 bombs, 11 in the shot I was doing now and 2 in the roof of the last shot, which I always blow down to give me more head room, after they had all gone off and the fumes had been pulled I went back down to check, and sure enough the trace was still straight across the face, some had fallen down which is pretty common, so I had to dig thought the dirt to find what I could.

I did get a bit more opal and potch and color (beginners opal) and a lot of potch, In total the lot weight in when cleaned 74 ounces of which there was 10 1/2 ounces of color.

I did not take any pics yesterday, but I will show you how long the fuses are soon, they are 7 feet long, but I will show you what they look like on the ground, I will wait until I get a bit more room to work in underground before I take any more pic's there, unless I see any color or the like that might be worth a photo or 2 for you all to look at.

I did not go to work today as it is my wife's day off today, but she is working tomorrow so I will go in and remove the dirt from yesterday, if I feel up to it I will drill the holes and make the bombs and fire them, the next shot will be at the bottom of the shaft I go down in and right next to the one I let off yesterday, this will make the face some 5 feet wide after this shot, then I may put a bigger shot in under the trace and see what is happening in there.

This trace is at this point running and falling down towards the back of a slide and also towards the front of another slide (fault) on my right, so if you look at this photo above, if you look at the shafts, the one with the hand winch on is the one with the trace in it and at this stage it is running towards the hill you can see at the back.

Well here we are again, not much excitement to pass on to you today but will just bring you up to date on what is happing here with me, only because I am a day older than last time and who knows when it might be my last issue.

We did manage a bit of rain about 7.30 am, not enough as I can still hear the weeds crying must be still thirsty, so I decided not to go out just in case it does rain hard and I will be underground pulling dirt, I would not know unless it came right down the shaft, don't like water and electric and as my Generator is out in the open not worth taking the risk, worse than bombs and no brains if you know what I mean.

The opal has been there for over 100 million years so what is another few days.

I cannot even take some pic's as I have some opal that has been classed and is ready to put in the web site, it is not the new stuff that I have found, as I said I will not touch that until the pocket or the trace that I am on now has run out, unless it keeps running and producing then I will do it in small parcels as I would not be able to sell a very large parcel of this quality on the net, I should not think, of course this might be wishful thinking, but that is what we opal miners do best is Dream.

I found an old electric motor that I kept from a concrete mixer that I threw away some 4 years ago, but I am having trouble getting the pulley off it, as the grub screws (2) are well and truly frozen, they must have been on there for who knows how many years, I have soaked them overnight with CRC, but I will probably have to go down to a workshop of a friend of mine and use the oxy to put some heat into it to let go, apart from that it works well.

We had another power failure last night, right in the middle of the movie, it lasted just over 25 minutes, this is getting worse here and I do not know what the problem is as they tell us nothing here, just send out the bills.

The Joys of living in the outback out here, when we far away from the cities as we are here they tend to treat us like Mushrooms, feed us bullshit and keep us in the dark, of well that's life in Coober Pedy and we choose to live here, so why complain might make a Million next week.

Well I did not go out to work on Monday as the forecast was for storms and it was very dark looking outside, but it did not rain one little bit so a day was wasted, of well that's life.

I went Mining yesterday, which was Tuesday here and cleaned out the dirt from the from the shot before, had a bit of a pick in the wall, I always do, bit of a habit doing that always having a scratch with the pick, even though you know that you are going to drill and fire under that bit of level for a better look, but that is all part of the excitement of looking for opal.

As I promised here is a pic of the small bombs that I am using for the opening up, I know that I showed it in a earlier issue but I thought I would show it to you all again.

If you look at the opening up pic, the shaft on the right behind the truck is where I put the shots this time, from the middle of the shaft on the right to about 3 feet to the left along the back of the shafts, where you can see those black pipes, that is the edge of the hill right there, also you will notice that I have put a cover over the 3rd shaft, this is not enough to stop someone probably fall in if they stand on it but they should not be there in the first place, this is for me as it brings it to my attention every time I am near it which is when I get out of the truck and when I start and stop the generator.

The last shot was what I call a nothing shot, it was just to open up more room and the level is still diving to the right of the shafts, so as I am not expecting to find any opal here, but the job has to be done, I call it a nothing shot.

Today we have had some rain this morning and it is looking very black outside again so I will not be going to work again, but the next shot will be towards the 3rd shaft that is the one that has the tin cover over it, I got a bit of color out of the wall there yesterday, so there may be something in there for me, it tried to make a little vertical, so who knows what is in a bit further.

The last Pic is how everything looks now I am set up and mining so to speak, but this will change as soon as I have opened up enough to have plenty of room so I can start driving and looking for opal in earnest, then I will move the blower onto the 3rd shaft as it is a better straighter shaft for the blower pipes, but this will be in a few weeks time from now.

As I am still opening up, I know it seems to take forever, but the holes that I have been drilling as I said are only 16 inches deep, against 4 feet when I get going, (big difference) but as of today I should just about finished with the short holes and small bombs.

Tomorrow I will with luck be connecting with the 3rd shaft, the one with the tin on top, be nice to get another air shaft open and let some more air flow in underground, as it is very humid down there due to the wet ground and I do sweat a lot, I hope that the trace is still running in the 3rd shaft, but we will see tomorrow, if the weather is permitting, as it is still very overcast outside.

The power failures are getting worse here, I am still not sure what the exact problem is, but we have had 2 power failures this afternoon and it was playing up at 12:45am this morning so I had to get up and switch off the fridge, answering machine and the UPS box on the computer here as they were driving us nuts with going off and on and then they were having power surges, bad news.

Wont be long before I start looking for the opal in earnest, but I have to finish making room down there so I can start leaving some items down, instead of keep bringing things up all the time.

Tomorrow I will be drilling 3 foot holes as I recon that I am about 4 1/2 feet from the shaft, I need about 18 inches at the back of the shot to make sure that the front of the shot comes out and also blows the back out into the other shaft, I may take a photo to show you what it looks like down there when I have blasted if I can.

G/Day Folks, today's is a good one

The connecting to the 3rd shaft went well and I had no trouble breaking through, although I did not have the amount of dirt in front of me that I thought I had, it was about 3 feet so aging I only used the 16inch auger to drill the holes.

What turned out to be a nothing shot, this is what I call them when I have to do a shot just to blow off a corner or in this case to connect to another shaft and not looking for opal or expect to find any, but opal will always make us miners a liar and sure enough this shot turned out to alright, because as I checked the shafts wall as we do to see if there is any trace in the level, there was.

I you look at the pic of the shaft closely you will see scratch marks in the wall at the top from the pick, as the bucket is drilling its way through the sandstone it covers up anything that might be in the level or wall, so we have to run the point of the pick down the wall and if there is anything there, we will hear when it strikes material, then we can chip away with the pick and investigate further.

Here you can see the other shaft after the blast, this is before I go and stand inside to have a look and scratch at the level and to my surprise I found some material in the wall just above the level, the drill had just nicked it, just shows you how hard it is to find opal and how luck plays a big part of what we do..

I will have to knock down the roof with the jackpick until I have connected with the other 2 shafts where I am working from and I have a little bit of trace in the wall on the left of this as well so I have to check this out as well, this could take me a couple of hours to do so I might be able to pull some dirt after.

But I might not have time to drill and fire as I have a blow the corner off to the right of the shaft I have just connected to, again a nothing shot, but who knows.
More later on this, might have to start wearing the sun glasses underground shortly as I start to find more color, by the way I took some more photos, but they did not come out good, I found out the reason why the camera thinks there is enough light from the globe I am using so the flash does not go off but the pic comes out yellow and you cannot see what I want you to see properly, next time I know what to do so we will be right.

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!