Opal Mining Newsletter January-31-03 on Mining Underground for Opals in Coober Pedy

G/Day Folks, Today is not so good for us!

Just in case you are wondering what has happened to me in the last couple of days, no I have not struck it rich, as yet.

In fact I have done my back in, I know that I have not told you that I have a bad back, but I have, it traps a nerve now and again in the lower back area and if I aggravate it when it goes it can take up to a week to get over it, I did this on Friday and I thought when I got up this morning that it would have been somewhat better as I had a good nights sleep.

But I was wrong, if fact it is worse and has given me hell all day today, had some pills and 3 scotch and cokes so far, I fell better for it, but the back still is very sore, so it looks like I will be off for a few more days yet, I cannot even take some photo's to replace some things in the web site.

I took one photo underground on Friday with the new camera, I took 3 actually but one was out focus, that was when I run out of battery power, should have know then something was wrong, because I have to use the flash I should have put new batteries [charged up] in, but I never give it a thought, oh well did not matter as it was only a test for the camera anyway.

I saw a crack in the roof above where I had done the shot, so I thought I would take it down with the jackpick, shot-2 also shows you the level in the wall, I think this is what we call a squibie level or false level, I think that the real level is about 18 inches higher than this, but I will find out in the near future.

It may have been taking this down that put some pressure on my back I don't know, I did pull some dirt and was going well, I had put the large elbow down and this was making life a lot easer for me to work with, I was going to take a photo for you, but next time.

In this photo you can see that the holes in the wall where the explosives were put are not clean and flush with the wall, this I have to clean up with some small bombs and also blow the roof down, then clean the dirt out ready for the next shot.

Will get back with some more news when I have recovered some.

G/Day Folks,

Thought it about time to let you know what is happing on The back as taken a lot longer than I expected, probably because I am getting older or I must have aggravated it more than I thought, which leads to a longer healing time.

The fact that I have not much to do exercise wise that is with this injury, I have been working on the computer on and off, as the back gave a lot of pain I would go and lie down for a while to straighten it out, but I am not one to lie in bed, I cannot even lie in bed in the morning as when I wake up about 7am I have to get up, so lying down with a bad back really give me you know what.

But I have been busy working, when I can sit here at the computer and have spent quite some hours at it, what I have done is to incorporate a Newsletter Program in the web site to make it easier to send this Mining Update to you all, it was getting to much putting all of the email address in the emails.

Also for me to put all of the photos in as well was taking to much time and it was not in a very good form for you read and understand what I was trying to say or explain about each photo, as you had to read the text then look at the photos down the bottom and try to relate to them what I had said.

So I have converted all of the old updates into web pages, which I might add took me a bit longer than I thought it would, but I am very pleased with the outcome, this took a little bit of setting up, but as my back was the problem my brain was working quite well.

There is the main web page/s that is called Archived Pages, right now there are two of these as there are 28 back issue's, that what we call them now Issue No 29 is this one, there are 25 Issues to a page so this one will be on Page 2 and as you will see at the bottom of this page there is a link back to the main Archived Page, this is very easy to follow. (I hope)

The thing is that you will have to join, sign-up, subscribe or whatever you want to call it to the Newsletter, the program puts you in its memory and when I send out this update it will send it to all who have subscribed to it, it will not send this page, but I will put the link to the page in the newsletter update that I send to you, click on that link and here you will be, easy for me and you as this is better to read I am sure.

You also be able to access all of the back issues, some you may want to read again as they are set up different from the first one you got and will look and read different, some of the photos have been made a bit lighter so you can see what they are about better.

I would like all of you to just fill in your info on the page, there is nothing there that will upset you and you can unsubscribe at any time as you have control over your own account just in case you change your email address, the only thing is that you must put a password in (twice) should you ever forget this password, just put your email address in and the program will send it to you.

From now on I will only be sending one update per week and this will be Sunday our time to save on time and space and I will still explain it day by day with any photos that have been taken as usual, in detail as I have always done.

The back is almost better and I feel that I could go back underground on Monday, but as I am so close to going on holidays I do not want to risk hurting it again, not that this has happened in the past but who knows this time, so I will stay at home and hopefully replace some items in the web site, by the way we are going on holidays on the 1st of next month and will be away for 6 weeks.

But that will not be the last you hear from me as I have bought a Laptop Computer and will be able to still take some photos of things that I think might interest you like the new 2nd hand boat we are going to buy in Queensland and of some of the fish that we might catch etc, as I still have to run the web site while I am away, I take my stock with me and the rest can be done with emails.

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!