June 30, 2003 Opal Mining Update - No 18 Still looking, but might have some repairs next week!

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Once again it has not been a good week for me in as much as having a straight week of work with no interruptions of any kind. Went to work on Monday and started pulling the dirt from the last shot and within 20 minutes I had pulled a muscle in my back, this I think is because it was cold outside and I had stopped to have a talk to the miner (Pete) nearly next door to me, he operates a tunnel machine underground with elevators up top instead of a blower like me, I will make a story up about this later as it is complete different to what I do. Anyway I think that because I was stood in the cold wind for about 20 minutes and by the time I got set up and went underground, the body had not warmed up enough or the truth just might be that I am or my body is just getting old and I am not as fit as I used to be or something like that, anyway I carried on as I thought that it would work itself out and it did not, but I continued until I had finished the job, then went home. I had Tuesday and Wednesday off to give the muscle and me a rest (any excuse to have a day off)I went back on Thursday and drilled and fired a shot including the roof from the last shot, I had trouble drilling the holes in the roof to the depth that I wanted in the last shot and came up 6 inches short on 2 of the 3 holes, now I can see why, I knew that I was drilling Gypsum but we cannot tell how big or thick it is until we blow it down. Thursday I went and drilled the shot ready for blasting after I had cleaned up the face a bit for it, but the back was still a bit sore so I came home and will blast it tomorrow, no rush at this time and do not want to aggravate the back more, better to go home than have more time off with a bad back again. Friday we loaded the shot and fired it, here is a photo of the shot and of the gypsum (8 inches thick) that came down in it, I have to break this sort of hard stuff up with the electric jackpick to make it small and easier to go up the pipes above to the hopper, sometimes I let one that is a bit big go up or 2 big pieces together and then they get caught together and I have blockage. (again)

Saturday, went to work to pull the shot, this is a photo of the shot dump with me standing on it at the top looking back at the elbow, I must say that when the shot has gone off and I get back down the hole after pulling the fumes out, the first thing I have to do is clean up all of the dirt and rocks that have been thrown out from the first 3 bombs that go off, which at the moment is thrown right past the elbow and is where I stand on the floor when I go down, then I will pull or remove in your language some of the shot at the front for about 15 minutes, then I can pull some of the shot down and make it level on top so I can sit on it when I check the level as the shot is quite high and there is no room for me at this time until I do this.

This photo shows you the gypsum still left in the roof, this stuff is very strong and heavy, if a piece of this was to fall down and I was under it, although it would only fall about 2 feet it could quite easily break a neck or shoulder bone or cause some serious injury, so I have to make sure that the roof is solid at this point and safe to work under, anything that is loose I have to take down with the hand pick, this at the moment is solid and will not come down by hand, but I may blow it down just to be safe when I blow the roof.

I have mentioned before about Telescopes, well I finally have got around to using them, here you can now see how they come into play and make the job a lot easier in pulling dirt now we are starting to drive, as I have cleaned the dirt from in front of the elbow out to about 2 feet I then put on a small 2 foot pipe and clean some more until I can get this 3 foot telescope on, below we show you how it works.

As I pull the dirt in front of me I just pull out the inside of the telescope and move forward until I have reached as far as I can go then I will pull the dirt from about 18 inches out from this pipe and then change over to the 6 foot telescope and start again.

This is how you see it from my angle as I straggle the pipe and pull dirt into it.

Here is the 6 foot Telescope, but in actual fact the black pipe is 7 foot and the telescope inside is 6 foot in length and this make pulling the dirt a lot easier as we now use the hand pick to remove a lot of this now, the reason being as the shot face is about 4 foot high and I as work from the center with the hand pick it causes a slide effect in the middle and the dirt just slide down into the pipe and then I will alternate between the shovel and pick until it has all gone, you need to use the hand pick as there is always some big pieces in there that need to be broken up with it.

Again this is a Birds eye View, get it Birds Eye as in Stuart Bird, ha, you guys haven't woken up yet, well you can see the drive taking form not sue how far I will go in this direction, will measure sometime next week up top to get some idea, but I think that I would like to go at least 15 to 20 feet behind the slide, so this drive might get to be some 40 to 45 feet long or about 10 shots more. I would like to explain here that the normal prospect drive that is done here with explosives is what we call a doorway drive and is made up of normally 9 bombs, which is 4 lots of 2 and one in the roof as the bombs are about 18 to 21 inches apart when blown it is about the same width as a normal doorway, this is done so the miner can dive some distance quickly looking for trace and when it is found he will then go wider looking for opal, I on the other hand do not mind putting a larger shot in, this one had 15 bombs in it and the face at the level is about 8 foot wide so I get to see a lot more of the level this way. But of course it takes me longer to pull the dirt as in reality I have done 2 and 1/2 shots in width, so if I can do this in 2 days I am happy with that, normally I would pull the shot one day and drill and fire and clean up the next, check the level and load the roof with the bombs, light them and go home, pull the dirt the next day etc, unless there is something else that has crept into the days work that was not planned.

This is part of a shin shell that I found right at the end of the shot in the wall, it was where I would not have expected it to be, but there is a saying here that opal will always make a liar out of you, we learn how to mine and when we think that we know where to look and find it, opal turns up in a place that you did not expect it to be and this was one of them, this is not worth anything and came apart when I got home and showed Patricia, but where is was found is of some concern to me as it could make a pocket there.

Here you can see here the level and how some Alinite as we call it has come in on this what I think is a squibby level (false level) there has been tiny bits of trace here and there, but nothing for me to get excited about yet, what I think is the main level is very weak at this point, but will know a bit more when I blow the roof down and have a look at it. As I get closer to the slide things are getting a bit messed up and irregular so at this point it is harder to work out which is which, this is one of the reasons that I have to cut this slide to have a look at the level has it comes off it, there is also another squibby level come as I told you last week this is still running in the wall and the skin shell you saw above came from here and is just about in line with the middle shot holes, maybe a little above so if it should make opal down here I have a good chance to blow it up, but unless I see it or know that it is there I have no other choice but to carry on as normal.

This as you have seen before is where the belts are that drive the fan inside the fan housing, as I was greasing the drive shaft in-between the motor and the big pulley I noticed that the belts are passed their used by date, all of them are badly cracked and one has a very bad split in it and so will have to be replaced, all 5 of them.

This is not a very good photo, seems a bit out of focus so I will take another next week to show you better, it will take me somewhere around 2 hours to get these belts off and then I have to come back into town and see if anyone has 5 of the same in stock as there are many different size belts used here on blowers and the like, so there may not be 5 of the same size available and to make sure they are all the same size I will have to get the same brand, its no good to get 1 from here and 2 from there sort of thing. it is critical that they be all exact in the Dia so there will be no belt slippage when running, we need all 5 to be driving the pulley to get the fan up to speed for the suction to be effective.

As I was getting to the end of pulling the dirt I was having problems getting some blockages with the damp dirt in big pieces and then I could not get much vacuum at all, thinking I had another blockage up top somewhere after I had checked the elbow down the bottom I decided that I this was enough for today and I would unblock the top elbow as I was about to go home. So this is when I pulled the dirt that was left away from the wall to have a look at this squibby level that I could see part of and I noticed a little bit of material in it, on inspection it was part of a skin shell. When I had finished and got back up top, after I had put the gear away, I checked the top elbow and there was no blockage so I thought that it was in the pies somewhere, that is when I had a look at the hopper and then you could see what had happened.. Some wet dirt had got caught in the hopper lid when it closed and stopped the lid from shutting tight and so the vacuum was broken, this dirt will have dried tomorrow and should fall off when the lid closes upon start-up, if not I will have to knock it off somehow. I think that I will blow the roof tomorrow and then pull the rest of the dirt, seeing as I still can run the blower at time, then I will remove the belts and see if I can get new ones straight away or if I will have to order them and then they will be up here for Thursday I hope. Then if there is no belts available straight away at least I can go back and drill and fire a shot then come home again letting the fumes get out by themselves and everything will be alright for the next day for me to go back and check the level etc. I may also due a oil and filter change on the blower engine and re-grease the 4 big bearings that are on the end of the drive belts, this can only be done when the belts are off and have they have not been done for some 6 years or there about.

Monday was a day for just pulling the old shot and blowing down the roof from the last shot, this I did but the Gypsum as it turned out was so thick that it did not come down properly and so that part of the roof that was left would have to be removed with 3 more bombs tomorrow. Drilling the 3 holes in the roof again turned out to be somewhat a bit of trouble as the one on the right was drilled all the way into the gypsum and took me some ten minutes to get it to the depth of 3 foot 6 inches, I need to get the tips re-sharpened on this auger, as this type of ground really lets you know when they are blunt. Below is the photo from last week showing you the gypsum in the roof at that time and the position of the shot holes that I have drilled to blow it down.

This is a large lump of the gypsum that came down from the roof, I had trouble moving this piece so I could take a photo of it, I guess that it would have weight well over 50 kgs (110 lbs) had this fallen on me from the roof from a height of 2 to 3 feet on my head it would have broke my neck or anything else that it would have landed on, there is still some left in the roof as you will see later on down the page, but at this time it is not dangerous.

Here is the same piece stood on it end, the pick leaning against it is 21 inches in length and as I said last week it is about 8 inches thick, this is a brown colored gypsum, normally it is white, this had also been laid down in three lots and was as I call it compressed through the immense pressure that it was under as it was being grown, yes it grows, as this is a crystal and it normally forms in long thin strands but there all joined together.

Here I am breaking up the piece of gypsum, this is a very good photo under the circumstances but as I dont have the camera telescope with me as yet, I had to balance the camera on a bag which is on a rock and see if the camera was pointing at me, then I set the self timer and took the photo, I did not realize until I got home that the drill and the corner was in the way, but at least you can see how I use the electric jackpick.

This is the brown gypsum after I had broken it up, took me about 5 minutes as I have said before this is major piece of equipment for me as to try and break this up with the hand pick would take a lot longer and take far to much physical energy out of me to work for much longer pulling this dirt.

Here you can see that the alanite has got a lot thicker, especially on the right, the level and this I think is the No1 squibby level, No2 squibby level is below where I found the part of the skin shell, I found a bit more potch here this afternoon as I had a bit of a pick in to see if it was going to make anything close the wall before I drill and fire it tomorrow, but no sooner had it come it was gone again and was only thin anyway. The level/s again are getting more erratic here as we get closer to the slide, I measured the distance today and it is about 22 or 23 feet to the slide (on the top) for me to cut it or in your language pass through it and I recon that I should do this in the next couple of shots. This is why the ground is so mixed up or to active as I call it, because we are to close to the slide, as the level gets further away from this it will settle down (we hope) but whether it will produce large pockets of opal and if I can find them is another thing, this level will produce some opal, as you have seen I have found color already here but nothing to retire on as yet, so I should find more pockets here and there, but at what cost! This Alanite below can produce some very nice opal if this comes in on top of the ironstone level later on and further away from the slide, I know a couple of miners here who look for ground that carries this material, trouble with this stuff is that it is very abrasive and wears the fan out a lot quicker, this Alanite is like a highly compressed talc powder.

Because the gypsum was so thick and strong it did not blow all of the roof and the gypsum down, it left what we call bull-holes up there which are about 18 inches deep, so I have drilled shot holes underneath as this part of the roof is to thick, the reason being is the level is still rising, so if I blow the part of the roof down first I will then be able to put bombs in the old holes and hopefully blow it down as the only way I could drill this high is to stand on the dump after the shot has been done.

This is after I have blown the roof down from above, it also brought some of the gypsum down, but the main part is still up there, I will blow it down after I have done the shot tomorrow and cleaned up a bit.

Below is where I found some trace in the roof, it was running under some thin gypsum and the material was itself also thin, but as I jackpicked in it got thicker, between 1/4 and 3/8 of an inch but was a jelly like potch and not nice to look at until I was nearly finished, then it started to show a bit of color in it, green, not full but a hint that it might make something as the level it is on is like a small vertical and is falling away from the photo on a downward angle. But of course it takes me longer to pull the dirt as in reality I have done 2 and 1/2 shots in width, so if I can do this in 2 days I am happy with that, normally I would pull the shot one day and drill and fire and clean up the next, check the level and load the roof with the bombs, light them and go home, pull the dirt the next day etc, unless there is something else that has crept into the days work that was not planned.

This sort of shows you how I would chase some trace like this in and there have been times when I have pulled a small pocket of opal out like this, but on this occasion it was only potch with a hint on green at the back, this pocket is about 16 inches deep, the deeper I want to go, the wider I have to make it and right now as this is not opal it was not worth it as I will put a shot under here later on and chase it in that way to have a look.

This is a close up o the pocket, you can see the gypsum very plainly and the material running under it, the potch when on gypsum like this sticks to it like glue and had it been opal I would have to taken the opal off it with a box knife carefully, even then it breaks some of the opal.

This is the last shot I have done and there are 12 bombs in this shot, here you can see the firing order that I light them in, in the next shot I will be only putting 10 in, that is 3 across the top as I dont need to go so wide now, I dont expect to find anything here.

I had off as on Friday it started to rain before I went to work, not heavy but enough for me to stay at home, as I dont like having the generator out in the rain and when you are underground you do not know what is happing up top and as water and electricity do not mix I dont take the chance if it might rain. So I got the fellow in that classes my opal for me, (when I have some) as I had some opal that I have had for quite some time and wanted to get it reclassed as I had forgot what the price was, this will not happen again as we now use the computer to keep records and there was some people from the US that wanted to have a look at what I had, but they never turned up to have a look Thursday afternoon or on Friday. Saturday, I went out to work to pull the shot that I did on Wednesday and after I had cleaned up a bit and checked to see if there was anything in the level which there was not, I put the 3 shots in the big bull holes in the roof, lit them and went home, below is the result of all those shots. As you can see I have blown down another big piece of gypsum, this is bigger in size that the last one above and is a bit thicker, this measures 9 inches thick in the wall.

This is the gypsum that is in the right side wall, thankfully I will not have to worry about this anymore as I wont be going anywhere near this lot.

This is the roof in front of me from the last shot in photo No 7, as you can see it came down very clean, but the gypsum is climbing very high now and I will not try to get above it all as it is to high now. As I am very close to the slide now and if there is a level (ironstone) it will not be this high, this gypsum has climbed about 3 feet from the corner where you can see me jackpicking the large piece of gypsum in Photo No 4, I will be only drilling 2 holes here where I have marked this photo.

This is how high the dirt gets after the shot, it piles up quite high, there will not be as much as this in the next shots that I do in this direction unless something comes in the level and that will be on the other side of the slide. I had intended to again drill the roof and blow it down then pull the dirt before I went home so I would have a clean face to drill and fire a shot on Monday, but as I left the drill underground which I don't normally do right now, and I left it lying against the damp wall and so it got moisture in around the trigger and the motor so I was not game to use it and I brought it up and went home, it should dry out for Monday, then we will be back in action again, hope to get a bit more footage this week, going to slow at the moment. You may have noticed that I did not replace the belts as I said I was going to do, but as the blower is running all right and I do not seem to be getting any belt slippage right now, I decided to leave it and get on with the job at hand, as soon as I develop a problem with the vacuum I will have to replace them.

Went and pulled the rest of the last shot and drilled the roof, but I did put 3 bombs in instead of the 2 that I was going to do, after looking at the roof again I decide that it would be better if I keep it the same width as the drive for safety reasons. So I blew it down and pulled all of that and then went home, I had started a bit late this morning as I went over to George the driller for a chat before going out to the field and when I came home I mixed up two bags on Nitro and rolled some paper tubes for the bombs, never ending the little things we have to do to go mining. This is how the shot looks now we have cut it down in size, we could go even narrower than this by making the shot 2 bombs wide all the way down and put one in the roof, this would look like a doorway when fired and the drive is then very narrow.

We had some rain on Tuesday night and this was the sunset before it started to rain, so I thought it was worth a photo as it is only outsidethe back door.

Pulled the shot and blew down the roof and pulled that, left a little bit of dirt at the end of the drive as for the time being I have finished here, I am 25 feet out from the shaft and I have not cut the slide as I expected. So I went back up top and got the wires out again and as I can tell where the slides start and finish, I checked for how far the slide went down in the ground as I had not done this before for this one and to my surprise if finishes around 68 to 70 foot down and I am working on the 74 foot level, so the end of the slide is above me. So I went down below and took the wires with me as they work underground as well and sure enough there was no reaction in any direction, so it would seem that all of the slides around me only go down to this level, this does not mean that there will be no opal, as you have already seen I have found some here and do expect to find some more. But the slide has had some effect on this level has I have shown you in the photos, the level has risen about 3 feet or more in about 20 feet, but I still want to go past where I have left off in this drive as I need to see if the level continues past the slide above and if the level continues at all, but right now I need to make some more room underground so that I can stay down there when I let the bombs off. Then I can use shorter fuses and make the cost just a little less expensive of a bomb, now I am going to start in the direction you can see here, this was the drive that I started just before I was flooded out and had pulled some opal out of that shot, but the trace or material has gone from that squibby level, but there is some small white potch in 3 places under the gypsum on the main level, so I will be starting this drive again tomorrow.

At the moment I am only 3'-6" in and after the next shot I will be 4 foot further, now starts the looking or prospecting as we call it, so for those of you that think when we find a small pocket of opal we are as you call it "On Opal" we are not, I have only found a pocket of opal and very thankful for it, being "On Opal" means that it is in the wall when we go home and you hope that it is still there when you go back the next day and have not been night-shifted and of course will continue to pull some out shot after shot for a while, but who knows I may be on opal, there could be some in the next shot.

Had the day, I almost went to work as I started to go on the field, but as I had gone about half way I looked at the fuel gauge and it was nearly on empty so I turned around and went back home to get some money and then went and filled the tank and got some for the generator as well as I always do, not like me to forget to check the fuel gauge, I normally only get 5 trips out to 11 mile on a tank of gas, not worth running out of fuel then have to find someone to tow me in, so I took advantage of this and got the spare auger tips re-sharpened as well as the man is right next door to where I get the fuel. It started to rain just after 1 pm today, not to heavy but steady rain and it did get a bit heaver at times, was still raining after we went to bed at 10.45, so I will be having tomorrow off as well, as it gets a bit slippery on the field where I am and having duel small wheels on the back of the truck which are not good in wet round.  Stayed at home, but I have done some homework on the cost of making the bombs now, which I have not done for the past 4 years, when I last bought some explosives, the cost of a bomb then with a 3 foot fuse was $1.68, now it is $2.84, the bombs that I am using now have a 7 foot fuse and cost $4.12 so you can see why I want to make room underground so I can stay down after I have lit the bombs. The difference in cost between the bombs with the different length fuses is $1.28, tomorrow I will be letting off 12 in the shot and 3 in the roof, but they will be with 6 foot fuses as it does not take that long to light them and get up the shaft so I can be a foot shorter, so the cost of the bombe tomorrow will be $60.84 and if I was able to stay down after they have been lit the cost would be $42.60 a difference of $18.24. On top of this cost I have the Generator and Truck Fuel for the day which is somewhere around $10.00 and if I run the Blower this uses between 9 and 11 liters of diesel an hour @ $.94 cents a liter, right now as I am still near the shafts and it takes a lot longer to clean up and pull the dirt after a shot and so the expenses are up, this is why I cannot do more that 3 shots a week, perhaps even 2 if I am not finding or selling anything. The reason I am telling you all this is (1) I have just worked it all out again and thought I would share the info with you all and (2) to let you see that this can be a very expensive game, the ground is very hungry here and can send you broke very quick if you don't have a wife like my Patricia who backs me by working for the expense money, so I do try hard for her sake but still need a lot of luck to find the opal. If I had or could find the money I would buy a tunnel machine, which is a hell of a lot cheaper to run than using explosives, this is one of the reasons that there is a decline in opal miners here and not a lot of opal coming out of the ground, is the cost of explosives, for the cost of the shot tomorrow that I pointed out to you above, I will only gain 4 feet in length for the same cost a average tunnel machine would drive about 80 feet, gave or take as most of them cost about a dollar a foot, except when they break down.

The tunnel machines that use the elevators instead of a blower are even cheaper to run, but I will do a story on one of them later on with photos and I will try to get underground with a guy I know who runs one of them as he is working next to me on 11 mile. As you can see we did get a bit of rain on the opal fields on Thursday, this is the track that I use to get to my claim and from here I am about 1/2 mile (800 meters) from it.

Did the shot with 12 bombs and 3 in the roof, unfortunately I only found some potch and not a lot of that ether, but there is a nice ironstone level and little bits of trace in a couple of places, so who knows what will prevail in the next few shots, was a long day for me as I did not go to work until 9am as it looked like rain at 8am, but by 8.45am it had cleared up and so I went to work. The ground was very wet and it took me well over an hour to drill the 15 holes, although the 3 in the roof did not take long at all as that part is very dry and drills with ease, but the bottom 2 holes were almost pure mud and were the hardest to drill, hope that I am now past were the water was sitting the rest of this drive will be a bit easier to drill. As I was starting a drive in a different direction and was near the shaft, the pipes and elbow, I had to move all of my stuff to the end of the drive I have just finished and take off the elbow and 5 foot pipe above it and make sure that the telescope was almost level with the roof so it would not get damaged with a flying rock/s and I could still pull the fumes with it. All being well I will be back at work on Monday and will continue this drive, there is a nice ironstone level in the wall so who knows what it may or may not produce, hopefully I will do at least 2 more shots this next week, bit of messing around with having to keep removing and replacing the elbow and 5 foot pipe and cleaning up as the dirt gets blown everywhere in the ballroom when I am close like this, also I may try to pull a little bit more of that wet ground next to the 3rd shaft if I can, if not I will wait until I do a special shot. There is a guy passing through here on holidays that is also one of the subscribers to this newsletter, he is from Adelaide and is going to stay here for a few days, he asked me if I would not mind taking him underground with me, so I have saved a spot to put a shot in to have a look at, as it may produce some color and this would make his trip up here worth while, below is the spot, I showed you this last week.

When I blow this shot, I will make it blow sideways instead of out, this will put most of the dirt over on the wet dirt and then I will get rid of both, there will be no wet dirt on the ground left after this shot, only the wall be wet where I will want to drill for the first shot after that it should be alright, this guy may be here next week, if so this shot will be on, anyway you will know next update, hope to have some good photos for you. Keep Tuned as I will have another shot or 2 to talk about next week and who knows what we will have found.................. Again I 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. 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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