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May 31, 2003
Opal Mining Update - No 16 My friend George has rolled his Drill. |
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Here we are again Subscribers,
Another week has gone by and we are now in the MUD. Well last week I told you that I thought I would have the rest of the water out by the end of this week, but as we have come to know now that all of our best worked out plans in advance do not always workout and again I have been proved wrong. On Monday morning my friend did not turn up to go on the field with me, he thought that I was going to see George about getting a shaft drilled, but as I told him on Tuesday morning when he came that it doe's not take a whole day to ask a question, so any way we got ready to go out to the field to do some work, but as I got into the truck and started the engine, it started then stopped. Yes, again the bad luck had struck again, I am starting to think that there is a Gremlin living on my Claim and that it does not want me to find any opal there, it turned out that the fuel pump had packed it in, so I had the mechanic order me a new one and that was up on Wednesday but did not get replaced until Thursday afternoon. It turned out that George late Tuesday afternoon was going to do a job here in town and his offsider stopped him to tell him something, but it just happened that George was on a hill at the time and it would seem the air bleed out of the line as he was standing on the pedal on this hill, he did not know that he had a crack in the airline underneath, well the tuck started going backwards and I think that George did a very good job in getting the truck to stop without having a major accident and not killing anyone including himself. He managed to turn the truck so it run off the road and did not hit any houses that were around him, but in doing so the truck turned over, George it turns out was not injured but was shaken up by this, he is nearly 70 years old after all, below is the first photo of this, the first 9 photo's were taken by the local newspaper here, I heard that they had taken some of the accident asked them if I could have them, but they are not the best, they were almost black in color so I had to lighten them the best I could so you could see what had happened here.  |
Here George is taking the Kelly off so they can move it out of the
way while lifting the truck back on its wheels, the Kelly is what
connects to the bucket and is in 4 pieces, all fit inside each other and
the 3 in the middle are square so they drive the bucket when turned by the
Ring-gear in the Turntable.
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Here you can see the bottom of the Kelly, this is the part that the bucket connects to when drilling.
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You can just see the big crane that has come to help lift the truck back on its wheels.
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Here they are connecting the crane to the ring-gear at the back of the truck for lifting, the bloke that you can see in the bottom left corner of the photo is my friend Alex who is helping me on my claim.
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Here the Kelly is being lifted out of the way, so they can get on with the job of lifting.
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This is the big forklift that is also being used to get the truck on its wheels.
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This is on Wednesday morning, after Alex came over for work, but as the
truck was not fixed yet so he went home after having a coffee, but he told
me about this accident and so I went around to see George to see how he
was and how the drill looked in the daylight, lucky there was not a lot of damage and it most certainly could have been a lot worse than this.
You can see the engine cover here is sort of bent out of shape, this engine is the same as I have on my Blower, a Perkins 6-354 6 cylinder, this engine drives the ring gear for drilling, the radiator is no good and I could see that the water pump is also going to be no good and the exhaust manifold is broken as for the rest, will have to wait for the cover to come off so we can see better.  |
The side mirror got pushed in and as the cab is made from Fiberglass it has broke the top of the door and at the bottom of the bracket it has pushed into the door as well, the oil is from the truck engine.
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Just a close up of the damage to the engine cover and of the exhaust manifold.
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A close up and side on view of the truck and the damage, very lucky it was not worse.
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I went back after lunch to see how things were going and they were well on
the way, now George has to order the parts needed to fix it, should be ready again for next week.
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The water pump as I thought is no good, but this is easily fixed, just takes money.
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This is the exhaust manifold, can be fixed quite easy, just have to be good at cast iron welding like me, but George knows how to do all this as well, he has had plenty of practice over the years.
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I did not go out on the field on Saturday morning as Alex was over helping
George out on the drill, so this week again has been a bit of a wipe out,
only one day at work, Friday, but the water is getting lower and in the
last 8 buckets or so I was starting to shovel about half a bucket of mud
as well as fill it with water, so we are now getting down to the business
end of things.
If my friend Alex turns up tomorrow to help me and I can get on with the job the whole of this next week I should be just about finished with this water and mud I hope, I am even now thinking that I may be able to start mining again from this place, I will see what happens when I have all of the water and most of the mud out of there, as I have already got 3 holes drilled in the roof ready for blasting down, so I will have some dry stuff to stand on and drill some more short holes to blow some more of the dry roof down if I want, we will see. |
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This last week has again been a bad week.
Well last week again I told you that I thought I would have the rest of the water and mud out by the end of this week, but again things have not turned out as planed. My offsider (Alex) only came for Monday and Tuesday so I have done very little again, I would have been finished by the end of the week (Saturday) if I could have got the whole week in, I figure that I have 3 more days work left down there. I have recovered all of my equipment now the last being the 500w spotlight and the 100 foot electric lead with double adapters, it has all been washed and cleaned and is now ready to go back under when it is required, except for the spotlight which has a screw rusted in, so I may buy a new one when I am ready to use one again. Below is the spotlight as I brought it up from underground.  |
This is the Mud I am taking out right now, there is a bit less than this
as I took this on Tuesday morning before I started work, the last shot I
did is to the right and there is a lot more piled up to the left, so I am
making a path between them to the wall, so that when I am finished and the
floor is dry enough for me to drill some holes for a shot I will have a
clean wall to start on, this mud here is about 18 inches deep some 4.5 feet wide.
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This is the pile of dirt or mud and some large pieces to my left, the
water right now is up to my ankles, I am only taking a bit of water out as
I am mixing the dirt with it to make it sloppy so it is easier for the
person up top to empty the bucket.
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This is a shot of the same pile of dirt as above only I am showing you the shovel that I am using and you can see some white stuff of top of the pile, this is some of the roof that I have picked down to see just how dry it is and is very dry indeed, no moisture at all.
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This is all of the electric lead that I managed to get out from the mud and you can see also the 90% elbow that I use when pulling dirt after a shot, it is all cleaned out and ready for use, along with everything else.
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I thought I would take a photo of me standing in this muddy water just to show you.
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This is what a bucket of mud looks like ready for being sent upstairs, what a job!
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And this is how it looks just about to be pulled up on the winch and dumped.
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Alex started a mud slide after he emptied the bucket, as it was piling up he decided to do this, he uses another shovel I have on the truck it is just a normal long handled shovel with a pointed nose, I though this was a good way of getting rid of it.
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A side shot of the mud slide, this also keep him busy and warm as it gets a little cold just standing in the wind and stops the flies bothering him as they do when standing still.
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But my friend Alex is like most of the single miners here is somewhat unreliable as you may now realize, so I have now approached another friend of mine a German Gentleman and I hope that he will be more unreliable that the last one, but at least I have a phone number that I can ring if he forgets, oh yes, he said that he would come if he remembered as he is also single and that this was not part of his normal routine, so if he is not here by 8.20am I can at least ring him and remind him, I could not do that with the last guy.
So I will be back at it again tomorrow morning (I hope) and I must have Tuesday off, so we will see if I can at last finish this week, this new friend (Hans) is also a miner and at least he does go out and do a bit of mining now and again this is why I did not ask him before, not like the other guy who at the moment does nothing, but is still unreliable. 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. 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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