November 15, 2003 Opal Mining Update - No 25 No Opal this Issue!

Site Map Home Page Archived Pages Contact Guest Book

Went in and pulled the shot or what there was of the shot as the roof did not come down again, some thick gypsum has come in again, I did not see this when drilling, why you might ask, well it was not present, well this thick anyway on the face it has started a few inches in and as I did not see it I drilled the holes in the wrong place, now I will have to drill another 3 holes and blast it again to bring it down.

This is the second shot into this new drive, but now you can see it taking shape, except for the roof still being there, right across the level at the back there is trace and the best trace in in the left side, so there will be poor potch in the next shot, but any color??

Here is a pic of the trace (potch) in the level, this level is falling away from here so later on, much later on I will be driving this way and as the level is falling towards the bottom of the photo slowly, this is the way that the opal may be.

Now you can see how close we are to the old drive and the pillar which will get a bit thicker after every shot.

Drilled a couple of holes in the roof, loaded and fired them, got the roof down clean at last, there was some big gypsum up there and unlucky for me the first bomb was right on top of it, so it stopped the bomb from blowing it down and in doing so also stopped the second doing its job. As I was going down the shaft I looked down as I always do to check that the light is on and this time is was out, so I thought that I had blown a globe, as we do from time to time, so I went back up and got the spare hand light out of the box and went back down, when I got to the bottom and found the end of the lead, I unplugged the old one and plugged in the new hand light, then I could see what had happened. The globe had not blown, that part of the wall where I had knocked in the nail for the light to hang on had come down, quite a bit of it, thankfully it had decided to come down when I was not there, if it had fallen off and I was near it or next to it I would have been seriously injured as 2 of the pieces were thick Alanite and as you can see the light is a write off, need to but a new one now for around $32.00, plus a new line switch, dont know the cost of that as yet, still this was under water for a few weeks.

Anyway back to work, drilled the next shot holes, 13 of them and made the bombs, loaded and went up top to start the blower, as I have to go up top again when I fire this one, I will be able to stay under for the next few, I will be up in the old drive next door, with the fingers in the ears. The shot went well and here you can see the thick gypsum in the roof, there was a bit more to the left but fell down when the shot went off, you can also see that I have drilled the roof a bit lower this time, try to keep away from that gypsum if I can.

Now you can see the pillar starting to take shape, the drive is going on a slight angle to the left away from the drive next door, there is a shaft 97 feet away for the pipes in this direction, but I will not be able to drive this far in this damp ground.

After the shot had gone off, I went back down when most of the fumes had been pulled by the blower, some of the roof had fallen down again, it was some of the alanite over the old drive as you can see below, also where the arrows are this is one of the pieces that crushed the hand light and I rolled over to here and it can stay there, forever.

The alanite fell for here, we call this a slippery back, that is the alanite is smooth where it has joined together and can separate without warning, lucky here I was up top and that also it was not thick, like the piece that fell with and onto the hand light, a piece like that falling on you will kill you, some miners here in years got by have been killed and hurt by these slippery backs, they are very hard to pick.

Went and got a drum of diesel went to work and then I had to fill the blower with diesel so I could pull dirt, had a lot of blockages today, I have days like that, for some reason the dirt does not want to slide up the pipes and then it clears itself and I can pull dirt with no problem for the next hour, so it took me longer today to do the job. The ground has changed again and has gone hard, though I had another shot before this came in, but I have misjudged it, the ground below the arrows did not come out I have jackpicked some of it but it will be quicker and easier on the arm if I drill the next shot different, I will drill all of the top and middle holes 3 foot deep and the bottom ones 4 foot deep to bring the face back to square, (I hope) but will have to allow for the hard ground and put a extra bomb in and have two openers, not one, this will or should solve the problem.

You can also see that the level is still dropping to the left, this is a very good sign for me as there is some trace in the level from the last two shots, I would love to go left right now but I am committed to doing the job that I have set my mind to and that is to drive as far as I can in this direction and then work out where to drill the next shaft, this is called a prospect drive as I am looking for opal but am reading the ground to see what it tells me and if there are any signs that may lead me to opal. I have 4 or 5 faults to cross, but I will be only crossing 3 on this drive and that is if I get a shaft drilled on the way to the other shaft which is 97 feet away, so will have to play it by ear as I do not want to move the blower until I have worked out where I am right now, below you can see a vertical in the wall, this is in the face of the drive, marked in the photo above, but there is no material in here as yet, but there is potch (material) in places in the level, so this vertical might change further in, for the better I hope.

This is the top left hole of the shot where the bomb went off, you see that I just drilled under the level as I did not know that it would drop like it did, notice how it looks like the bomb when it went off has made it bulge upwards, but this is not the case, this is natural I was just lucky not to drill into to it, but had there been opal there instead of potch I would have blown it up and would have ended up with what we call sugar, cause that's what it looks like when you see it.

This is a close up of the photo above, the level where you see the potch is falling away very sharply as the arrow shows you, it is possible that there could be a small pocket in there, but as I have only seen potch the chance of color is not good, but with opal you never know, so I will put a bomb under this in the next shot to have a look, after I have drilled a couple of test holes to see how far the level drops, then drill (1) one foot under.

Drilled and fired the new shot, pulled the fumes and cleaned up, then relaxed and checked the level, nothing worth taking photos of, when I jackpicked under the level in the above photo there was a bit of potch and I found another small vertical in the level just above it also potch, so right now I am in the wrong spot or so I think, do not expect to find any opal for the next couple of shots, but in this game you never know. Had a day off, have been tired all of this week so this is a good excuse to have the day off and Patricia is also having the day off and as she is flying out to Perth in Western Australia tomorrow to go and see the Grand Children (5) she will be gone for two weeks, so I have to wipe my own nose for that time, this I dont mind its washing the dishes I dont like, the cooking I do anyway and of course washing the clothes, lucky I dont have to iron anything. Day off, this is normally my day during the week, but have been know to work it if I have missed a couple of days during the week, my wife Patricia has gone to Perth in Western Australia to see our Grandchildren (5) for a couple of weeks, she flew out of here this afternoon at 1.40pm and will arrive in Perth at 8.20 pm there time, as they are 2 and a half hours behind us, We have just last week gone on to daylight saving, so we went forward one hour and West Australia does not have it at all, never have, anyway the 2 weeks will go quickly I am sure, with working on doing all of the other chores I will not have time to miss her, no I do not think that is right I will miss her, we have been married for 40 years now, so who am I going to argue with now she has gone, going to be to quite around here.

The exhaust manifold on the truck is playing up again, noticed it going again on Friday, so I am taking it in to the mechanic after I get back from the field tomorrow, this is getting to be a pain in the butt. Started to pull the shot this morning and everything went well for about the first hour then I had nothing but problems with blockages, blockages, blockages, I was up and down on the winch like a fiddles elbow unblocking the pipes up top, the elbows are not the problem just the pipes, they are getting that thin layer of mud inside them again and slowing down the dirt going up and this causes problems. In the end I just packed up and came up top, undid the top elbow and separated the pipes so the air flow could circulate through the pipes and dry then out so I will finish pulling the dirt tomorrow, just hope I will be able to do a shot as planned, but as I have to take the truck in again I cannot be to late or I will not get the job done. Got ready to go to work but when I started the truck it sounded very bad, so I took it down to the workshop and left it there, it seems that it has burnt part of the pipe away where the exhaust gasket sits on it and the mechanic tried to patch it up last time, but did not tell me about it and it has not lasted, I have part of a new exhaust pipe here that they took the muffler off so I have the part that might be useful to him where the gasket sits on, he will have to cut it off and get his brother to weld it on for him and hopefully it will be fixed, but will have to wait and see.

The truck was fixed by late yesterday afternoon, but have not had a chance to give it a run as it was raining when I got up this morning at 6.20am, so stayed at home as the forecast was for rain today, but it did not rain and would you believe as I am writing this it is starting to sprinkle, time now is 3.05pm. As we do not know what is happing up top when working underground and my generator is open to the weather it is best if I don't go out just in case it does rain, do not like to play around with electricity and water, some do, but I don't. Looks like it is going to be another short week, very hard to get a run going these days for one reason or another, hopefully I will get to work tomorrow. Pulled the rest of the shot today, with no problems at all after the pipes had cleared themselves of what ever had been causing the problem on Monday, the shop came well as I expected with the extra bomb in there as an opener, but by the time I have finished I reckoned that I would not have time to do the shot. As I have to do some shopping today with Pat not being here, for those of you that do not know, Thursday is our main shopping day here in Coober Pedy and we only get 2 trucks a week up here with supplies, 2 trucks comes up on Wednesday night for the Thursday shopping and another also comes up on Saturday with some supplies, we only have 2 small super markets here to cater for the population here of just over 3000.

So I drilled the shot holes for tomorrow, so I will only have to make the bombs when I go down and will not be pushed for time when checking the level, not that I hold much hope in finding any opal, but you never know, I am 22.5 feet out from the pipes and will be 26.5 after tomorrow, I will be under fault (just) after the next shot, the level is still rising and falling to the left, but I expect it to level out and start dropping after the next shot, but only for a short distance as it is not far between the next 2 faults.

I have left trace of potch in the level on the left hand side of the drive for the last 2 shots, will be checking this out much later when I do the drive to the left of the pipes and parallel with the faults as this is the way the level is falling and the best chance of finding a pocket of opal, but I have to finish this prospect drive first, as I am trying to read the ground and looking at what is happening about 24 feet out from the major slide, this is why I am cutting across the faults in front of me at the moment. Made the bombs and went to load the shot only to find that I had forgot to drill a hole in the roof, you can see it is missing in the photo above, top left, never had this happen to me before, so I had to go back up and bring the drill down and drill the hole and then take the drill back up top again, then I continued loading the shot, I am using a new product so we will see how this works out. After I had done the shot and pulled the fumes, looks like the shot went off alright except the 2 end bombs on the top row did not break into middle properly, I may have drilled a bit wide on them, but until I pull the dirt I cannot tell if it is good stuff as I really know when I see if the bottom came out alright, again there was bits of trace in the level but no opal, which I did not expect anyway, to close the fault in front of me, if things work out I may find something in about 16 feet from here (4 shots) the level is still on the rise and falling to the left, but should level out in the next shot. Pulled the shot, as you can se below, but the roof did not get blown down again, for what reason I do not know until I get it down and see what is up there, night be that I drilled a bit high as I was trying to get the roof up a bit more for more head room so this could be the problem, whatever I will have to blow it again on Monday.

This is Peter, my next door neighbor, he is about 2 claims away and has been there as long as I have been on this claim, he owns a tunnel machine and runs it with elevators, a bit hard to explain here, so I will take some photos next week to show you, up top anyway, he had been away for 2 weeks and just got back and he had been putting diesel in the machine and paid me a visit, he has never been underground and seen a drill and blast operation, he works a lot neater than me and a lot faster.

He is a new Miner and has only been mining as long as he has had this claim, so is still learning how to read the ground etc, he was saying to me that he is disillusioned by this mining he thought that he would have found more opal than he has in the period of time he has been on the claim, he also said that if he was running a blower and using explosives like me he would have quit some time ago as he would not have been able to afford it, his wife is a school teacher in Adelaide, where he has just come back from. Why am I telling all of this you ask, easy, everybody thinks this game is easy and that all opal miners find plenty of opal and are rich and when we try to sell it, to many opal buyers try to get it for nothing from us, crying poverty and as most of them are middle men or resellers I don't know what they have to cry about, come here and try mining for it, then you will learn how to cry, from the back pocket, if fact this town right now is going backwards, we are losing miners because of the expense involved and the government departments that are imposing penalties on the unemployed and pensioners like me, trying to make it harder for us to go mining and so there is less opal being found right now. Anyway that is enough of my complaining, I will be back to work on Monday as usual looking for that beautiful gem stone that we have come to love and cherish so much, but this is still the only job I know of that WE PAY to go to work and come home with nothing, day after day, we must be mad. Day off, have to do the washing, which is something that I don't do at all when Pat is here, its things like this that make a person miss his Wife more than anything, the cooking I do anyway, but even that is messed up as I don't feel like cooking for one to much, but I am not loosing any weight as yet, See Yer All next week.

Went to go to work and when I got into the truck to start it, Nothing, the battery was dead and I mean DEAD, took it off and cleaned the terminals and put the battery charger on which is a trickle charge, so it is slow, but as of tonight at 6 pm it is still dead, no life at all, so I think it may have a collapsed cell, will wait until morning to check again, if it no good will have to run down and buy a new one, which hurts as this one is just 14 months old and should have lasted another 2 years at least. I was outside taking some photos of jewelry for the web site and these plans flew over, I have been told they were up here with the Royal Flying Doctor, a bit unusual seeing things like this up here and a nice surprise, the sky and weather was perfect for them.

I could swear that it says US Army under the wings, don't know where they come from but will find out a bit later on, someone will know.

Had two batteries chargers on the battery overnight and this morning it had a full charge, after I had put it back in the truck I found out what the problem had been, when the mechanic had been working on the  truck the last time is must have lent over the steering wheel to turn on the ignition switch, on the top of the steering column is a switch for the hazard lights, which I cannot see unless I lean over the steering wheel, he has done this before, as all of the repairs to the engine compartment are done from the passenger side and he leans over and in doing so accidentally turned the switch on, so the battery is alright and all is well, but cost me a day off. Went to work and as I was near my claim I thought I would show you Peters Rig, you know the guy that I took under to have a look, My next door neighbor, about 2 claims away roughly as I said last week he runs a tunnel machine and is learning, this is his first claim, he was lucky that he came up here with some money, enough to buy this rig, the last owner of this was a Greek Guy, who with his son in law found 2.5 million on 15 mile field about 2 1/2 years ago, he has sold up and moved to Melbourne now and Peter bought it, just over a year ago, he has been on this claim as long as I have been on mine, to the week.

As you can see above the elevators can put up big dumps, they dwarf mine in size, below is his set up for the winch he uses which runs off the diesel generator on the truck just behind the winch in the background, this whole unit is very cheap to run per week.

I tried to wait until the elevators were running as he is underground and was working when I drove up, but he has stopped and must be checking some material in the level right now.

This is from the other side, this tunnel machine is different from most in town, as this and about 4 more are designed to work in wet or damp ground the kind that I am working in right now, Peter is working one level up from me, I am on the 76 foot level and he is working on the 64 foot level, this is where I will be going when I have finished working out the level I an on, up one level, will explain some time later how this is done.

This is Peters neighbor and friend Ashley, he is the guy who put Peter onto this rig to buy it and then he came up from Adelaide to start Mining, Ashley also runs a tunnel machine and also has a noodling machine as well, if fact he has some big equipment, so what he misses underground he gets in through the noodling machine.

Sorry about the photo but the sun is in this direction, this is Ashley Noodling Plant setup, this boy moves a lot of dirt and he finds opal, that is the only way to find opal here is move plenty of dirt, pity I am too slow, but I get there.

This is me, looks like a long way, away, but is only about 300 meters in distance, as I said about 2 claims as our claims are 50 x 100 meters in size.

This is the last shot I did on Friday and here I am showing you my tamp stick which is marked off in 6 inches at one end, when I drilled the shot holes they were only 9 or 10 inches under the level, here you can see that the level is about 20 inches above the middle shot hole or where it was anyway, gives you some idea how the level is still rising to the fault in front of me, on the right hand side of the tamp stick is a little trace in the level.

This material is right next to the stick on the right hand side of it, only potch.

And this is a bit of color, but only a bit that's why we call it trace, but who knows what is in front or to the side of me.

You can see here that level is still on the rise, but it should start to level out in the next shot or two, it will then go down or stay level for a short distance as it is not very far between this fault in front of me and the next one, about 30 feet I think and the fault in front of me is roughly 2 foot, so should start to see something happing in the level in the next shot.

This is the shot today looks like it came out perfect (about time) should have put the light a bit closer up the drive, there was quite a bit of colored trace (nice green mostly) on the left hand side of the shot for a change, the trace has been on the left for the last 4 shots so this makes a change and being color also makes a change, I also found a couple of pieces of skin shell (see below) and quite a few mud shells below the level.

As we do not know what is happing up top when working underground and my generator is open to the weather it is best if I don't go out just in case it does rain, do not like to play around with electricity and water, some do, but I don't. This is the shell and its green as you can see, this type of color I need in seam opal, that is the opal is found in the level, but this type and thickness can be cut, will make doublets and nice ones, but small for the most part.

Now we are getting into it, this gives you a real good look at the opal and color, this is what we call Green Blue (the predominate color is green) for those of you that do not know, much sort after for inlay, already might have a buyer for this opal if I have enough of it, a friend of mine who does the inlay rings I have in the web site, just loves this type of opal, in fact she drools over it.

Now I have finished checking the level, just light the 2 bombs in the roof and go home, will pull the shot tomorrow after checking the roof is safe. Tried to pull the shot, but I had nothing but trouble today with blockages, most of them were up top as well, I got sick of them, I said before I have days like this and this one was a real beauty, so as I had lost a lot of time and diesel for nothing I decided to quit and come home, but then I remembered some potch in the left side wall so I decided to have a pick for a while and I started to get into a pocket of potch, so I will finish it off tomorrow if I have time. The weather this week has started to warm up a bit, the last 4 days have been over the 100F and it is not good to run the equipment in that heat, so I try to know off by 12 or 12.30 if possible, wont b long before I will have to start a bit earlier in the mornings now, will see how we get on tomorrow pulling the dirt and also now its getting hotter up top it is getting more humid underground due to the damp ground that I am working in, you might think it would be cool under there. But when the blower is running as it sucks the dirt up the pipe (when working properly) it is also changing the air below by pulling down hot air down the shafts from above, so this is why it is humid, hot air and damp ground. Finished pulling the shot without to much trouble, just a couple of small blockages but in the bottom elbow, so all went well an the shot came out perfect, I have brought the bag home that I throw all of the potch and bits if colored trace in that I find in these shots, not worth bring home until I get enough to tumble, anyway I had a bit green/blue trace that I wanted to show in in its natural form in the ironstone, below underneath the arrows is the potch that I was picking out of the level in the side wall, never made any color in this lot, but did make a few big pieces, still worth nothing.

This is where I am digging in the wall, here I am just setting up the camera for the next shot, you can see how I hang the light on the wall, but sometimes I hold it my hand.

Well here I am, have fun but not making any money (as yet) I did not find any color here at all, but there is still trace in the wall, I will chase this a later date by putting a drive in, I have found opal not far from this spot and back towards the camera.

This is the piece of green blue I was talking about above, you can see that it is in the ironstone itself, normally seam opal will be on top or below the ironstone, I will have trouble getting this out of here as this ironstone is very hard, so I may try soaking it in water for a while to see if that will soften it up a little, but I doubt it.

Just a slightly different angle to look at it from, this is very good green/blue opal, if I could just find a pocket of this but seam opal, that is on the level, like that potch above, I have already show this bit of trace and a few small pieces to my friend who does the inlay, she like it and hope that I find some more as she will buy it, maybe, I will show you the rest when I have tumbled it, but I may wait for a couple of more shots to see if I can find a bit more to go with it and make it worth my time in cleaning it all.

Drilled and fired a shot, pulled the fumes and cleaned up, same old story then check the level, which has level out and in the right hand side has already started to drop and made some colored trace in there, again it was green/blue, but not a lot of it again, no sooner it was there it was gone again, so finished checking and came home at 12.45. Talk about bad luck, as I was coming home and I was about 9 kilometers out of town, all of a sudden there was a loud bang and the truck jumped a bit, I wondered what the hell I had hit as I saw nothing on the road, so I stopped as quick as I could and when I opened the door, I heard the exhaust on the truck again and found that the muffler had fallen off, this was what the bank was, as the muffler pipe hit the road it dug in and turned over this is what caused the truck to jump. I have only had the truck in for the manifold repairs if you remember a week last Tuesday, he put a new front pipe on and he had welded it to the muffler pipe where he had cut it off, only he did not weld it good enough it would seem, so I went straight back to him, muffler still dragging on the ground, which he removed and I now have to take it once again and get it fixed. The muffler is bit worse for the experience, but I said that if he could beat it out a bit and weld a bit of new pipe on as the small piece of pipe that was part of the muffler got ripped off, well hanging off, but needs a new bit, so we will see how it turns out, he said it will not look the best, but as long as it does the job I will be happy, otherwise he will have to find another out of his pocket, so lets hope this will do the job. It will be another day off again, to get it fixed so I have to have the day off on Tuesday anyway, so I will take it in then to get done, hopefully it will last a bit longer this time. 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!

Top

Index Page | Site Map | Opals | Black Opals | Gold Pendants | Inlay Rings | About Our Opals | Earrings Opal Rough | Triplets | Doublets | Inlaid Opal Pieces | Wire Wrapped Opals | Valuing Opals | Opal Glossary