October 31, 2003 Opal Mining Update - No 24 Not a good Month this one, but a tiny bit of Color

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Got the spare wheel off from under the truck, only took about 1 minute, changed the front wheel over so I could drive it down and get the new tires put on, this cold I have is somewhat better, but not good enough to go back to work on the field as yet, the weather was overcast today and it has tried to rain  about 3 times and as I am writing this is starting to rain again, but this time it is raining with the wind behind it. Rained most of the night and was still raining this morning, but this cold or what I thought was a cold is worse this morning and I now think that I have the flu, the chest is pretty bad, so I have rang the doctor and made a appointment for this afternoon at 3.15 as that is the earliest I can get in and that is if he is running on time which is unlikely. The Doc said that I have the flu and has given me some pills to take, there is a lot of this flu going around town right now, and I have a friend that is trying to get here to help me finish a shed that I have been trying to get finished for about 2 years, but every time he has been able to find some spare time to come over the weather has turned out bad and yesterday was another one of those days. Still bad with the flu, the chest is the worst as any great exertion brings on a coughing fit, but Dave my friend turned up this morning just after 9 am so I had to go outside and get some fresh air, we did not do a lot as he had to sort things out and find out where to start from where I had left off all those months ago, but we did get a bit done, put on 4 sheets and hung the door, so the rest of the side will get finished in the next session which should be tomorrow, if the weather is right.

As you can see the weather looks like it is going to rain at any time, but somehow it managed to stay away and it is our race weekend here, its a weekend of horse racing that is held every year (except last year) and people come from all over the outback and Adelaide to visit so the town is very busy in Accommodation, keeps my wife busy where she works as a house maid.

Still crook and Dave rang up to say that he will not be over to work on the shed today as he has had to take in visitors for his work mate for this race weekend, so he reckons that they both will be over next Tuesday to work on it, will have to wait and see how that works out, all of the plans made in advance never have worked out so far, so the way I am improving I might go to work tomorrow and see how I go pulling the shot. Went to work today, took the camera as usual but forgot to put the card in, boy what I could do if I had a brain, the flu is still with me and although I am somewhat better the chest is taking its time to clear up, but will not stop me from going to work. I did pull the last shot and the back of the shot did not come out and the bloody roof did not come down again, this is twice in a row and is from a new bag of Ammonium Nitrate and a new brand that I have not used before, as I have just finished off the old stuff that I have had for about 4 years, this one would seem to me to be no good, unless I put more shots in and closer together, which will make the short more expensive which is not on. Went down to our Opal Miners Enterprise, which is for the miners and bought a bag from them (another brand) and have already mixed it, so if I do a shot tomorrow I will know straight away if its any better and there is another business bringing in some new product from Russia, its overdue and will be cheaper, but as for the quality will not know until I try a bag. Did not get chance to go out today as it was raining this morning, bit disappointed after having more that a week off but there will be plenty of time in the near future to go mining and hopefully find some more color, if the weather is right I will be out tomorrow, then the first thing I will have to do is drill a couple of holes, make a the bombs and get the roof down, then pull the dirt after that I can then start on the days work and drill and fire the next shot, so who knows what will be in there, got a Crystal Ball?

Stayed at home again with the flu, chest still not right as yet, but getting better, have my friends coming round in the morning to help me finish off the shed, then I have another one to get finished when they can fit me again than I will be happy as it as taken me 5 years to get this far, told you that opal miners are slow. At last, help has turned up to help me finish the shed, well I thought they were going to help me in fact they kicked me out of the way and got on with it, here they are putting the roof on, not much of a slope on it as you can see, all I have to do now is try and seal it the best I can to keep some of the dust out as it was made for a back yard in the City that has Grass, something that is sadly lacking up here.

Here it is finished except for me to seal it on the inside against dust, only took 5 years to get to this point, I bought them in 98 and I put the pads down and the frames up by myself in 2000, now I have one more to finish to the left of this one.

This is the other one I have to finish soon, this was supposed to be a cutting room and would have a AC fitted which I have put away and have electricity supplied to it, when finished it was to be fitted out inside with a wooden frame, then insulation and a wall covering etc, but I don't think it will go that far now.

Finally got back to work, first thing I have to do is get the roof down that did not come down in the last shot as seen below, I have shown you where I drilled the 2 shot holes and although the roof is cracked it did not come down, now I have to drill another 3 holes and fire it again, pull the dirt, then we will be ready for doing another shot.

Here is the result after I have got the roof down, you can see now that the alanite has gone altogether and that the level is dropping to the left, this is because the main slide or fault is to my right and is facing me on a angle that runs from the top right hand corner of the photo to the bottom left, but the bottom of this fault is about 20 feet to my right as you are looking at this photo and a level always rises to a slide or fault. As you can see here the ironstone level is rising to the right or to the slide, this is where it is possible for opal to form in the level a bit further to the left, which I will pick up in the next drive, I will continue this drive for another 3 shots (12 feet) then I will probably finish the first drive, the one that had the pipes in it and then start a new one right next to this one but leave about a 5 foot pillar in between the two.

You can see the elbow that I have put on the end of the pipe so I can change the direction of the drive, there are 2 pipes on (20 feet) and the elbow, so I turned the drive 25 feet out from the down pipes and I am in 8 foot (2 shots) and as I said will probably go another 3 shots or 12 feet, depends on what we see in the level at the end if there is material I will continue, if not I will finish, but this drive will go for at least another 50 to 60 feet, but may have to have a shaft drilled, so right now I have to work out around where I am before I will move the blower onto another shaft.

Here is the new shot and you can see that I have followed the level with the shot holes being on a angle and not in a straight line, I have even put an extra 3 bombs in the shot as this Nitro is not that good, you can see that there is 2 rows of 3 bombs, where normally I have only one row, so we hope this will help get the shot out this time.

Was wrong again, the shot did not come out properly and has left what we call Bull Holes in the wall, on the top row these bull holes are 18 inches deep and from the second row down they are 2 feet deep or half the shot depth, which again was a waste of time as I will have to drill some more shallow holes and make up some small bombs of about 8 inches long and blow it again to clean it up to get to where I should have been in the first place, more cost and time and for nothing as there is no opal in the level, which is still on the rise.

Here you can see the what we call the opener, which is the first bomb we light, in this case I drill the hole 3 foot deep where the rest are 4 foot deep, this makes sure that the blast make a hole in the face and allows the shots on ether side to blow into this hole and then below and above do the same thing, if this shot does not come out properly then the whole shot is stuffed as was the case here, where this opener hole is or was supposed to be there is still 2 feet of dirt left to be moved at more cost to me.

Here I have tried to show you the level, which is the brown line you can just see under the dotted yellow line, you can see that the level is still rising which is a surprise to me as I thought it would or should have started to level out if not be going down slightly, but once again just shows you that we cannot forecast what is going to happen in front of us, even when we think that we know the ground or as we say reading the ground, it will still make liars out of us quite often, still a bit of a guessing game this opal mining, I am in the right area for finding some opal, but where is it exactly, that's the question.

Went into work and pulled what was there of the bad shot took about an hour, then I drilled another 11 shallow holes 18 inches on the top row and all the rest down below were drilled to 2 foot deep, made up some small bombs, loaded the holes and lit them, also lit the bombs in the roof as well. This new bag of Nitro seems to be alright, plenty of punch and concussion, but until I do a full depth shot I will not be happy, anyway I pulled the fumes and cleaned up a bit to make sure that all of the fumes had gone, then checked to see if the rest of the shot had came out, which it had, so I have pulled about half of it then came home I will pull the rest in the morning and drill the next shot, if I am not to tired then I will load and fire it. Pulled the rest of the shot (expensive shot) then as the photo below I am starting to drill the next shot, you still can see the holes where the shots were, I then loaded and fired the shot, this Nitro is alright, but the ground is very hard.

This ground is very, very hard, many years since I have had ground this hard to work in, but that can change at any time as the ground here change very quickly, from one shot to the next and if we strike soft ground at the back of the shot and the ground is hard at the front, then the shot also will not come out as the soft ground will absorb the shock waves, anyway I have very small bull holes in the wall now (seen below), but this is due to the ground being hard and no fault of the explosives, I will have to put the shots a bit closer together in the next shot, so instead of 5 across the top I will put 6 and so on. In this photo after the shot you can see where the level is and where the bombs were in the face and that the shot came out clean and left the level intact, sometimes, especially when there is material (potch or opal) in the level part of it will drop down on top of the shot as the top bombs are going off, but in this case and as the ground is hard I have to take this level down by hand with the electric jackpick and boy was it hard, as I said earlier the hardest I have come across for years, I even struggled getting it down with the jackpick and I can assure you it was hard work and the jackpick motor was running hot.

This is a bit of skin shell that I found in the level, the brown material you see here is the ironstone and this is like a rock, again this is not normally this hard and most of the ironstone that I have here in level is soft if not crumbly, there is no money in this type of stuff, in fact the very thin stuff is of no use at all, the other half of this was in the roof and came apart when it fell on the bag, some color but mostly potch, will probably only do (1) one more shot in this drive, (2) two at the most unless there is opal in the level, the dirt is getting hard to pull now as I am getting to far from the elbow, only because it is damp ground and the further you have to pull it the slower it become as it causes drag in the pipes, because damp ground builds up inside the pipes and when the inside of the pipes is not smooth, the dirt travels at a slower speed, so it time to start a new drive and later on drill a new shaft and move the blower, it quicker and cheaper that way.

Had to take a another 10 foot pipe and put it underground, already have two under there but need another to help to pull the fumes after the shot, today I will pull the last shot or what I can of it, as I said last week it is getting harder to pull the dirt now as I am some 40 feet out from the elbow and it is taking longer than normal and costing more.

Well I was right, I had trouble pulling the dirt today, I had nothing but blockages in the first hour and as I lost an hour in time I did not get all of the dirt out as expected, so I will have to finish it tomorrow and clean up the face so I can drill and fire again if I have time, which I should have if nothing else goes bad on me. Pulled the rest of the shot again the bottom of the shot did not come out, the ground is very hard now, so as there is no trace or material in the level, decided to abandon the drive and as I have cleaned it out I now can put the pipes etc up in there for safety. Will start a new drive tomorrow next to this one and in the same direction, but there will be about a 5 or 6 foot pillar between them when I get going, will have to put the telescope up in the pipe near the roof to get it out of the way of the blast so I do not damage it when the shot goes off, this shot will again fill the little ball room and will have to clean it all out again before getting to the shot, this will happen for the first 3 shots after that it will become a lot easier when the drive takes shape and we have gone in a few feet. Did not go to work today, two reasons, one was that the knee was playing up started last night and was no better this morning and my friends are supposed to be coming round to work on the shed around 11am, so will stay home to make the coffees. The boys did not turn up yesterday, must have got tied up with the job they were on, but I went to work and got ready for the new drive as you can see below I have put the pipes up in the old drive, they will stay out of the way here from the flying rocks and dust.

This is the inside of the big elbow, you can see that it is getting a lining of mud, this is also up in the telescope and the other pipes and top elbow, it gets worse than this when the dirt is wetter and as the inside of the pipes is not smooth now this breaks up the vortex of air and makes the pulling of the dirt harder and slower the further I get from this elbow in a drive.

Here you can see where I have to put the telescope to get it out of the way of the shot, to easy to damage this pipe, so I will have to do this for the next 3 shots after this one.

Again this is the old drive I have just finished and the shot I will do just as soon as I have put this camera down and drilled the holes is next to the elbow at the bottom left, is also right next to the 3rd shaft.

This is the way the drive is going and starts right next to shaft where the arrow is.

Here is the first shot of the new drive, still have alanite and gypsum above the level here which is good right now as it will clean out the pipes very quickly.

Here you can see back to the shaft that I come down and the pipes, as you can see it has spread the dirt all over the place, so for the first couple of shots in this drive I will have the same mess, takes a bit longer to pull the dirt as I have to clean up this until I get into the drive and then the dirt is contained within the drive and cleaning up is easy.

This is the old drive right next door, but the new drive goes to the left on a slight angle from the old one and after a couple more shots you will see a pillar taking place.

You can see here that the dirt has spread right across in front of the old drive, so I have to clean this out of the way to get to the pipes etc at the back, this will not happen again like this with the next shot, as the next one will start a tunnel and leave a bit of a pillar.

This is one of the big pieces that has been blown down from the roof, there is another one to the left and next to the elbow, this is what takes time, keep breaking these and a lot of smaller ones up with the jackpick.

Finally got that lot out of the way, now I have knocked off for the day and will finish the rest tomorrow and will do a shot again on Monday, there is a bit of trace in the level, no color and not very thick, but it gives me hope that there might be something within the next 4 feet, just have to keep the fingers crossed.

This is the other big piece of the roof that I have to take care of before I can start pulling the rest of the shot.

Went round to my friend George the Driller for a chat and a coffee before going to work, as I left there I noticed that the charge light was on in the truck, so I turned around and went to the Garage where the mechanic I use and asked him to run a test on the Alternator to see if that was the trouble, never know there might have been a wire come off or something simple like that. Not the case I'm afraid the Alternator has packed it in and I have to take the truck in on Monday morning to get it fixed, so that will be another day off as well, always something happing to stop us from going to work, but as they say here the more equipment you have the more problems you will have, thankfully I only have few items. So I did some catching up with work on the computer, always something to do on the web site, seeing as I am changing the format on the pages for selling and also re-taking photos of some items as I have got better at taking photos with the new camera and have to replace a lot of them in the site.

Day off due to the truck being in the mechanical workshop for repairs to the Alternator, so stay at home and work on this computer and taking new photos of some jewelry and change page format as well. Picked up the truck this afternoon, cost $85.50, problem with Alternator was old age, like me nothing lasts forever, wish I could get fixed up as easy and as cheap as the Alternator and come out working like a new one. This is the second half of the shot, as you can see there is still a pile to move, this lot took me 1.75 hours to do, including making sure the face was clean, so I had a early day.

This is how the face should look after a shot, the shot holes at the top are just indents and the face is straight, there was a bit of overhang just above the level, so I took it off with the hand pick and when it fell I saw a bit of trace above the level, see below.

This is the bit and I mean bit of trace that I saw, so I looked for the piece that fell off.

This is the piece that was on the wall, a bit more trace in this than I saw in the level.

Took this photo up top and there is a bit more color here than there is in the wall, but who knows what will be in the next four feet, I broke this piece off the big bit that came off the wall, so I would not have to bring all of the rubbish up top.

This is the other side of the piece above, just shows you that just because you can not see it does not mean that it is not there, in this case the bit of color is on the front but this lot is only potch.

When I came home I went straight around to this Russians house to tell him that the truck was fixed and that he could come out with me when he wanted, which will be Thursday Morning now, I told him I had found a bit of colored trace in the level and took him outside to show him, not that this is anything to brag about, but he is learning about opal mining, so as I was showing him and his wife the lump of dirt I broke it up and gave his wife a couple of chips of color and out popped this little stone, nice color.

Pity its only a bar across the top and so is called potch and color, but now I am looking forward to the shot tomorrow, there may be a pocket in front of me at last, I hope.

Went to work, but half way there I remembered that I had to run a errand for Pat and that it had to be done before 12 o'clock, I should have done it before I went to work at 9 o'clock then I could have stayed on the field as long as I wanted, now I had to rush back, so I decided that as I was more than half way out I would continue and go down and drill the shot than come home and do the shot tomorrow. The boys are coming around to finish the shed today for sure and I am taking this Russian (Gena) out with me to learn the game, so we got there and I drilled one hole so show him how and then made the bombs, loaded them and as I have to still come up, I went up and then sent the winch back down for him to come up and then I went down to light the shot and came straight back up again. We went back down after pulling the fumes and then started to check the level, which had some potch starting to come in about half way into checking, but again I had to leave early as Gena is at the local Tafe (Tec Collage) doing the opal cutting course and started there at 1pm so I had to make sure that we came up around 12o'clock so to get him back in time to change etc before going, will have to finish checking the level tomorrow. I spent all morning checking the level, explaining things as I went along to Gena and there was quite a bit of potch here and there above the level, pity is did not make color as there are some big pieces in the 1oz and 3/4oz size, but there is still some trace in the level so there might be some more in the next shop, have to take the truck in tomorrow for the exhaust manifold gasket to get fixed again, so will not be on the field.

Above is the last shot, I will show you how the drive is taking off when I have pulled the shot, I have now blown down the roof down with 2 bombs so will have more than this to pull when I get back downunder, I will also show you how close it is the last drive next door. Had a day off, the truck was taken in this morning for the manifold gasket to be replaced and I will pick the truck up this afternoon around 3pm, I will be ready for work in the morning. Was going to go to work today, ha, well that was the intension anyway, but I sort of forgot that we put the clocks back last night and I did but did not go to an hour earlier so when I got up this morning, I did not feel like going to work, Pat went, but again my knee was not the best his morning so that was enough for me to change my mind and the Russian that was supposed to come with me did not turn up. Not that I would have waited for him, I have a policy that when I take someone out with me if they do not turn up on time or before I do not wait, but this guy, Gena, I don't think knew about the Daylight Saving and putting the clocks forward one hour, sort of buggers up the day when you forget, anyway back to normal tomorrow, no excuse not to go out now. 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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