October 15, 2004 Opal Mining Update - No 42 At last we are back underground.

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Well here we are again, another 2 weeks have past and I am well on track to go back mining at the end of September for sure, I hope you enjoy the photos below as I have a few more from the movie that was being shot here, it is all over and we now can get back to a normal life again as far as normal goes here. I have taken on a young lad for a Partner for a change, he is 24 years old and will be handy to help me carry pipes and set up things, the old bones are starting to creak a bit and the Arthritis in the hands is getting worse, especially the left one, so a extra hand or two right now will come in handy, excuse the pun. Starting back where I left off in the last update about the tunnel machine, this is the seal that had perished due to old age and being left out in the weather for a lot of years above ground and not working, this seal had really rusted out and the rubber seal itself was almost none existence, and because who every had owned it last when it was used had never checked or maintained anything at all, the guy I bought it from had never used it and it had just been sitting on the trailer for about 18 months, again out in the weather.

Here is the new chain all set up and ready to go, the sprockets have just been painted with a undercoat grey paint and there is 3 new bearing in there, the big sprocket on the left has 2 in there, I had already put it together but I had forgot to check the small bearing in the idler gear an when I put it together there was movement in it so I had to take it off and put a new bearing in it, anyway all done now and should last a while,

The cover is back on, I have sealed it again with a rubber silicone, but one that can stand up to oil etc, this will have some special oil in it not grease and I had to drill and tap all new holes to replace the broken bolts that were in there, now ready for the oil.

Here I am putting the oil in, the filler hole that I drilled and tapped, the oil is that thick that it will not run out of the bottle itself I have to squeeze it out, takes about 5 minutes a bottle and I will put 4 in there, this should be enough to keep the chain in oil all of the time, the chain will spread it around inside for me.

Back on the movie set out on the Olympic Field again for one day, this is the last time they want me or anyone other that the crane that will be needed to lift the light for night time shooting, I will be used in 2 shots at 2 different locations, but both not far apart, I was supposed to follow the truck in on the right and get set up in there for a shot.

I was put just in front of the dump on the left of photo, the front of the blower was right in and only the back was sticking out just in front of the guy you can see here but the shadow from the hopper is in the way of the what they wanted to do so I was asked to put it here you see it now and the Director was happy and so she stayed there.

This is the truck that was in front of me, it has all of the tracks etc that they set up for the camera to run on when filming, as I am up close now I can get to see a lot of things that I did not before and I am not needed anyway so I just have to blend into the background, keeps these boys busy all the time, hardly stop.

This is the tent that has the drinks in it and the Producer sits in here looking at a small screen of the shooting and does the playbacks, so I am hanging out in here, in between taking these photos anyway, the sound guy sits just on the right of photo.

This is one of the cameras and the camera man, they were only using one camera for this scene, just at the bottom of the photo at the base of the tripod legs is the battery they use to power the camera, nice looking unit, never did ask what it was worth.

Here they are setting up the machine that the camera will be mounted on along with the operator and they will put weights the back of the machine so it is counter balanced, you can see that they have put blocks and wedges under the tracks to make them level.

The camera has just been put on, now they are starting to put some of the weights on the back for the counter balance, then they will test it with the camera man on it.

Now you can the counter balance weights on the rear and the camera man is doing a few dry runs to check it out before they start the real shooting, here he is looking down a shaft that an actor will climb down in the scene.

Nearly ready for the scene to take place, I was asked to show the actor how to start the blower for the shot, but then they changed there minds and said for me to start it and leave it running so they had the background noise of the blower running and the actor would just pretend to turn on the key and then the scene would start, the little boy is in the scene as well, as he is supposed to go underground to look for or at Opal in the story.

Here is the lady Producer (English) looking at that little screen I mentioned above, it actually records the scene as they are shot and after 4 takes the director came over and had a look at them, then said he would take a another one without sound, if you look closely at the little monitor, you can make out part of the blower in the background, as it is the scene all of the time until the actors go down the shaft, but right here just is just a part of the dry runs that they do to get set up for the real thing.

They are changing a battery box over, what the guy with the camera is doing I have no idea, but they are always taking photos of everything for some reason.

At last here are the 2 actors, Man and Boy they are with the makeup lady and the some other lady who does something for them but do not know what, they seem have people for everything here, nearly ready for shooting.

Now the action starts, here the actor has just pretended to start the blower and they are now going to walk towards the shaft he is going to take the boy down.

Here the boy is asking if they will see any Opal or something like that and he is saying that he always see opal underground, wish I had a claim like that, always is a lot better that sometimes.

Here they are at the shaft, it is only 12 foot deep, was drilled special for this shot, there was a few that was drilled just a few feet deep for different shots and they put wire mesh on top to make them look the part, here the actor is putting a head lamp on this head ready for going down, not used, just for the movie shot, actually it would be useless for mining, better for beach fishing not mining, but this is the movies, so what has to be real.

Here he is getting the boy ready for going under, putting the mining hard hat on the boy and you see the camera moving in.

Now they are ready for going under, but I cannot figger out why the actor who is playing the part of a miner does not wear a hard hat as well, no miner would go down without one, but again it is the movies, he will go down first and the boy will follow straight after him, theoretically if the boy was to fall or anything was to happen the miner would be just under the boy and would stop him from coming to any harm.

Again this is a late in the afternoon shot, the camera is mounted on the front of the vehicle and is going to film the boy on the back, they adjust the camera angle through that little screen that the producer looks at and record on as they are filming, this vehicle did a couple of runs with a vehicle approaching from the side as it went past a turnoff, what this was about I have no idea, but as they piece this all together in the cutting room it will when finished it will make sense.

The above is what they called the sunset shot, as they were doing a lot of filming after the sun went down, I asked one of the camera men why they did not do a shoot with the sun going down, he said that just after the sun had gone down it was the twilight time and right here the fly's had gone and the wind had dropped for them, in this photo I have made it a bit lighter so you can see it 2 different ways, this is what I call a sunset shot.

This is how the photo is really, this is what I call my "Sun Set" shot the vehicle above is not in the photo as they just moved it after I took the photo above, this is the last form me as I was waiting to get a lift home and had been for about a 1.5 hours, lucky I stayed around, was worth the photo, after this they set up the big crane and put a large light up there surrounded with a white cloth, looked like a big Chinese Lantern, but through out a lot of soft light, the blower and the surrounding small dumps were lit up quite nicely, but I don't know what they were shooting as I went home soon after this, will look forward to seeing the movie when it is released, the name of it is POBBY & DINGAN and according to the producer who is from England it should be released May or June next year.

Back to work for me, the machine is finished and I have wound out the extendable cutting head ready for taking off, this is the first time I have had to do this.

Now you can see how far it has come away from the other cutter, I can if I wish make this machine cut a 7 foot circle, but that is a lot of dirt to get rid of, the smallest it will cut is 6 foot 1 inch, so I will be starting at 6 foot 2 or 3 inches and we will see how we go at that as my partner is almost 6 foot 2 inches high, me I am 5 foot 11 inches high, the circle must be set before we start a drive as it cannot be altered out or bigger while doing a drive, cannot get the cutters to cut in the floor or so I have been told.

This is the cover I have made to put on the machine, maybe I should have a metal one made, but I have to take 2 of the screws out on the other side on a corner when I want to grease the bearing there so right now this is a good idea, if it was tin I would have to take the whole thing off, this cover is to keep some of the dirt away from building up where the Hydraulic Oil Breather Cap is and the filler plug which you can see in the middle just under the cover, wont keep it all away but will help, I have also to get rid of the round pipe that they welded on the machine which I think was for putting there pick and hammer in, but it gets full of dirt etc and has no relieve hole in it, very badly designed, no thought went in to this at all, I have a better idea, you will see this later on.

Here is the head off and ready for me to put in the truck, Ross came out and used his forklift to lift it up and off for me, worked out great, now to see how the winch handles it so I can put it on the truck, it is quite heavy as we did lift it by hand to try it out but would not want to carry it too far, so I recon its around the 90+ kilo mark.

This is my offsider I have taken on and the winch handles the cutter with no problem, if I put it on the side of the truck as that is where it was when I first lifted it the truck leans towards that side, but it would do that if I sat in the seat on the side also, that is why I have set the winch up at the back of the truck with a wire rope hooked to the rear of the cab, this stops the truck from dipping at the back.

I had to put it on the truck on this side as I have the winch set up to over this side of the truck only and I can let down the side to make it easier to put it on so it worked out alright, I was thinking that I would put it down and on the machine with the winch, but now I think that I will use the crane as it will be easier for me and then I can have the 2 of us down there, when it is just put on and I get the screw started it has to be let down to sit on a small pipe I will use so it looks like the photo above that has a stand under it, this requires 2 people to let it down slowly, it is to heavy for me alone, so the crane it is.

Here she is ready to go, now to bring the trailer down and put it on, then take it home ready for taking out on the field, whenever that is.

When we went down to pull the dirt to get ready for the tunnel machine being put down, I check up in the big shaft, as I found some potch well up above the level in there after it had been drilled in the first place and I had not forgotten this so as soon as we could get under the shaft and stand on the dump, (there is a lot of dirt to pull) I checked again around the shaft and on the opposite side to where I saw the potch there were some skin shells looking at us, so we dug them out and here they are for you to see.

One piece with 2 bits of skin shell in it, nice color.

This is the end of a skin shell, but this one has lots of red in it.

If I can find a good pocket of this opal, but seam I will do alright, very nice crystal.

Shows you how these things form in the ground, nice to be the first to see this after about 85/120 million years.

There was some more trace up there so I will have to check that spot out before I pull all the dirt from under the shaft, here is the machine at home on the trailer ready for action, I remembered that there was another small job I had to do on the machine that I had forgot about that is very important to me in the operating the machine, lucky I can do this at home as Ross is going away for a about 10 days next Monday, so I hope that nothing happens to me now as I do not have a workshop to go back to for a while.

There is a lot of dirt down there, I was amazed at the amount of dirt that was left behind after George had left, as he did pull a lot out with the bucket, it has taken us 2 days just to make some working room under the shaft that the ladders are down, the dirt was piled right to the roof and I had to squeeze though a small opening to one side of the ladders so I could make some room in the dirt so I could put the telescope down and fit it up into the plastic pipe and tie it up, then I was ready for pulling some dirt. As I have already said there is a enormous amount of dirt down there and we have to dig our way down through it so we can reach the floor again, then we can start to move and clean up, but we have done 2 days work and there is still another 2 days left at least. Right now I expect to put the machine down next Wednesday the 6th all being well, it would have been down now but with finding those shells we spent a bit of time checking out the shaft and then it has rained here so that was 2 days off and then I had to put the wheels on the trailer and get the crane to put the tunnel machine on it and bring it home, that was another days work, and when I say a days work I mean a morning, or about 4 hours, that is my normal working day. I cannot work for 8 hours anymore and depending on the state of my knee, sometimes even less than that, should make it easier now I have a tunnel machine and I can sit down for most of the time and when I get the offsider trained I will have even less to do. I am now looking forward to the next update as I will be underground with the machine, but I do have to learn a bit with it, but as always I will have some great photos to show you I am sure. 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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