August 31, 2007 Opal Mining Update - No 76 No Opal Again and more Breakdowns

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Monday 1st. 5th day in this drive as you can see I am back at work now the car port at home is finished and I have replaced the fan, did not last long at all, but then I know I have a problem other than being always short on funds, the hopper on the blower is too small in diameter, it is 4 foot and I really need one that is 6 foot in diameter, this stops a lot of the dust and dirt from going through the fan and wearing it out before its time, but this would cost me around $4000 plus to have done, so I need to find some opal and lots of it. I worked on the loader first thing this morning, putting Hydraulic oil in as some got lost in replacing the radiator and would have been down a bit anyway as there is some leakage on some of the hoses, also has to do a bit of cleaning of an air breather and blowing the dust out of the air filter, so took a little while and enjoyed the sun for a bit. I left the blower switched off when I went underground as I had to clean the 2 elbows and I had decided that I would get rid of one and put a straight pipe in its place cutting out one small elbow then I would not have that one to clean also ever elbow or bend is a restriction of vacuum so for that alone it was better for me if I could do away with it and I could, after I had altered the pipes the way I wanted I went back up and started the blower and went to work. The face below is as I left it last time after I had found the shells and cleaned the face up and came home, what I call the main level may not indeed be the main level as all of the material has been in the ironstone above and where the shells are, so at the moment I am still going up at an angle slowly to bring that top ironstone down more as this is the one that is carrying potch most of the way along it, only thin but who knows when it may turn into color and thicker.

Only gone a couple of inches and I have a couple of skin shells come in the face, so I have to dig them out and hope for the best.

Here I am digging under the skin shells, I have to dig a pocket out from under them just in case they go in some depth and there may be a full one in there who knows, so I have to have some room under so that when I break the top section down I will not break anything that is close to the front, skin shells break easy when using force like this but solid shells will not, unless they have natural cracks in them like one of the last ones, then it will break up along the natural  fracture line, anyway here's hoping.

No good a few skin shells like this, not of much use to me and not worth much at all if anything, but there was bits and pieces of other things in the here so we carry on and hope for better, after I have finished digging around here, when it is all gone I will continue tunneling.

Now alinite has come in above the level so now I am hoping that thee will also be some material start to come in, as this combination for me is good or has been in the past, when on a ironstone level and alinite has come in on top it always has made material, and at times some opal, including some verticals and excellent crystal, so here we go.

A few more inches done and the ground has slightly changed and sure enough potch has come in on the level, right in the middle not big but about 1/4 inch, now have to bring the machine head down a bit to bring this level up a few inches so I can see it all.

And now more has come in but above the alinite, so more to dig out, surly there must be some color around here somewhere.

Here is a close up of it before I start to dig it out, just appeared fro nowhere.

Here is where I am going to start digging under it and there was bit more to the left of it and some colored trace under and in the alinite itself, turns out it was a small pocket with a couple of pieces with color and in bars of low quality gray, also some skin shell turned up as well while digging this lot out, no money again today, but still a chance in front, so tomorrow is another day. So I only did 3 foot 7 inches today, was a short day anyway as I did not get started until late and when I am on material and have to keep stopping and having a dig this takes a lot of time, so I do not expect to do any good footage,

Day 6 in this drive and we are in a few more inches from yesterday and this potch is still running, so much for it supposed to be under the Alinite as this is running above it, still I will take it anyway it where ever it wants to appear, but would like it to turn to color soon.

Where the arrows are is where the potch is and running, will have to dig right under all of this line to see how far it runs and how far in it goes

Now Concrete has come in on the left side just above where the arrows are, the outside cutter handles this quite easily it is the inside one that has some problem with this type of ground as it chatters quite a bit when cutting it and I have to reduce the rotation of the head so it can handle it, it is this type of hard ground that eventually will break the shaft on that hydraulic motor again.

More Alinite (white material) is coming in the face now and it is hard stuff so that has slowed the cutting somewhat, more lines now to keep my eye on for material coming in on, but so far nothing exciting, this is the end of today's shift and I always leave the cutting head in the upright position like this just to keep the oil away for the seal area, and talking about the oil I will have to put a breather in the middle of this cutting head as now it is getting rid of some of the oil, it is building up pressure in there now the seal is seating properly when the oil gets hot, a breather will over come this problem so I must remember to chase one up for it, probably will have to drill and tap a thread again.

Day 7, The Concrete has finally gone on the left and some potch has started to come in on top of this ironstone level on the right side, but did not last long and no color came in.

Now we have material all over the place, coming in from the roof and along that level again, so will have to have a pick at it all.

I have dug right under this level and this is the second time, so I have followed this in for about 6 inches, a little color as I saw but nothing exciting from my point of view, it has all gone for now, may come back in later.

Here I am having a dig under some potch higher up in the face again nothing, surely it has to make a pocket of opal somewhere in front of me right now I am doing  lot of work for nothing, would sooner be on color or nothing as I have to stop and dig out what I see as I never know when it could be a shell or the start of a pocket, many times a pocket will start with some potch on the outside of it, but most times it will be just straight color when you hit it, its the skin to skin stuff I want, in other words full color.

This is the end of day shift and you can see that a lot of hard alinite has come into the face, so the cutting is slow, did nearly 4 and a half feet today but worked only for 2 hours just about wore my arms out with the jackpick, was on material all the time and was constantly stopping and picking not an inch went past I did not see something in the face, I am now some 45 feet 8 inches into this drive and so far I only hove the 2 shells so far which is better than nothing. I run the big tape down the shaft with the pipes today as I always thought I was working on the 73 foot level, I had sort of forgot that where I first started I was on the slope of a hill and when I am now in on level ground on top of this slope and so the distance from the top of the ground to the floor underground where I am working is different, so I was working a level at 74 as it was 79 to the floor when I was hand mining and I brought the floor up a foot when I put the tunnel machine down. But as I have worked along and to where I am now the ground level above has risen up some 4 feet from where the blower used to be near the ladders to where it is now on top of the rise, so now I am 82 feet 4 inches to the floor, so that means that the level I was working before I started this drive was around 78 & 1/2 feet and now I have gone up around 2.5 feet to get to the level in this drive I am doing now, so that means that there is another level about 3 foot above me at 73 feet. The shaft that I tried to get to and missed it had potch in the level and that was at 73 feet if I remember right and the shaft that I cut thick skin shells in I also tried to get but failed because of the wet ground and the fact that the shaft was to far away from me in this wet ground, anyway I have not been down that shaft to check exactly at what depth the skin shells were cut at, now I will have to go down both and  record what I find so I do not forget, this I will do in the next week so I can try and make some sort of plan for the future after I have finished this drive. But if I am on material at this depth and have an ironstone level I will have to do more dives at this depth, of course an ironstone level is not everywhere and this only be within 2 fault areas and as I am driving at a right angle (left angle actually) to the length of the claim this ironstone level may not continue past the next fault in front of me lengthways, the only way to find out is to do drives in that direction. I cannot see an ironstone level at 73 feet where I had the tape measure hanging down today where the pipes are down right now and that is only 3 foot up from the roof of the drive, but the shaft that I was just talking about is only 96 foot from this and on the other side of a fault line and it has an ironstone level at 73 feet, the bigger problem I have is that when I got these shafts drilled I did not get them drilled much past the 73 foot level so I do not if there is the same ironstone level I am now working on at 76 or the one that I was working on at 79 again the only way to find out is to do tunneling, so looks like I now have a long time in front of me in this claim.

Day 8, Here is a good look at the level, nice and strong and has been carrying material for more than 15 feet now, some above this and some below, most above and now some has started to come in on this main level.

The alinite has just about gone in the middle of the face and now I have a smoky gray potch come in on what is a Squibby level, boy I have to have my eyes everywhere with this face, material is coming and going all over the place, but not a lot on the main level and no color so far.

Here is a close up of the material, most of the potch I have found so far today has been this color, if this color of potch turns it should make good color, but can run for every and not make any color at all, smoky gray potch has a bad name for not turning, maybe my luck will be different, but it had better hurry up.

Now potch has come in almost right across the level, its even right in the middle of the level which I cannot see right now so I will have to bright the machine back now and take it down to bring this level up a bit higher so I can see it all in plain view, I was trying to keep the lines at the top of the face in view as material has been seen up there as well, but I will concentrate on the main level for a while. I have also lost a cutting tooth on the outside cutter, lost it yesterday but did not stop, now I have to so when I bring the machine back I will go in front and remove the cutting plate and replace the teeth, the 2 that are left are worn out anyway and I may even sharpen the inside cutting teeth as well, don't know how much further I can go in this drive now the hard stuff has gone, I will start getting blocked elbows again as the round is still damp, so will carry on for as long as I can, would like to keep going as long as there is potch in the level, if there's material in the level there is a chance of opal.

Here is a shot of the material on the right side, hard to see in this photo as it is not very thick but never the lees it is thee and I have to keep stopping and having a pick as I never know if it will turn to color and perhaps a pocket.

And here is some on the left side, this is thicker and is running at the same time as the lot on the left, but no color in any of it as yet.

This is the bottom elbow when I knocked off work today, 1/2 full already so the ground is getting wetter especially now thee is no big Gypsum or Alinite to help clean it out, so it may not long before I have to quit this drive but will keep going as long as I can.

Day 9 Have had 5 days off work to work on the web site, was a couple of days that was a bit cold and the wind was up so probably would have had them off anyway, but I have to put some time in on the web site as well putting new items on and that is very time consuming, the way I do it anyway with the photo editing, always trying the get the best possible photo. So I went back to work in the drive and right from the start of tunneling I had to wait for the telescope behind the machine to clear itself and that means only one thing, that the elbows are starting to block up straight away, so I put up with this for 1/2 hour and then quit the drive, pity as I did find some thin skin shells with color in them on the right hand side above the level, to thin to make any money with still color. So pulled the pipes up and brought the machine back to the shaft, again this oil seal behind the outside cutter was leaking oil and I had drilled a 1/4 inch hole in the rear of the box to help relieve the pressure in there, but I may have drilled it too late, so will have to pull the cutting plate of again and fix it up. Aug-16th, Went to work today and pulled the outside cutting plate off, did a clean up of the oil seal and area that it sits in with petrol to make sure that all of the oil was off, then cleaned the seal up and fitted it back in but with Silastic which is a semi liquid rubber sealing compound that sticks like shit to a blanket on the outside of it and put it back in, turns out that the seal was not getting blown out with pressure as I thought, (and others) but the seal it self is not a good tight fit where it seats in the plate and it was gripping on the boss of the sprocket now it has been chromed and fixed properly and turning around when it was working and worked its way out to the front until it could go no further for the cutting plate and then the oil could get past in, so now I have done this it should be alright and the Silastic will have well and truly dried when I get back to work. The next time I go to work I will be starting the new drive and as I will be going through alinite again I will sharpen the teeth before I start, it only take 10 minutes, I also put the timber on the hand winch back on line for the shaft again and when I checked from underground it was dead on line for the drive I am going up in front of me and level off for the 73 foot level, so I was dead on line for this shaft when I went up to the 62 foot level or what I thought was the 62 foot level and wasn't, so cannot understand how I did not hit it as I went out 108 feet and this shaft is only 96 feet away, anyway will be going for it again. Not sure that going up will cure the wet ground bullshit, but will give it a go and will be going up 6 feet this time and will be carrying 2 levels one above center the 73 foot level and one below the 76 foot level, both are or should be carrying material as I dug a bit out of both today as I went up this drive and had a look at the side walls, so onwards and upwards it will be tomorrow.

So everything is at the ready, I have greased the machine, did not sharpen the teeth as I said they are good enough for one drive or so I think, here I have moved the machine into the drive going up and am about to start the cutting so again I have to  remove a bit out of the roof to allow the cutting head to start rotating, the back of the actual hard gets caught on the roof etc, so it is this I have to make way for, not the cutting teeth, it will be a little way up before I start the machine to cut down and level off, not an easy job by ones self its not the machine that is the problem that part is easy it is the pipes etc but I manage, so on we go and hope for the best.

So now I am making headway and as I have gone into this drive a few feet I have had to came back and lift the bottom elbow and pipe up again off the floor as you can see, this is the part that I could use a hand with, but as I said I can manage ( just ) and use the milk crates again, very handy these are, still have to go up a bit further before I will start to level the machine off slowly.

Now I am leveling off the machine, this is done by backing the machine onto a piece of 3 inch square timber under each track for about 2.5 feet and dropping the floor cutters down 1.5 inches below level and cutting backwards as I go, then as I go forward I use the cutting head to cut the walls until I get back to where I was in the first place, then cut forward another 3 or 4 inches and do it all again.

Took this photo to show you how much higher I am to the drive next door I have just come out off, I am perhaps a bit to high here, so may have to come back a couple of feet on the last time I level off to bring it down a touch, hard to judge when you are going up at a 20% angle, but I will get it right, You can see the 76 foot level on the side wall, this has to be just under the cutting head of the machine so I can keep my eyes on it but will be hard to see all the time when I am cutting, but will have to pay very close attention to it just in case any opal comes in.

Now you can get a good look at he timber under the tracks as I back it up on them, also the levels on the side wall and again I have developed an oil leak, nothing to do with the one that I have just fixed and that is fixed as nothing has happen as yet and I have blocked off that drill hole as well, so it was not pressure that was doing it, just the seal was not sitting right and was working it way loose and leaking oil, this is leaking from the rear of the shaft that rotated the cutting head, photo below.

Only just finished topping the tank up this morning, still could do with some and will now after this gets fixed, I have never had these units off as yet, but looks like I am about to get to know them better, the one that is leaking is the oil pressure pipe that feeds the oil to the cutters and the other at the front is the return pipe, I will have to remove both to replace the seals, I do not know at this stage how many seals there are but I should think at least 2 in each unit, today is Friday, so will wait until Monday to come back down and finish leveling of the machine, after that I will take the pipe off and bring the machine back down if I have to as its not that far, if I can work on the side I will do it where it is, then I will take these units off and bring them home to clean up and take apart, find out what the seals are and order them, may be in time to order them and get up on the overnight bus, so will not be out of action for that long, but always something to stop me finding opal, such is the life of an opal miner, pays to feed the Gremlins and keep them happy which looks like I have neglected.

So another leak, I have decided that I can do it where the machine is, so I have pulled the telescope off the back of the machine and the flexible hose so I can stand directly behind as I work, now to pull it apart and fix it.

Just to show you the level, it has split into 2 and the bottom one right now is carrying material, it will be a few more feet yet when I get going again before I start to carry the 73 foot level in the face, but for now onto the repairing of the oil leak.

Got the first part off, had to remove a hydraulic hoses to get to the big hose at the front to undo the not, same as the big one you can see here, but this doe's not have to be completely removed just undone from the top, but I have struck a snag, I cannot get there 6 allen key bolts undone, they have Locktite on them to stop them undoing with the vibration and are really good and tight, I am afraid that I will brake the allen key, so have to try and get them loose somehow or I will have to drill the heads off the bolts which may be hard to do as the bolts look like they are high tensile an do not drill easily with normal drill bits, so will see what happens the next time I am down here.

Wednesday the 22nd, I went down to this Opal Field today called Opal Ridge with my mate Peter to have a look at what is going on, this field is some 38 kilometers south from Coober Pedy and can be seen off the main hwy, it is 2 kilometers in from the hwy, does not look much from here and is not that big with working as yet, I counted 10 drills there when I got to it, not all was working at the time I was there, but I have taken some good photos that you do not get to see that often, in fact it is the first time I have seen this type of operation myself and of course as Peter is only in his third year here this is a first for him as well.

In this photo you can see a prospect drill in front and they drill a 9 inch hole and use augers to  drill with and also a lot of prospect holes in the foreground, so they are looking very hard for opal, this field like Allen's Rise will produce Black Opal.

This photo is just to the left on the one above, here there are 2 drills with the Kelly's up working and 3 drills with the Kelly's down not working and lot more holes that have been drilled.

Now we are with my mate Peter, this is the blower he has borrowed to help him get the dirt out of the cut he is starting to work from, his rig is on the background, will be while before he can use that as you wills see further down below, big hopper, I could use that and is high enough so will put up a decent sized dump.

Now we are with Peter, he had decided to start tunneling from the surface as the levels are not that deep here and I believe he is going down to around 32 feet, he tells me that right now the machine is down 21 feet from the surface, so the rest of the photos tell the story of what he is up too.

He had to get an excavator in to dig this ramp for him so he could start tunneling, but that is when he got into trouble as far as pulling dirt, as he use elevators to put the dirt up top, to get the dirt to the elevators he has to use conveyor belt tables which you can see in the photo stacked on the right hand side of the ramp, but he soon found out that he could not use them here the way he has started mining.

Here is a better look at the conveyor belt tables, they stand on small legs when being used underground, but here as the angle is 30% at the tunnel machine (I checked it with my angle gauge) as the belts are smooth they will not run the dirt up that angle, so a blower is needed to pull the dirt from behind the tunnel machine, until he can reach a shaft and open up to put his elevators under.

You can see the full height of the face in this photo 21 feet, as they were taking it down they drilled a couple of holes in the face an put 2 steel pipes in there and put some corrugated iron on top as a roof to stop being hit from falling stones etc as they work, now he has to start tunneling in and still as to go down more about another 10 feet or so.

Here is a good complete photo of the blower with the pipes from the hopper right down to the back of the tunnel machine, plus you can se the length of the conveyer belts that he uses which are 10 foot it length, the same length as the pipes we use, Peter his partner (offsider) will have to come to the blower to dump the hopper when needed, unless it is a self dumper did not ask about that, but some hoppers are set up so that when a certain amount of weight is in it the door will open on its own, I should get my done like that now I think of it, or some have a set up with air, where they have a small compress on the blower and when they press a switch it operates a air release valve which shuts off the vacuum butterfly and lets the hopper door open, same as me but I do it manually by pulling on a rope that is linked by pulleys to the vacuum butterfly and when I pull on the rope it closes the butterfly and shuts off the vacuum letting the door open under the weight of the dirt inside dumping the dirt on the ground, hence the name DUMPS.

This is the same photo as above only from another angle, here you can see how this person has drilled in straight lines or in a pattern to try and locate any material or trace below, this drill has been drilling on the claim that my friend Peter has got now but had pulled the pegs and left, now Peter has got it and good luck to him, hope he strikes it rich, if you look closely at all the photos of the background, you will notice that it is pretty barren out there, no trees or shade of any kind.

Another of the scenery, 2 drills in this one, same thing nothing in the background, but plenty of ground to drill in, I would love to drill a few holes here but do not have the money to do so, all of the drills here are owned by the people who use them, we do have a drill that belongs to the Miners Association that can be hired out by the day or week, may look into that later on, but would need $1500 minimum to spend for a weeks drilling, that is 8 hours per day for 5 days and it is a prospect drill and you can have as many holes as he can drill in that time.

Now Peter and Peter are down there, they have started the big generator and are looking at starting tunneling soon, need to get this blower running as it has not been started for some time so I have been told and as Peter has never used a blower before and in particular never started this one, will have to see just how good it is at starting.

Peter is worried that the machine may be at too steep an angle, which I think it is personally and as the machine is up against the face he wants to see if he can bring it back some so he can start the cutting head, seems like the front  tipped forward a bit on some dirt when he took it down there and he said he was worried if it would climb back up away from the face.

This is a reasonable photo of the machine up against the face with the cutting head up ready for action, Peter is having trouble starting the blower, seem like the electric fuel pump they have on it to pump diesel up to the injector pump is not working so it was time for me to leave as not knowing if and when they would get it running today, I wanted to get home and work on this lot of photos and the write up on them which has taken some 3 and a half hours to do, so you can see I do spend a lot of time on my newsletter in a month, will have to ring Peter to see how he went with the blower and if he got anything done today. I rang my friend Peter and asked how he went after I had left, he said that they got it going about 1/2 hour after I had gone, was some screw that they turned and it work starting the pump, same thing after they had stopped for lunch they could not get it started again so turned this screw again and away they went so maybe some sort of security thing but the guy who they borrowed it off never told them about this screw, anyway all is good and they did got foot in that day, I wish them the best, now back to my problems.

This is a photo of me trying to apply some heat to the head of the bolt with a small blowtorch that I had in the cutting room, forgot that I had this little thing, but might as well not brought it as it cannot produce enough instant heat for this type of situation, still had to try, but there is Locktite under the heads as this heat started to crystallize what was around the edges, but that was all, now on to plan B when I think one up.

So what I came up with was to cut a small section off the Allen Key about 1 inch long, so I could hold it in a pair of Multi-Grips so that when the Allen Key was in the bolt the multi grips were about 1/16 of an inch from the plate then I had about 1/4 of an inch sticking out that I could hit with the hammer, did not want to much sticking out or it could break or bend with the force of being hit, had to hit it very solid quite a few times and some more than once, but with a strong arm bar as we call them ( a little short bar) on the allen key they came undone one by one, with a crack noise, it was the Locktite under the heads that was the problem. I was thinking that I may have had to drill the heads off these bolts, if I could not have go them loose, I was also thinking that this was a spacer plate and if so it was over designed with some many blots in it, was only after talking to a friend on mine Dick in the USA that I started to think that there was more to this plate than being a spacer between the 2 units, it may have some seals in it and it did, so just as well I got the bolts undone properly, so here is the main shaft and bar that goes through the center without the units on them, now to take them home and clean them up and see what is needed to fix them.

The small unit is the so called spacer plate it has 2 O-Rings in it, on the outside and 2 smaller ones on the inside, these were not leaking but will be replaced as all of these O-Rings are from when the machine was first built some 20 years ago or there about's, the unit on the right is the one from the front and also was not leaking but again I will replace all O-Rings, no point in removing and not replacing and the one on the left is the from the rear and one of the O-Rings had ruptured, the one at the far back as you are looking at it here. I have cleaned these units now and the small plate is fixed with new O-Rings as Ross  carries them, but the other are special rings and have been ordered, so will have to see if they are up here tomorrow morning on the bus, if so I will fit them and go back on the field and put the parts back on the machine and get it ready for working, so will have to wait until the morning.

So here is the machine fixed and working, but did not do a good job as I damaged the seals in putting the units back on, the seals are very solid with no give at all and have leading edges with a runner O-Ring on the inside of it, I had trouble getting these units back on especially the front one which has the biggest seals, so I have ordered new ones again and will have to re-do the job later when I have finished this drive, the front until is leaking again, but only dripping so I will not loose much hydraulic oil in a mornings work and will be able to continue. What I will have to do when I get this second lot of seals is boil some water and put on in for a couple of minutes and see how soft it has made it, some seals got soft by putting them in boiling water if this works I will have to take an old electric kettle underground so I can boil some water and do one seal at a time, I can put one seal in the front of unit and put it on the shaft and then do the rear seal and put it on if this works with softening the seal, then they will not get damaged again, hate doing the job twice and hate wasting money even more.

Now hard to believe as it is, but about 10 minutes after I took this photo above I was plunged into total darkness and I had been only working for about 3/4 of an hour, the lights went out and the electric motors on the tunnel machine stopped, something had gone wrong with the generator, I had to grope on the side wall and get the rope that had the revs on the blower off, I thought I had a small torch light in the camera bag but it was not there, then I remembered that I had took it out to put new batteries in it and had not put it back, thankfully it was not that far down the drive to the pipes and there is some light that filters down the shaft but not enough to see out from it only to lead you to the shaft in the dark. When I got to the shaft with the pipes down I had to grope on the side wall to find the electric lead for turning off the blower engine, after I had turned off the blower I could hear the generator working, so that was good at least I could use the winch to get up top and find out what has happened, so I found my hard hat and slowly groped my way down the 90 foot drive to the ladders and winch. But when I got to the winch it was not working, so I had to climb the ladders to get out, bloodily near killed me not used to this type of physical effort as I climb them all wrong not being used to it now, so take a little break about every 15 feet for a few seconds and finally after what seem like forever I got to the top, but in fact only took about 4 minutes, then I went to the generator after catching my breath which was till running and one of the gauges showed that it  was putting out over 400 volts. I checked the 3 phase RCD Circuit Breaker which is a safety switch and the switch had not thrown out, then there are 3 small fuses on the front of the generator and they were all right, so I do not know what has gone wrong its now above my head, my friend Boro who has fixed this for me before and is an industrial electrician is down in Adelaide for a week and will not be back until the begging of next month, sounds like a long time bit is only 4 days away or there about's, so will have to wait for him to get back and get him to look at it when he can fit me in. So until I can get the generator back in action again I am again Broken Down, cannot seem to get a run with the machine this year, I am starting to believe that this claim is now bad luck for me, I will be glad when I have finished this drive as this will tell me if I will stay and do more or pull out completely, just wish I could get it done soon, need to find some opal to pay the bills. It would seen that the town is dieing as far as the opal mining is going, more and more equipment is for sale on the advertising board at one of the local supermarkets so my wife tells me as I do not go there very often but she is in there everyday as this is where the Post Office is and she always looks at the board, so it would seem that the lack of opal and the rising costs of fuel are having there toll and also the restrictions that have been put on us by the government regarding the storage of explosives here has also been a factor, even I cannot buy and store any explosive any more due to there stupid red tape bullshit due to this Terrorism that they have no idea about, but that's another story. 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 as it only takes one pocket of opal, but only time will tell, 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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