Working Down the Mines

Pics I have scanned from my photos which have turned out quite well I thought. From when I worked underground 1968 - 1981.

The first part is Windarra nickel mine, 212 miles north of Kalgoorlie Western Australia. This was a trackless decline with some pretty big gear, 35 ton Wigmore Caterpillar trucks which were a modified 631 scraper with a tipping body, and 3-boom Gardner Denver pneumatic jumbos. They had open stopes with longholes drilled with GD Airtracs and some bar-and-arm machines. From memory I think one of the big stope blasts was 100,000 tons. The mine closed in the early '80s and was gutted.
There were a few deaths down there, all rockfalls, all on my shift, so R.I.P. to those guys.

The second part is Lake View & Star gold mine, on Kalgoorlie-Boulder's Golden Mile.
I worked there as a machine miner on airlegs doing shrink stoping and intermediate driving (drifting). We worked by ourselves with no partner which was the practise then.
We used Holman's Silver 3s and Silver 900 airleg machines (jacklegs). Mucking out inter drives we used air or electric 2-drum scrapers into a raise.
We used AN60 dynamite primers with ANFO and electric detonators or sometimes safety fuse.
This was a "traditional" mine with rail drives leading to a vertical shaft about 3000' deep from memory.
The mines on the Golden Mile no longer exist because they have been swallowed up by the Super Pit.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• hard
• rock
• mining
• underground
• mine
• blasting
• explosives
• detonators
• scooptram
• eimco
• wagner
• caterpillar
• cat
• bogger
• airleg
• jackleg
• windarra
• nickel
• kalgoorlie
• boulder
• laverton
• gold
• copper

[rfhracing]

Great stuff... You mentioned you were at MIM in other comments.. Do you have any Pics from there?

[gm16v149]

@rfhracing I've got an album loaded with underground photos I took when I worked at MIM 1970-72. I might get around to uploading them one day.

[emd645e3c]

Interesting set of photo's. Thanks for sharing.

[gm16v149]

@emd645e3c The negatives are in a big pile somewhere but I thought the photos didn't come out too bad with a scanner.

[versatile1150]

Very nice Video, super channel

[gm16v149]

@versatile1150 Thanks

[gangesexcavating]

That was a really interesting slideshow, Great action shots of some very seldom seen specialized Cat equipment. Thanks for this

[rfhracing]

@gm16v149 Would be interesting to see compared to how MIM is these days... Cheers

[cheeptorque]

very interesting.....some scarey pics in there ya mad bastard. specially stoppin to snap a shot of the lit fuses..lol

[mrWeagle]

Excellent, thanks.

[aussiebigbangers]

Nice work and i can appreciate the time you took to do that.

[gm16v149]

@CyberPassenger I might get around and put some more up.