An incredible day of exploring and taking advantage of drought conditions. It was dry and hot, but with the lantana and grasses dying off, we found some incredible adits we had previously walked directly past in the previous missions. The longest drive was 154 meters and featured 11 stopes.
A solid day of history hunting ultimately led us to staring down a decent-sized stope, without a single one of us having our ropes or rigging with us. History tells us that when we pack our climbing gear, we either find nothing at all or easy access via open adits. When we leave the ropes at home on longer treks, we often find shafts or open stopes only. Given there were zero documented details on these diggings, we were extremely lucky to cross paths with a prospector, who had a decent length of rope on him. 20 minutes later, I was on the bottom level of the stope and very happily recording and shooting photos of the cool scenes down there.
This location was filmed on a drone years before this day and not really discovered until the footage was edited months after it was captured. Quite likely a failed prospecting drive but it was worked in a waterfall with vertical cliffs both above and below it. It punched in around 30 metres and no portion of the veins along the back had been raised on or stoped.
This was the end of the road and quite a walk back in time. The journey started with entry into a modern decline, then punched into a recently timbered drive. That drive was a rubber-tire drive and still a big space. Then eventually we dropped down into this old beast. Barely 5 feet high and littered with old relics. When we got back to the surface, we realised we had punched through the 3 main eras of workings.
I'm not sure how much you guys support your own exploring crews when it comes to nasty red mine mud. We offer pretty much no support as a general rule. In fact, if you go a whole day with dry boots on a mine exploration day, you'll probably get pushed into a deep puddle by the end of the day. If you go a whole weekend avoiding the nasty red stuff, you'll be voted the first explorer into the nastiest red puddles the others can find. Em was new to our crew, so she was unfairly targeted in my opinion, which is why I went in for the rescue. We thought it was remarkable how close her pant colour was to her orange jacket.
This was an incredible exploration. A site with no real modern information available, and we know it closed in the 1930s. The mine manager passed away, and six months later, court articles told the story of the miners themselves trying to take over and continue the operation. That court case appeal sadly failed, and the mine was closed, with assets liquidated shortly after. We assumed it had not been touched since, but one of our eagle-eyed followers noticed a certain type of bolt used in timbering in the upper winze station. So, after that bit of info, we were able to piece together that it was reworked in the 1950s or 1960s. This mine comprised a small upper adit of around 130 meters and a large lower haul tunnel that you see me face out here. I stepped it out to be well over 300 meters long. There is also an intermediate level between them, but that was only accessible via roping in from the top adit.
The government survey report indicated that this was a promising mine. Upon ascending the waste rock and locating the portal, we anticipated a rewarding experience. What truly captivates us during these surveys is the timbering.
Well below zero degrees outside the portal. We are thinking it was somehow even colder inside the big old adit, with the extreme Arctic wind ripping down through the open stopes.
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Coming to our YT as a 3-part series this August
https://youtu.be/EX94VGHubSg?si=euNJ7W4NzfKEYBQF
Tonight at 7 pm the full 19-minute episode on QAM.
From our perspective, age often correlates with enhanced value.
This particular tunnel is remarkably ancient by Australian benchmarks. Given that the lower alluvial fields were depleted by the 1880s, this tunnel was likely excavated sometime in the 1890s. Definitive information remains elusive, as there is no documented record of its construction or its official designation. Vid coming to our YouTube in July
Vid coming up in an hour or so!