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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.