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11 July, 2004
SUNDAY MAGAZINE - Fran Voss's special underground report on the people behind the Beaconsfield mine.
Beaconsfield's GOLDEN rules
Sunday, 11 July 2004
COVER STORY Fran Voss and photographer Will Swan ventured 1km under the earth in search of gold.
LARRY Dally's roots go deeper than anyone else's into the gold-bearing quartz rock of the Beaconsfield mine.
His great-great grandfather William Dally, with his brother David, discovered the rich Tasmania reef in 1877.
But that's not why Larry is the "miners' best mate", as senior supervisor Steve "Salty" Saltmarsh calls him.
It's because as the winder driver at the mine, he has minute-by-minute responsibility for everything that comes up or goes down the mine shaft.
From his desk overlooking the massive drum that feeds out the cable on the cage, he controls a barrage of screens, levers, dials and communications systems connected with movements in the 375m shaft.
On his screens, he can also see everything that is happening in the mine below. |
Fran Voss.
Pictures: WILL SWAN. |
The five-tonne cage, suspended on 35mm steel cable and capable of carrying up to 15 people down the shaft, is lowered at 4m a second.
Hoppers attached to the cage's underside bring the ore to the surface and all equipment used in the underground mining operation must be carried down the shaft on it.
This includes the massive trucks and loaders, which must be cut in pieces and re- welded together once below.
Mr Dally, 47, first worked at the mine as a general labourer in 1978 and has worked at various jobs, including crane driving and rehabilitation of the shaft when the mine was reopened.
"That was an interesting time, digging the blockage and all those timbers out," he said.
During the years the mine was closed, he worked at Boral and Comalco.
"I couldn't wait to come back" he said.
"It's good. I've never really known much else. I hope to retire here."
He said the revival of the mine has put life back into the town of Beaconsfield.
"Salty" Saltmarsh, who escorted us down the mine, has worked at the Beaconsfield mine for a total of 11 years.
When he began his second stint seven years ago, he worked on rehabilitation of the mine.
At the top of the shaft, there was a large board covered with pegs and name tags. One half of the board was painted green and labelled `Out- Safe' and the other was red and labelled `In-Underground".
Our identification tags were hung on the Red side as we stepped into the cage and turned on our head lamps.
Bell signals are rung for each different cage operation: one bell means stop, two lower, three raise, four men on, and so on.
It took less than two minutes for us to descend to the 375m level.
We came out into a wide cavern, where the roof and walls were hung with pipes and cables. The walls were covered in "shockcrete", the modern-day equivalent of shoring up the walls.
This level contains the large maintenance workshop. Grease-covered maintenance crew were busy repairing trucks and loaders. One is an Elphinstone 1600 loader, bulky as a dinosaur, the biggest one in the mine, "Salty" said.
From here on, access to the lower levels was down a spiralling decline with a gradient of 1:8.
At the top, we left another set of name tags on another red/green board.
On the way down, we passed through the old workings that stopped at 450m.
When "Salty" started at the mine, it was flooded to the 150m level. His first job was de-watering. It took two years pumping at 600 litres a second to empty the mine.
Water in the mine now is a combination of ground water and water from the drilling. It is collected in a series of sumps and pumped out at an average rate of 70 litres a second.
Brought up on Tasmania's North-West Coast and a butcher by trade, "Salty" soon made a career change. He's worked in every State in every kind of mining, a total of 23 years in the industry.
"I like the people, the characters," he said.
The crib room for all the underground workers is on the 700m level.
Outside, a large sign is painted on the wall: "No Parking Boggers". Boggers is mining slang for the large loaders.
Miners have a half-hour break in their 10-and-a-half-hour shift. Maintenance crew have two half-hour breaks in a 12-hour shift.
The crib room was a large white-painted cavern filled with long tables. The miners munched thick sandwiches, read books or played cards.
Grey-haired Glenn Burns started his mining career at Rosebery on the West Coast. He has been an "air-leg" miner for 24 years. This is a compressed air drill.
He's been at Beaconsfield for six years. The pay is not as good as at other mines, but the location is better, he said.
"Mining is a tough life but you get used to it all right," he said.
Paul "Lambsy" Lees is the `charging up' man. In his words, the job entails "putting in the explosive and letting it rip".
ORIGINALLY from Sydney, he became a shearer, which is what brought him to Tasmania. But the money is better in mining. Robbie Rigby, 53, is one of the older miners. After following his father into the Tasmanian railways for 14 years, he came to the mine 11 years ago and his first job was removing the old pumps.
The massive Cornish beam pumps were the biggest of their kind in the world at the time. Because of their heritage value they had to be removed in one piece, a very difficult operation.
He operates the jumbo drills at the mining face.
"The worst thing is the heat," he said.
As the crib break ended the miners got kitted up again with their belts slung with breathing self-rescuers and batteries for their head lamps.
Geologist Grant McDonald was brought up on the North-West Coast and reckons mining is in his blood.
"The longer you're here the rock gets under your skin," he said.
He has a passion for mining history and says the old-time miners in the Beaconsfield mine were "`craftsmen".
Mr McDonald is one of five geologists at the mine. Their job is to sample the reef every time they fire it to give an ongoing picture of the grade and give the miners directions.
At the moment the grade is just short of 21g to the tonne.
"We just keep following the reef down. It's a simple reef and we know it down to 1200 metres now. There's no indications of any bottom yet.
"This is the largest single reef in Australia, if not the world."
After leaving more name tags on another red/green board we drove down to the face at 925m. The last assay of this face showed 57g to the tonne.
Everything below 700m is classified the firing zone. Firing is carried out every crib time: 11am and 6pm.
An explosive called ANFO (ammonium nitrate fuel oil) is used.
Robbie Rigby was helping jumbo driver Garth Bonney attach roof bolts to secure the face before the charging-up men come in to place the explosives.
On the face, the stark white of the gold- bearing quartz angled down the wall, standing out in sharp contrast to the surrounding sandstone and siltstone.
In the tunnel, it was as hot and humid as a stormy summer day.
"Garth is the heart and soul of the place. He's got lots of respect from everyone," Mr McDonald said.
He said he owed his life to Mr Rigby.
"And guys like Robbie are pretty sharp and have an instinct for the rock," he said.
Further down at the 985m level the heat was more intense. A jumbo operator was drilling the decline tunnel.
"By the end of next week we'll be through 1000 metres," Salty said.
The distance from the bottom of the shaft to the face is 5km. Before they had light vehicles underground Salty used to walk the whole mine every day.
On our way back up he removed our tags from the boards.
Everyone is relieved the mine has overcome its earlier troubles, he said.
"A couple of years ago it wasn't looking too good but now we've turned the corner," he said.
As the cage emerged from the shaft the sun was shining brightly in a clear winter sky.
"This is what the fellas love when they come up," Salty said.
Metallurgist Craig Bartle finds the Beaconsfield mine a fascinating challenge.
"I came over here because it was interesting and I've never stopped being interested," he said.
Aside from the air temperature - in the Pilbara he could be working in 50 deg. - the process of extracting the gold at Beaconsfield is quite complex by comparison.
In WA the biggest mine he worked at processed 1100 tonnes of ore an hour. Beaconsfield processes 30 tonnes an hour but the grade is much higher: average 20g to the tonne compared to 3g in WA.
The process in WA basically involved size reduction of the ore and dissolving the gold. At Beaconsfield half the gold appears as free gold and half is locked up in sulphides.
Extracting the second type involves a bacterial oxidation process. The initial problems with the plant slowed gold production and caused a cash flow crisis for the joint venture companies.
The black, bubbling thick liquid in the bacterial oxidation tanks bears little resemblance to gold.
After the gold has been separated in a range of processes it goes to the gold room, a heavily barricaded facility with strict security.
Here it is smelted in a furnace at 1063 deg. and is then poured as molten gold at 80 per cent purity into bricks and stored in a strong room.
One brick weighs 15kg and is worth about $205,000.
Senior plant metallurgist Bob Quilliam came to the mine two years ago with a 26-year history in mining.
"Over the last couple of years the mine has made a big jump. It is very technically demanding because there are so many circuits going at any one time. You have to be on the ball," Mr Quilliam said.
After working in mining on the mainland for 12 years Beaconsfield gold room operator Brendan Moulin was drawn to Beaconsfield by the excitement its opening generated in the industry.
"There was a lot of excitement because the mine was so rich," he said.
"Early on there were a lot of challenges, a lot of very experienced people were trying to figure out the process. In other places it is simpler to extract," Mr Moulin said.
"Now morale is very good and we feel we've been given some ownership of the job. It's exceeded all my expectations."
Mine manager Matthew Gill is quietly optimistic.
"It's good we've been able to stick at it and see it through," he said.
BEACONSFIELD'S DIG OF HISTORY
Gold discovered by Dally brothers in 1877.
Mining started in 1877, Hart and Grubb shafts driven down vertically, reaching 450m.
Over the next 37 years mined one million tonnes of ore mined to recover 840,000 ounces of gold, worth $400 million in today's terms. An economic downturn, the start of World War I, and persistent flooding in the mine saw it close in 1914.
1993: Joint venture formed.
1998: First gold poured.
Now: 135 employees and more than 30 contractors.
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