Beez Neez now Chy Whella - Black Hand Tour

Black Hand Tour

Beez Neez now Chy Whella

Big Bear and Pepe Millard

Sat 8 Nov 2014 23:07

Chamber of the Black Hand Mine Tour

We descended the many stairs down into the Black Hand Mine and found ourselves in a ‘shop’ that stretched the length of the first chamber, set up as a jewellers complete with display cabinets. On the other side lots of information boards and a side room set up for tea and coffee. Already we were amazed considering five minutes ago we were up in the heat of day, now in the cool but forty feet down. As we waited for the others on the tour to pay their entry fees we had a look at some of the pictures on the wall. The one above, shows the shop and our first hint that this was to be like no other tour we had ever been on.

Once we had paid for our tour Jock our guide led us through a gap and on. From the lower level art chamber – own blog, looking up. Settled with Jock to listen to the life of an opal mine.

We were fascinated to learn how people actually came and started digging, all very simple. You find an area measuring fifty by fifty metres, this can be ‘new ground’ within the dig area. A previously worked area that is now available or an area that is currently being dug but up for sale. In recent years a safety course has been introduced and must be attended before you continue in the process.

Notes:

The reference peg used to mark out the claim should be clearly noted on the diagram.
Bearings and distances should be shown on the diagram for every part of the markout – both the traverse from the reference mark to the claim corner and each traverse which forms a side of the claim. All bearings are from magnetic north.
Nearby or adjacent claims should be shown on the diagram and include the claim number.
If the claim being marked out is an overpeg of a former claim, this should be noted on the diagram.
The reference mark used to mark out the claim should be known to the Lightning Ridge staff prior to marking out the claim. Claims based on unknown reference marks will not be accepted.
If no reference mark is available in the vicinity, another method should be used to mark out the claim, or the claim should be used to mark out the claim, or the claim should remain pending until a reference point can be established.

Next you go to the Mine Office and register your area, once the paperwork has been completed the Office issues a Claim Number, a map marked with your ‘lot’ and off you go.

You take yourself, shovel in one hand, worksheet in the other and fence off your hole or make a metal grid over your hole. Then you follow the worksheet which shows you how to support your shaft. Then you become one of the hopefuls who give the landscape its unique look. The less successful have their spade, more luck have digging equipment and the most successful have sorting gear. Next to the piles of ‘slag’ are various polite notices informing people that should they touch anything they will shot............and words to that effect. Some live on site with a variety of old caravans, converted containers, sheds etc. making the whole area look like some kind of ‘one careful owner’ in the blistering heat – temperatures here can hit fifty Centigrade. So this particular adventure is not for the city-dwelling faint hearts.

Here is an article called Black Bonanza, Dreams of Fire, this gives a good look into the life of a miner and opal mining: Opal is Australia’s national gemstone, and black opal is the rarest and most valuable form, at times reaching carat prices rivalling those of the best diamonds. The Lightning Ridge area in northwestern New South Wales produces black opal of the highest quality and much of the world’s supply of darker opal.

“The Ridge” is famous for red-on-black gems of superlative brilliance in every conceivable pattern – harlequin, rolling flash, flower garden, picture stone and Chinese writing. From the deepest, clearest blues and greens to rippling golden orange, vermillion, carmine and fuchsia, every colour of the spectrum – glorious and incandescent – is seen in the best of these stones.

Lightning Ridge is on the edge of the Australian outback, semidesert country with wide horizons, huge skies and empty blue-grey bush. The geology consists of low outcrops of Early Cretaceous sedimentary sandstones overlain by Tertiary gravels and silicates. Black opal is found at depths of three to thirty metres in fine-grained Finch claystones, which are freshwater channel deposits laid down more than one hundred million years ago on a coastal floodplain.

During opal mining, it is these ancient sediments that are brought to the surface and dumped as mullock heaps, creating the characteristic moonscape of the Australian opal fields, blinding in the fierce sun.

Lightning Ridge earned its name around 1870 when a shepherd, his dog and flock of sheep were struck by lightning and killed – a portent, perhaps, of times to come when hopes and dreams were ignited by opal flashes in the dark. A few years after that shepherd met his demise, opal was found at the ‘Ridge, and opal mining commenced in 1901. In this unforgiving environment where lack of water is matched by the heat and the dust, the early miners were tough and fearless, sinking mine shafts through shinecracker – silicified sandstone, with hammer and chisel. The earliest mining methods were, of course, the simplest and most arduous, pick and shovel, windlass and leather bucket. Working by candlelight to find the flashes of red and often rejecting or ignoring the blue-green stones, the old-timers missed a great deal of the opal, which they discarded along with sandstone, opal dirt and gravel. It was piled on the surface around the shaft openings as huge mullock heaps.

The mullock was reprocessed in dry rumblers in the 1960’s, a time of mechanical innovation on the fields. By the 1970’s, inventions such as the automatic self-tipping hoist and the wet puddler enabled faster extraction and finer processing. After the late 1970’s, processing and washing were further accelerated by the use of agitators or converted cement mixing barrels. Open cut mining is used less in black opal country than in other Australian opal mining areas, but by the late 1970’s, the richest areas of the Ridge were being reworked as open cuts.

Ron’s certificate.

These days, opal mining claims are fifty by fifty metres, and each miner may register up to two claims. Miners must complete a safety course before registering a claim, and mine management training has been introduced.

To start mining, a shaft roughly one metre in diameter is dug down to the level thought to contain opal.

Ladders and lights are secured, machinery is lowered into the shaft and the miner begins tunnelling. “Drives” and “Ballrooms” are created as the miner searches for opal along the way. Opal dirt is excavated using jackhammers or machines with names such as ‘digger’, ‘bogger’ or ‘blower’, many of which are unique to opal mining. The opal-bearing claystones are brought to the surface by a hoist or blower and loaded into trucks.

The Processing Dam. The settling tank of a processing dam contains tons of silt, which dries in the sun after being washed in modified cement mixers called “agitators”.

At the processing dams, huge agitator barrels are perched in rows along massive earth ramps. The Ridge is the only place on earth where opal dirt is processed in this manner, and the dams are spectacular and mythic sites. Opal dirt is churned and washed in the agitators using water from the dams. Because of the limited water supply, this effort is communal. The process can take many hours, depending on the hardness of the dirt. The claystone wears down into slurry that is channeled into settling tanks. Eventually only hard material – sandstone and opal – remains in the barrel.This residual material is emptied onto sorting trays, hand searched for opal, then left in heaps that slowly weather back into the soil.

Opal is found in seams, sometimes there are some amazing finds. “Eric” is probably Australia’s best known fossil that has been preserved in opal. Found in 1987 by Joe Vida near Coober Pedy in South Australia, Eric is a pliosaur, a marine reptile closely related to the plesiosaur. He lives as do the other finds in the Australian Museum. Vertebral section of the “Ken Harris Pleiosaur” found in 1976 in Ken Harris’ opal mine near White Cliffs, New South Wales.

Opalised jaw fragments from the early Cretaceous were discovered at Lightning Ridge. Steropodon galmani found in 1982. Kollikodon ritchieri under reflected light and transmitted light to show the detail of preservation.

Back to our tour. In this particular mine, the initial hole was dug until it reached a well defined marker between chalky sediment rock and bedrock. The opals, if they are there will be found in the layer that my beautiful assistant is demonstrating. From there test areas go out like a spiders web – within the claim. It is to be noted that this mine has yielded $27,000 in twenty five years........

The current active areas within the mine. Hardwood poles support the newest dig. The inspection hole seemed to go on for a very long way.

This mine must cover many claims and is a smorgasbord of tunnels and workings. When exhausted as a mine this will over time, no doubt, become extensions to the art galleries.

A newspaper clipping showing Ron.

Just a taste of what we saw on the art front.

I had to have a little rummage, the claystone was cool to the touch and soft and crumbly like moist chalk. We loved the moving truck but simply adored the wheelbarrow with its ruddy extension.