Going Underground

Mining just got real today, because I finally got to go underground. I arrived to the offices at 7 as usual and met with Pietrus to organize for someone to take me and my surveying dream-team of Leonard and Phillimon down to the 6^th level adit, currently the only entrance for personnel into the mine.

Now Pietrus is kind of the all-round handyman of the mine and seems to be helping everyone out all the time, whether it is in engineering at the plant, smelting in the lab, driving the Unimog (more later), or issues with the water pump underground. He is a tall and very tough-looking guy, mostly because he is missing two of his upper front teeth. He is married to Fifi, a thirty-something year-old man who prefers to be called a lady. They live together in one of the houses here and while Pietrus is at work, Fifi usually spends his time smoking a cigarette in his boxers admiring their garden. I know this because their house is on the walk to and from the offices for me, and everyone time I go by, this is what Fifi is doing. I met him once at a BBQ on the weekend, very nice guy and funny too, but if you could hire a comedian to write a heavily stereotyped version of an extremely flamboyant gay guy, I’m telling you Fifi would be it. He’s just one of the many characters this place has to offer.

Pietrus gave us 10 minutes to get ready, so I packed a bag with water, measuring tape, a hammer, my compass and my notebook, dawned my brand new, super-cool blue jumpsuit, and hopped into the Unimog with Pietrus and the guys. The Unimog seems to be the pride and joy of a lot of the people working at this mine. It’s a Mercedes, after all, but it’s a Mercedes built in the mid 1960’s, and essentially looks like a double-bed frame on 4 massive wheels. There are two seats in the front, where one can view down a gaping void in the cabin to the enormous engine and gear box. This thing rattles like you would not believe when it isn’t in gear. The thing it does do well is taking up to 12 people down the treacherous dirt road to the 6 level entrance. I rigged up my headlamp to my safety belt and helmet on the way down before we were dropped off at quarter past 7 to be picked up at 11 from the same spot. Then, in we went.

As we first entered the mine, I needed to stoop pretty low before it opened up to a more generous cavern after about 15 meters. A pair of old rusty narrow-gauge rails split the muddy floor that stretched to about 3 meters across in the wider areas. The ceiling of the main drive shaft always seemed to be just high enough for my 5’11 frame to stand up straight. Then, every 10-20 meters, side bores would go off in various directs including diagonally up or down. These fingers shooting off the main drive shaft are the stopes that crossed into the heavily mineralised zones and were mined for gold in the past. The handy thing was that in many of these stopes, the grade of the gold was spray-painted on the wall where they took samples from. So basically I knew where there was gold and I knew where there was no gold. My task in the coming weeks is to go all around the mine and basically record where the high grades are, what the host rocks look like, and then try to build a three-dimensional picture of where the good stuff is that the previous owners haven’t got to yet.

About 600 meters in horizontally, we reached the main centre shaft, which open up at the top of the hill adjacent to the offices, almost 200 meters above 6 level. Crossing the shaft brought is into “6 level north”, and a further 600 meters until the end of the drive shaft. Along the way I was taking samples and looking at the rocks as much as I possibly could. To be honest it was a bit overwhelming but it should all seem quite familiar a couple weeks from now when I will have spent 30-40 hours underground. A lot of the rocks are heavily mineralised with pyrite, but I can happily say I wasn’t fooled into thinking this was gold, so there.

Tomorrow I am going up to explore 4 and 5 level, which means an added element of excitement: climbing the ladders to different levels! The ladders we passed climb along steeply dipping and pretty claustrophobic-looking caverns, and are between 25 and 40 meters long. Should be slightly more hair-raising than what was essentially a straight walk in the dark today. Now I can’t say I loved being underground, especially for that long, but it wasn’t terribly uncomfortable or scary either. I’ll definitely have to get used to it because I’ll be spending most of my mornings down there over the next couple weeks.