Going deep for Au - Mineshafts

Talking about mullock heaps, if your doing ok from the stuff up top....
why not take it a few steps further?
I'll let the pitcures do the talking.
Please don't try this if your not very well trained.....







About 30'-36' down, dosen't look that far does it!
Phill.

Hi Phill
As long as all safety precautions are taken and all the risks are known, like foul air, shaft stability , snakes etc you could do well, this type of prospecting even for the experienced there is a level of risk but for the inexperienced it's just plain dangerous.
I think most of us have either tried this or at least thought about it at some stage, I did, nearly passed out with bad air and just got out in time, I didn't smell anything unusual except dampness which you would expect.
Cheers Mark

all i can say is bugger that, one wrong move and that could be it for you... i'll just stick to finding it on top, but it would be good to see how you go...
cheers
stoppsy

and apart from all the health risk's.....i doudt you would be on the bottom, with 150-160 years worth of debry that
falls in to those shafts.

the cops dug down in a shaft near avoca vic (i think it was) and it took them ages just to get down to the
layer that the top of the debry was at in the 1970's
cheers

Some thoughts to put your minds at ease.........

"i doudt you would be on the bottom, with 150-160 years worth of debry that
falls in to those shafts."

Thats bottom allright, the horisontal chamber running in about 10' proves that one.
This particular one was dug during the depression of the 1930's

"the cops dug down in a shaft near avoca vic (i think it was) and it took them ages just to get down to the
layer that the top of the debry was at in the 1970's"

What do you expect....they were cops!!!

"I think most of us have either tried this or at least thought about it at some stage"

Really?, I am yet to meet anyone else who has taken a detector down a shaft, thought about it yes but not done it. Not saying in the slightest that no one else has, I just haven't meet any, I must be living under a rock or something.

"all i can say is bugger that"

Now that's more like it Stoppsy Most peoples reaction's go along the lines of something to do with travel and sex!!

Mark, safety precausions are always parramount, and yes risks are there. I won't bore you with quallifications and experience but both myself and the guy at the bottom have lots of both.
I still believe it's a bigger risk getting in the car and travelling on the road to get there.
Phill.

But did you find any Gold down there????

Regards Johnny

phill wrote:

Really?, I am yet to meet anyone else who has taken a detector down a shaft

GPX-4500 & NFA 14x9" Coil with Garrett ProPointer Pinpointer used. The guy in the pic is a neighbor who came with us to show us the well-hidden shaft entrance.

Here's the business end of my own GPX in a shaft at Pyramul, NSW. The owner is displaying a target recovered from the soil underfoot. Surprisingly it worked faultlessly down there. There was also a moody, twitching wombat tunneling away at the end of the shaft so we assumed the air wasn't too bad. He did NOT appreciate the cattledogs that came into the mine with us.

I wouldn't recommend doing this though. Bad air and pockets of C02 kills a lot of people with the same idea. Vertical shafts as well as horizontal drives can all carry pockets of C02 and they'll knock you out in about 20 seconds. It's all over after that. Some of the mines at nearby Sunny Corner are leaching a toxic gas that kills the grass downhill of the entrances in a big stripe. Those are now fenced off for safety.


You can just make out the edge of the wombat's back in the background behind my wife. The owner of the property (and the dogs that came with us) is just out of shot in the foreground.


This is what it looks like down there without the camera flash. This mine was unmarked on the maps and was dug around 1860.

Hi Johnny,
That's always the burning question....
With THAT hole the story go's like this, with the detector.. zip.
But... we did bring a lot of soil/rock to the top, it looked something like what a bloke I meet from QLD called "billyrock"
it was full of very fine sparkles with a gold like appearence.... but I don't reckon it was gold.
My mate bought a processor to put it through, but alas he went walkabout a short time latter and I lost contact with him......
Maybe he got rich?


Marco........"Not saying in the slightest that no one else has" Sorry, I ment on a rope... like vertically straight down not wander in like a wombat. This generally requires jumaring or prussicking back out, and mate with a BA set on your back that can be an effort but I spose you would know all about that.

Cheers, Phill.

hey nero, how much have you found going down the sharfts if you dont mind me asking? now i thinking it would be good to go down with someone who knows what there doing
cheers
stoppsy

BTW Marco,
If your talking to me I wasn't asking for your recommendation; I put the post on here for a bit of intrest for other users of the forum thats all.
In my experience; bad air is usally from the curry I had the night before, CO2 makes the bubbles in my beer and in 8 yrs working with the NSW government in search & rescue & as an adviser/assistant to the police rescue squad I haven't found any persons dead at the bottom of old mine shafts nor have I heard of any locally.
(lots of people killed with the same idea eh?)
But... I have extracted lots of really twisted car & truck bodies from around dead people who have made mistakes or been the victims of really unfortunate circumstances.
And I'm pretty well aware of Sunny Corrner also.

phill wrote:

Marco........"Not saying in the slightest that no one else has" Sorry, I ment on a rope... like vertically straight down not wander in like a wombat. This generally requires jumaring or prussicking back out, and mate with a BA set on your back that can be an effort but I spose you would know all about that.

Cheers, Phill.

I get you. I'm not into caving though. I've been down a few vertical mineshafts with a detector (they simply bottomed out and I wanted to see what sort of material was on the bottom layer). Although that was with a lighter X-Terra 70 detector (VLF). My biggest fear is not the snakes or the gas but the damned spiders. I see too many Mouse Spider webs near Bathurst and Funnel Web Spider webs (and tubes) on the coast that I literally can't stand the thought of them. I was coaxing a leaf-tailed gecko out from a crevice in a vertical shaft once whilst using the spoke from a bicycle wheel - when something moved into my range of vision on my left very abruptly. It was a dark blurry blob and so I leaned back from the crevice to see what it was, thinking an animal was down there with me. A Funnel Web Spider was about two inches from me cheek and it had probably been attracted to the edge of its web by my hair touching it. Though I wasn't bitten, it literally scared the living heck out of me since that day. The web had extended from the spiders silken tube and was wrapped around part of the wall of the rock. Do not want.

BTW, did you see the movie 127 Hours? Worth a look if you're into spelunking. The cave divers at the Sydney Katoomba area have to deal with Funnel Webs at almost every cave entrance. I'm surprised no-one has been bitten yet. MadTuna saw a Funnel Web in his detecting camp once at Hill End if I remember correctly.

phill hi
i`m guessing since you`ve got all the abseiling gear you would be aware of this but are you aware of the dangers of entering a confined space and the possibility of "bad air". if you are going to carry out this past time i cannot stress enough that you must get an oxygen detector and lower it in BEFORE YOU ENTER. if you happen to drop down into a pocket of hydrogen sulphide , which can be caused by rotting vegetation or rotting food, one breath and you are unconsious , 2 breaths and you are dead.
that aside, if you are taking all safety precautions , all the best with your detecting
cheers
dave

Good luck with it Phill, you haven't looked at some of the photo's of my underground detecting then. (in my gallery of the forum)

Cheers

has anyone done some videos off the underground... i know i posted a few a few months ago off you tube but i can't think off what i put them under...
cheers
stoppsy

Good stuff Phill, nothing ventured nothing gained. I also like getting the adrenalin pumping by entering dodgy looking shafts and tunnels but mainly adits. Was in an adit one day away up in the ranges checking out all the quartz leaders in the wall that produced the coarse gold in the alluvial down the hill, when I was stirred to attention by a noise in the black of the adit ahead of me. I shone my l.e.d. torch directly down the adit to reveal two eyes glaring back at me belonging to a solid (you know the ones) black wallaby
O-keee-do-kee then. Slowly shift myself into reverse without grinding the gears and back up. Prepared the whole way to hit the deck in case of a charge from my subterranian homed friend (adit was not much wider than shoulder width) I reached the safety of the loose, steep, slippery as a butchers d*** mullock outside. Shame I didnt have a friend there to share the experience
All my investigation is done with caution and not stupidity. I do like to see the labours our predecessors toilled to achieve above and underground. There is nothing quite like seeing a hanging wall with tons and tons of backfill being held in place by 120 year old timber that is still doing its job as supports....just (this is another story).
This is not everyones cup of tea!
Cheers
Curley

Gday


There have been very few old mines that I would have ventured into even if I had the desire to do so, and for a start I think that you have to be trained not only in the methods of safely entering and exiting these mines, and using the correct equipment, but also in being able to recognise the dangers involved.

Most of the mines I have seen look to me (the untrained) very dodgy and I would be very reluctant to go down one, the only exception being if someone had fallen down one and I had to try and get them out, many of these mines were dug a long time ago and are very much worse for wear, often the sides are undercut from water entering and many are filled with all manner of rubbish and widlife, foul air and the list goes on.

Common sense tells me that I dont have the correct training to do this sort of thing, and judging by the questions from other members, few of them have any training either, so I think that it would be foolhardy to attempt it if you dont know EXACTLY what you are doing, personally I would not recommend it to anyone unless they were prepared to undergo specialised training first, and be prepared to purchase the necessary gear required to do it as well.

Something else people may want to think about is the fact that if things do go pearshaped while you mucking about in one of these things them some poor sucker has to risk life and limb to get you back out, I would be very surprised if anyone qualified in the field of rescue operations would recommend untrained people do this sort of thing, as they of all people would know how dangerous a small amount of knowledge can be and would have had the real life experience of having seen careless people get themselves in this sort of situation.

cheers

stayyerAU

I don't care how much gold, diamonds or winning lotto tickets are down an old shaft, I will not go anywhere near them. I am not in favour of meeting someone who might have been down there for 150 years or so (Ooooohhhhh...the spirit world ). I wouldn't be jumaring or prussicking or whatever. I'd jump straight out of the hole without touching the sides.

Apart from that, after the rains we've had recently, the ground strength has altered in may places.
My wife and I drove up a track we had been along many times early last year only to find a 2 meter diameter bottomless hole right in the centre of the track. Some well intentioned person had surrounded the hole with branches so it was impassible.

Good luck to you Phill. You obviously know what you're doing. I'm afraid you couldn't get me down there even with offers of immortality. If it was left to me, all the gold below 2 feet down would still be there

Robert

as i work under ground no thanks for one no vent two no ground support and 150 year old mine

if i cant see the sky above i dont want it

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the replys and comments, as I said in the original post
Don't try this unless your VERY WELL trained.
But I just have to put this one in for Murachu,



You can still see the sky....
Dunno where the rope went thou??

But let's get an idea of whats "very well trained"...

Well about a decade of doing this sort of thing professionally is a bit of a start..



There's two of us in this pic, look close...

Cheers, Phill. (stay safe)

Phill, What have you done to Murachu? He'll be dreading looking out from that hole,all knight.

Cheers kon61.

Hey Phil amazing stuff. That's one hell of a climb and my vertigo wont let me do this anymore!!!
By the way how many nuggets on the edge of this cliff. I know I'd be dropping them to of load the weight LOL
I loved the days of climbing - keep it up.
cheers vasilis

Thanks Vasilis,

First lead that climb in 2004 I think, pretty easy going at grade 13 but did get a bit spooked when I went off the line and started doing "come out and play" at grade 22 by error, live and learn eh! Should have got my partener to give me a bit more beta on where it went....
Still, pretty airy at 68 meters thou, plenty of space under you.
Put up about a dozen new lines at Mt. York area in 06' but my real climbing days faded when I got responsable again and got back into the workforce.
I absolultly loved climbin' and still dream of days spent on the rock.... but like anything you need to keep at it to go hard and now, I'm a bit soft
Alass... only gold up on those cliffs were the sunsets and feelings of elation on glorious autumn evenings
Phill.

I went into a tunnel east of Warburton Vic and it opened up into a big room like area with all water worn quartz in the walls but didnt get to run the detector around them because i was bitten by some kind of bug on the neck when entering, also on the floor was a ground mat and some other stuff maybe utensils and the like that didnt look to old so i kind of felt uneasy about meeting a hermit or fugitive face to face in a dark den,

Also with going into shafts ive thought about it a fair bit and it is very good to hear so many people with miss givings about going into them, you would have to asses each hole differently, for instance hard rock would be safer than alluvial, so say you where going to go down an alluvial one have a look at the rest of the shafts around see if any are giving way if they are falling in then dont go down, make sure theres been no flooding lately in the area because it might be dry up the top but down the bottom of the lead it might be wet, and wet clay is going to be more unstable than dry clay, the wash itself should be ok if not wet because its usauly compacted kinder like cement.

I would consider doing it in two's one up top, also i would buy a mini compressor that plugs into the ciggie lighter of the car or plugs onto a 12 volt battery and dropping the air hose down to bottom and pumping all the crap air out, dropping down or climping down a rope ladder or aliminium ladder down a shafts not that bad, think about the poor buggers that had to dig them, or the ones back in the day digging 700 feet ones, or working in a [wet] deep lead drive where they needed to pump out the water all the time because they where working below the water table, stuff that for a laugh.