* * *
20. The Pallid Bricklayer; and The Industrial Model Cage
The next four days were taken up with a series of conducted tours and inspections, the construction site of the new Catholic Church being first on our agenda. The building appeared about three-quarters finished, its walls enveloped in a forest of scaffolding.
High up on a platform a number of workmen could be seen laying bricks. We wandered around the area for a while looking at things and after a while one of the bricklayers came down – as if to query our presence. He was a heavy pallid-looking man, all spattered with cement and wearing just boots, shorts and a battered hat.
We quickly discovered this person was Father Kelly, the local parish priest … who happily confessed to being a compulsive bricklayer. “I rather enjoy going up with the workmen and getting my hands dirty,” he informed us as he picked up a piece of rag that was lying on a stack of bricks. (I thought he was going to wipe his hands with it but instead he put it on. It was his shirt.) “In any case, I certainly have no intention of overseeing the construction of this fine church without putting in a few bricks of my own,” he added.
None of this surprised us really; he was just like Father O’Long. Mud or mortar, there wasn’t much difference. Later we discovered the locals referred to him as ‘Father Ned’. This was no surprise either. As far as we were concerned, anyone able to trump Father O’Long as he had done with Zack’s enrolment deserved to be called Ned Kelly.
The following day we were taken on a conducted tour of the giant Mount Isa Mines concentrating and smelting plants. (A closely conducted tour, actually.) We were fortunate in this as there was a ban on children entering the leases, yet a little bit of hocus-pocus was arranged wherein we boys were classified for the duration as students.
This was perfectly true, of course, as far as it went, the inference being that we were from a university – though from which university and students of what was conveniently left unanswered.
Conducting our tour was a Mister Dunstable, the person in charge of safety underground. He addressed us at our assembly point and explained how his instructions were to be followed exactly, emphasizing that if anyone stepped out of line he would terminate the visit immediately. We were then issued with a hard-hat each, plus overalls, boots and safety-glasses – all too large – told what it was we’d be seeing, then taken to various vantage points in a staff bus and shown these things.
And I have never been so bewildered in my life. On assembling at the viewing point Mr Dunstable would describe via the megaphone he was carrying the things which lay before us – machines that were crunching, swallowing, tumbling, stirring and melting on a scale and at a noise level I could never have imagined and could scarcely believe. And I heard not a single word of it above the unabating din.
Eventually the tour ended and we were taken back to the visitors’ reception area. Father O’Long was waiting for us there in the dilapidated old bus Father Kelly had wangled from the Mount Isa Mines’ management.
“Well boys, what did you think of all that?” he asked us. When no one answered he added, “Come on lads, show a bit of enthusiasm. Kevin, tell Mr Dunstable your impressions.”
This was a prearranged signal for the boy named to extend our appreciation for the visit. Gees, why me, I thought, and said, “Well Mr Dunstable, on behalf of all the boys here, I’d firstly like to say thank you for taking the time to show us around.
“We’ve seen things here today that er ... I mean, I don’t think... Well, none of us, really... That is ... er ... you know, just what it’s like...” (That seemed to sum it up. I could have mentioned about the din and the confusion, but why waffle on unnecessarily?)
The next day’s excursion turned out to be a trip into the underground workings. This caught us completely by surprise and could only have been arranged on Mr Dunstable’s personal initiative. The tour was optional, however, and most of the boys declined the offer.
As for myself… Well, with my compulsive interest in minerals and mining – some would say obsession – and being keen to learn more about these things, nothing short of being encased in steel-reinforced concrete would have stopped me from accepting such an opportunity.
In the end only six of us elected to go, the declinees arguing that being underground would be even more noisy and confusing than the surface tour, but with the added fillip of a thousand or so feet of rock overhead (some 300-plus metres in metric money.) And they were right, of course. —Well, to some extent.
What surprised me though was how well Mr Dunstable managed to hide his disappointment on seeing the low attendance, especially after going to so much trouble on our behalf. In fact, compared to the previous day he seemed far less stressed and almost friendly as he took us through our pre-descent briefing.
Besides the regulation overalls, helmet, boots and safety glasses, our costuming this time included a helmet light, powered via a belt-mounted battery and cable. Fully togged-up we resembled the specially trained humanoid orangutans they sent into the tunnels of the Martian Megatron Machine in “The Monster from the Moons of Mars”, a flick we’d seen the previous term (…a likeness many of our compatriots would have claimed went further).
On passing inspection we were led from the underground visitors’ assembly room to the main personnel shaft and its huge winding machine. There we were to use a small cage set into the side of the shaft – a facility for incidental staff movement which operated separately from the main winder.
Doogle and Sash were present as well, making up our usual threesome. “The Low-marks Brothers” Rosie used to call us, but we were getting by. Disappointingly, the expedition had to forego any spiritual guidance, as for some reason Father O’Long and Brother SanSistez had declined to join us.
“Well, of course they did,” Sash pronounced on hearing this. “They wouldn’t want to get any closer to Satan’s fiery realm.”
“That’s a ‘hell’ of a thing to suggest,” Doogle parried.
“Yeah! And the Devil made me do it.” Sash returned.
To me it sounded like the lead-up to our Lannercost Pub adventure, with Sash and Doogle bouncing smart-arse comments off each other to hide their nervous apprehension and reinforce their self-confidence.
It was funny in a way. Neither would have pulled out of the trip underground in front of the other, even if they’d been half frightened to death by the prospect. I was all right, though. Excited perhaps, but as you’ve probably guessed, I was looking forward to the trip.
At the pit-head all seven of us packed into the smallish “man-cage”. It was a tight squeeze, too. When we were set Mr Dunstable signalled the winder operator … and instantly the cage floor opened and cast us footlong into the abyss.
“Plummet” is the appropriate word here I believe. This was no retail emporium elevator gently transporting old ladies up and down to the powder room in chrome and carpeted security. This here was the industrial model, a grimy mesh cage dangling on the end of a five hundred kilometre steel rope, the giant winding-winch at the surface paying out our lifeline as we hurtled toward the centre of the earth at terminal velocity minus one.
Downward we bucketed, the lights of a working level strobing the cage every so often as they flicked upward past us, the return to utter blackness instantaneous. We had our helmet lights on, of course, but the principal illumination in our Cage Of Death was the whites of our eyes.
After a hundred or so kilometres the cage suddenly slowed, so violently it should have reduced us to metre-high midgets, at the same time refuting any notions we’d had that the rope must have broken or the end run off the winder-drum. Mr Dunstable had explained earlier how safety devices would prevent the cage from falling in the unlikely event of such a happening – all that had kept us from screaming in terror as we’d hurtled downward.
Then, with a final jerk, we stopped, exactly at one of the working levels – I can’t remember which, forty thousand and something I’d
guess.
“Great ride!” Doogle exclaimed as he stepped out into the tunnel. “Give the driver a tip.”
“Yeah, great!” added Sash – with, I thought, a certain shaky bravado. “Whatcha reckon, Case?”
Their legs looked as wobbly as mine. “Fantastic!” I replied. “What’ll we go on next?”
Our host studiously ignored this light-hearted banter. Instead he headed off toward the centre of the planet or somewhere, along the way showing us crib-rooms and haul shafts and “dee-clines” and sub-levels – plus a good many other things. But to my mind the most interesting place he took us was into a working zone in the lead orebody. In the roof we could see twisted seams of galena, while toward one end lay a large mound of broken ore which was yet to be removed.
Mr Dunstable explained that it was the roof they were actually mining. Holes would be drilled upward about three metres along the full length of the section, explosive charges put in them and the whole lot fired down. The ore was then hauled away with a funny flat-looking front-end scoop. After that the floor of the tunnel was filled in with waste material and when they could reach the roof again the process was repeated.
We were allowed to take specimens but the fine crystalline ore was not overly interesting. Instead I was lucky enough to find a flat hand-sized sample which exhibited the acute folding evident in the orebody above us.
We then left the “cut and fill stope”, as Mr Dunstable called it, and walked back out to the service tunnel. There he asked us a question, which, he told us, the guides always put to their visitors. “Which way should we go,” he said, “to get back to the man-shaft?”
Nobody volunteered an answer and, as we walked along behind him, I contemplated the problem. It was not just a matter of disorientation in a three dimensional maze, I reasoned, but that most of the maze had a grey rocky sameness about it which left any novice without reference points. Noise and darkness in the tunnels just added to the problem.
After a surprisingly long walk we reached our destination and Mr Dunstable pressed the winder room signal. While we were waiting the cage flashed by on its way to the workings deeper down, and so quickly did it go by that it barely left an image on my retinas.
Soon it returned to our level, where it abruptly stopped. Mr Dunstable opened the mesh doors; first the shaft gate then the cage gate. After we’d stepped in he joined us and secured the gates.
“Take us up to the roof, driver,” said Doogle. “We’re bustin’ outa this joint!”
The upward journey proved no less invigorating than the descent, our cage quickly reaching escape velocity as the big winder reeled us in. A short time later we were back at the surface, eyes smarting from the sudden brightness. As we stumbled out into the sunshine Sash shielded his eyes in an exaggerated fashion. “Hey! Bad timing!” he shouted. “The sun’s gone nova!”
Mr Dunstable was not impressed. “I suspect you boys would get along a lot better in life if you took things a little more seriously,” he said in a disapproving tone.
“They don’t mean any disrespect, Mr Dunstable,” I explained to him. “They’re just over-compensating for getting back here safely after being half scared out of their brains.”
“But if you were worried so much about it why did you come?” he asked.
“That’s bullshit, Casey,” said Sash.
“Yeah, Mr Dunstable,” added Doogle. “We wouldn’t have missed this ride for anything!”