Mining tragedy

Back from my holiday and on site completing some solo work all I've been hearing on the radio today is news regarding the 29 trapped -likely dead- miners in the Pike River Coal mine in NZ. It seems a gas explosion occured on Friday due to a deadly mix of methane and carbon monoxide released from a bore hole. Full Story. The gases prevented safe rescue of the poor fellows and with a second explosion today, more powerful than the first, they're presumed dead. My heart goes out to the families.

Wandering around the bush today I thought maybe I'd revise my plans to do some underground mine work in the future. Specially because compared to a dank dark tunnel there are many beautiful things to see on the surface, and no I'm not talking solely about pretty rocks. The West Australian bush is under-rated in my opinion. Tourists and many locals see the western beaches or the far southern forests and seem to forget the stuff in between, which might I add encompasses an area bigger than most European nations. It's not pretty in an ornamental sense and hasn't a particularly breath-taking landscape but I think it's existence alone worthy of respect. This winter local farmers in the eastern Wheatbelt received a mere 100mm of rain, well less than half the average. Yet the bush is full of trees, bushes and perennials. It's a wonder that anything survives in such harsh conditions, when it can be 46ᵒC for an entire week -this from first-hand experience- yet it flourishes as best it can. This combined with the plethora of prospecting 'trash' keep me on track when my goldfish brain needs 5 minutes of distraction. Here's some photo's I snapped today to share with the blog-o-sphere, welcome to my other office;

A pile of tinnies from those not very environmentally friendly prospectors, this patch has been worked since the 1920's so could be difficult to find the culprits.

A dumped car, not very interesting I guess but by the angles on the chrome bumper I'd say she'd be a good 50 years old.

A collapsed mine shaft, just a little one, this was worked up til 1924. Probably went down a good 20m, the ol boys would have climbed down there every day and worked with pick and muscle to get their gold.

There was water in bottom of this pit only a couple of months ago, I loved the crunching sound it made when I walked over this.