Karli mentioned to me that he knew of a little mine for a Sunday
mini trip that wasn't too involved. I was up for this and when he said
Middlehope, I was up for it even more as I always wanted to go to this mine,
however….
…it turned out to be one of the nastiest places I've
been in. At the first the entrance drive in looked fine, though I hadn't
expected orange water (Karli was laughing at this). Shortly we starting coming
across timber supports and a lot of these had failed causing wall and roof
spill outs. On the way in we saw a set of crossing points against a wall, lots
of coloured calcite formations, old pipes, all interesting to see. We passed
the crosscut leading to the stope with the explosives with a view to going up
there on the way back. At this point the water was getting a bit deeper and the
roof level lower. Passing under the support timbers and commenting on how bad
they looked, in my mind I was getting more and more unsettled about the state
of these. I knew there was an air receiver in this mine and I really wanted to
see that, but I was rapidly going off the idea. Once past the low section we
eventually reached a roof fall and started to climb up it and back down into
the level. It was at this point that the stink of hydrogen sulphide hit us when
we dropped back into the water. Whilst I slide down over a roof support, I
realised the timber has the consistency of a milk soaked weetabix. I lost my
appetite for going in further at this point.
Turning around, we retraced
our route. At the junction with the explosives stope we crawled into the
crosscut and climbed up a rise into it. The stope had been worked for spar.
There was a wheel barrow here, tubular steel with rubber tyre. Is this classed
as a 'modern' artefact? A short distance to the forehead of the stope we came
to the leaching explosives, all bloated, puffed up, and custard like. Climbing
back down, we exited the mine and I was so happy to be back out.
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