I am posting a bit early today because I have just got back from a medical appointment at Raymond Terrace and we are out for dinner at the Bowling Club this evening and then at our photo club AGM which is held in the Bowling Club. A long day today.
I put this collage together last night of some of the photos taken on Sunday when we went to Broke Village Fair in the Hunter Valley. At the fair they were organizing free bus tours to the Bulga Open Cut Mine which is about 5 minutes away from the village.
Here are a selection of photos taken from the bus at the mine. Unfortunately, we weren't able to leave the bus, but it was still an interesting place to visit.
The top left and bottom right photos show the mine and in the top left you can see the regeneration of the area after the mining has finished and they re-fill the ground and plant trees.
The top right photo is of one of the coal loading trucks and this one is a 300 ton truck. The tyres apparently cost $65,000 each. You wouldn't want a puncture in one of those!
The bottom left picture is of a water sprayer truck and we saw one of these in action damping down the dust, but I couldn't get a good shot of it from the bus.
Great collage Babs, you said you were going to visit one soon. Aren't those trucks huge but when you see them in the mine it's hard to get a sense of scale.
@pcoulson Thanks Peter. those trucks are enormous. A friend of ours is a retired mining manager and he said when he lived out at Broken Hill they always employed women to drive these huge trucks because they had more empathy with the machines. How about that.
@leestevo@creampuff@quietpurplehaze Thanks so much. When you see these machines close up they are huge and yet when you see them in the mine they look like Tonka toys.
@kwind@pittcj17@seattlite@tonygig@paulaw@wearing0@eyesmile@taffy Thanks so much. Paula asked how they fill the holes again after they have removed everything. When they start to dig out the rock they stock pile it in an area just next to the actual mine and then work the coal seam. You can see a seam in the bottom right picture (it is the dark banded area) and then when they have finished the put the rock back in the hole and then move on to the next area and start again. When they have filled in an area they plant trees etc and leave it as it was found.
Great collage Babs, very interesting to see 'how its done'. As you know we have mainly brown coal down here, and also mine by open-cut, but I suspect it's done a bit differently. Must check that out.
@golftragic Thanks Marnie. It was really interesting to watch the trucks they looked like Tonka toys in the distance. It is only when they are close up that you get the sense of how huge they are.
