As for Mt Magnet, thanks for the pics! Home sweet home for 3 years, straight out of uni! I left in 1985 and haven't been back
. Hope you won't mind some reminiscing.
My view of town from The Mount:
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Hard to tell, but I think the white open pit area in your pic:
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... is the mine I used to work on, but in those days it was an underground operation, with a shaft and headframe. The heathens have dug it all up
. Every morning, I got dropped a couple of hundred metres straight down the hatch in the 'cage'! Was nice and cool though, in summer.
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... except when you went down the little alternative egress shaft, where you just stood on a bucket and hung on (for dear life) to the winder rope
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I played miner (only once ... incredibly loud & hard work). A pneumatic 'air leg' hole borer. Drill a pattern of 1.5m long holes, fill with explosive, detonate, clear out, repeat.
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The good stuff (photo is faded, sorry). This was exceptional and there's not that much gold in weight there:
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And the roads back then were no better than they are now. Note that because I'm not changing the tyre, I wasn't driving!
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