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Six Miles Beneath New Zealand Exploring the Liverpool State Colliery.

(By Beula Hay.)

Have you ever been down a coal mine? No? Well, if you would like to go, we will ring for permission to see over the Liverpool State Colliery. Wear your oldest clothes, some strong shoes, and catch the second train leaving Greymouth at 7.30 a.m.

It will take a whole day to see over the mine, although it only takes one and a half hours for coal to be drawn from the pits and loaded for transport on the trains. This gives some idea of the speed and activity which goes on in a modern mine.

Seven-thirty a.m. and pouring with typical West Coast rain! Along we jolt in one of the old-fashioned carriages, behind a string of coal trucks. This is no passenger train! We share what the miners feel more at home in —a pall of tobacco smoke and seats upon which they can strew their muddy boots without thinking twice about the fate of the upholstery. The majority of men catch the 6.35 a.m. train to Rewanui in order to reach the mine by 8 o'clock. About three hundred men are employed there at present. Through miles of dripping bush we climb, towering mountains on the right and yawning precipices on the left. When the train arrives at Rewanui we walk up half a mile of rough, ferny track to the cable car. “All set,” ‘phones one of the men to the operator over in the gorge, as we all climb on to the car and hang on while we whizz through the tunnel darkness and emerge on the other side of the bush-clad hillside. Another half-mile walk brings us to the mine offices and power-houses with monster, clicking engines shaking the spotless concrete floors.

When one's conceptions of mining have hitherto been limited to hazy recollections of reading in one's school books about tunnels, miners’ lamps and picks, all the various workings of a big mine come as a revelation. Amidst the deafening crashing and grinding of machinery and ringing of signal bells, there are the engineers, quiet and alert, watching gauges, moving levers, ‘phoning or receiving instructions and attending to all the thousand and one other things necessary in the running of a coal mine.

Glimpsed through darkened doorways are the roaring furnaces with stokers heaping coals into the hissing white flames. These furnaces are kept blazing night and day to provide compressed air, which drives the haulage, an endless steel rope, measuring over two miles and on which there are three hundred coal trucks. When the trucks are filled by the coal hewers the truckers push them, one at a time, along to the jig head. They are then jigged to the bottom by releasing and controlling them with a brake. Away they clatter down the steep, dark tunnel. At the bottom they are coupled in tens and a horse pulls them out to the main level haulage rope. After they leave the mine they are split up into ones and lowered down the inclined haulage over the gorge, through a tunnel to the other side of the hill and along to the coal storage bin, by means of a hydraulic brake. The weight of the descending loaded trucks hauls up the empty ones on the endless rope. When the empty ones pass over a certain point the axles press out daubs of oil which automatically greases them.

“Come in here, and we will get lamps to take down into the mine,” says our guide, as he leads us past the fully equipped ambulance room into the lamp cabin. “These are the oil safety lamps used by the deputies for testing gas in the mines. They turn down the flame and if any gas is present a blue coneshaped cap comes on the wick.” Our guide picks up another similar lamp. “These lamps are what the present day miners take into the mines. When screwed up, the lamps automatically lock themselves, and the only way they can be unlocked is by the electric magnet, in the lamp-room, which draws down and releases the plunger and spring. This obviates any tampering with the lamps after they are taken from the lamp-room to the mine. They weigh about seven pounds and are carried in the hand by a hook. Some of the miners wear electric batteries clamped around their waists and strapped on to their foreheads are lights, known as the head electric safety lamps.”

Into the mine we go with our lamps. There is a dank, earthy smell. It would be pitch dark but for the flickering shadows cast by our lamps. The tunnel is about twelve feet wide and seven feèt high. For many chains the sides are rock until the coal seams show and we come to where there is little else but walls of coal. Wooden rails are laid at the entrance of the mine as a precaution against lightning. Iron ones continue farther on. Along the lefthand side are wires for signalling back to the power houses. All that there is to be seen is a bobbing light every now and again. Nearer it comes; the flicker of a man's face passing by, then the deafening rattle-bang-clank-clank of the coal trucks passing to and fro.

Now we are at an intersection. Seven or eight men are grouped about in front of a cubby-hole office lit by a lantern. They are directing the trucks to and from the various sections. It is like an underground city with trams departing and arriving to and from the various suburbs. As we pass along, page 15 “Hellos,” “Good-days,” nicknames and jokes are exchanged by the miners with our guide.

“Ah! Here comes Betty,” continues our guide. “Betty is one of the thirteen horses we have for hauling the trucks.” Plodding softly through the tunnel she comes, white horse for luck! As soon as she sights her stall, cut in the wall of coal, she stops, waits for the trucks to be unhitched, and then returns for more trucks. The oats from her feed-bag that have dropped and grown in the coal and mud have snow-white stalks.

Every year over fifty-eight tons of stone dust is sprinkled over the coal walls as a preventive against fire. Further on in the mine it is as still as a tomb. Sound does not carry far. Everything seems dead and oppressive. Until we come right into the presence of the miners there is not even a muffled echo of anything. This is mainly because brattice cloth is hung at intervals for ventilation and to direct the air currents to where the workers are. Brattice cloth is thick, fire-proof sacking. We bend our heads and shoulders and turn into a side tunnel to examine the cloth more closely. Suddenly from behind it bursts a snatch of song, “O night of love and starlit sky.” Whose deep voice is that, singing so fervently, in a mine of all places? Surely ‘tis Pluto serenading Persephone in his halls of perpetual night.

At last we come upon a couple of coal hewers. These hewers work in pairs. About fifty-four pairs are working there now. First of all they drill a hole into the face of coal. When it is holed out an official deputy comes along to inspect it and fires a charge of samsonite which has been placed in the shot hole. It blows away the face of the coal, which caves into the hollowed out portion. An electric detonator is used. After that comes the work of loading the trucks.

As the miners blast their way into a coal seam they drive in wooden pillars and rafters to form the tunnel securely.

The ventilating system is an extremely complicated affair. Passing along innumerable dark tunnels with the continual clank-clank-bang of moving trucks we pass through three doors which take all our strength to force open, as the suction of the ventilation is so strong. There is a mighty rush and roar of air as each door opens and closes. Down a rocky precipice we scramble, descend a ladder, creep through another door, and emerge into an inky black, dank and draughty passage. This is the exit of the return air. It is drawn through a gigantic funnel by a sirocco fan, which is on the opposite hillside. The tremendous vacuum caused by this fan draws out the foul air, and the fresh air rushes in the entrance and the openings, called the intake. A 280 h.p. motor drives the fan which draws out 120,000 cubic feet of air every minute. This is only working at half-speed. In the event of accident the engines only need speeding up. The fan can also be reversed, so that, if necessary, fresh air can be pumped in. The fan is going continually, and men are on duty both day and night. Nowadays, with these powerful engines guarding the safety of the workers, women do not live in daily dread while their men are down this modern mine.

The State mines cover over thirty square miles. It is eerie exploring portions of the six miles of twisting coal blackness. During the winter many of the miners see no daylight at all, excepting perhaps just a glimmer at 4 p.m., when they knock off work. Each man is checked in and out of the mine daily by means of the numbers on his safety lamp.

We emerge from the mouth of the mine, look at one another, and laugh. We certainly are more or less smudged! Better have a clean up.

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Enter the bath-house. At the first glimpse it looks like a schoolroom with rows of benches. When the men arrive in the morning they change their working clothes. Consequently, when we enter the bath-house we are greeted with the comical sight of about three hundred pairs of trousers hanging heavenwards, likewise shirts, singlets and coats. Each man is allotted a pulley upon which he hoists his clothes up to the roof and out of the way. Fortunately for our heads, their boots remain below, in neatly arranged pairs. Everything here is amazingly tidy. When the men return after work they bath in the dozens of concrete bathrooms down each side of the hall.

Now for some lunch. What a welcome blazing fire. No coal shortage here! While we dry our sodden shoes and drink mugsfull of steaming tea, we scan a few of the surveyor's plans. These give us a clearer idea of the general layout of the mine. Lunch over, and now we will follow the coal trucks down the gorge, through the tunnel, and into the storage bin. This bin is a huge building with a 4,300 ton capacity. The average daily output from the mine is eight hundred tons.

As the trucks clatter into the rear entrance of this building they slide along to a tippler which clamps and overturns them. The coal drops on to an iron shaker, which is like an enormous sieve. It shakes all the slack through into bins below and passes the lump coal on to a conveyor, which resembles an escalator. Two or three pickers are stationed beside this conveyor, to pick out any foreign matter from the coal. At the turning of the conveyor the coal falls off into the coal bins. The floors of the bins are opened by a lever movement, and the coal falls through into the waiting hoppers. No shovel loading is necessary with this modern method, and one of these railway trucks is filled in fifteen seconds.

Walking back to catch the train, we see the loaded coal waiting to be transported to the bunkers at the Greymouth wharf or railed to the cities to keep our home fires burning.