Given our early start and big drive on Sunday, we were a bit slower off the mark on Monday! We drove around a bit before deciding to do a mine tour.Vaughan wasn't keen to listen to "old farts talking about rocks" so stayed in the car reading his book, keeping Bandit company!
The rest of us enjoyed seeing a different style of mining to those we'd viewed previously (ie. an organised opal mine tour at Lightning Ridge, the walk-in gold mine at Maldon and our excellent geocaching adventure).
Our guide showed us bands of wash that were once river beds (around 70 million years ago), with a few sapphires and a zircon left in situ.
We also viewed a short movie showing equipment being used in a working mine. The pic at the bottom right of the first collage is a "tummy tunnel". Pioneer miners excavated these from a prone position. Yep, they were very keen fellows!
Our tour guide wasn't a fan of the micro bats living in the mine but we thought they were lovely. I've tried to identify them using my Australian Mammals guide but it's a tricky process and I'll need to research further. (We don't usually see bats so closely, though encountered some in a cave at Kwiambal during our 2010 visit).
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