NTL - Down the Mine, AGM and Rainbow's End

It's been an action packed few days for robbo24.

Went down the mine;
Went to the AGM;
Went to Rainbows End to find the historic equipment given by NTL to the Gold Rush ride.

So here we are exactly one year on from my site visit to the Talisman mine. In 12 short months it has gone from overgrown, gorse and rat infested piece of crud to a functional underground mine site.

For starters, there's heaps going on down at the mine. About 8-10 people doing various tasks around the mine site on a Tuesday afternoon. Good to actually meet the people who are gainfully employed by our shareholder funds. Excellent group of people, can't say enough good things about them. One of them lent me their hat to go underground.


Here's a shot of outside the portal/entrance to the mine. Looking snazzy. Lots of equipment around. Can still hear State Highway 2 from the portal pad which is no surprise. Who would have thought that underground activities are that much quieter than a nearby highway.


Here's another shot of the front of the mine. Funny how the TerraFirma logo got into both these photos. Unabashed thumbs up to this company by the way, a great group of lads and they are doing great things underground.



Here's something built in the 1990s, probably by @bizzo. Still looks pretty sturdy, well done @bizzo.



Here's nice picture I took of part of the Maria Vein. The black stuff in the quartz is one of the parts of the ore that has lots of gold in it (thanks to the 4-5 geologists/miners/mining engineers who rattled off intricate facts about gold/silver bearing sulphides and gold/silver bearing electrum - facts that I partially grasped). There is a lot of gold here apparently. The Talisman mine has electrum, sulphide and visible gold/silver too.

This part of the Maria Vein had a tunnel through it, but it was about 2.5m high and a few meters wide. The old wood on the left is leftover from the late 1890s/early 1900s, and the wood on the right is more recent. These types of wooden supports are being replaced by rock bolts so machines can operate in the mine. All this wooden stuff will be removed.


Here's another quartz picture.


And another.


I don't know why I took this picture.


Here's a zoomed in shot of some people using a drill to install rock bolts.

We ended up going down to the a point not too far from the turn off to the Mystery Vein but they are still installing rock bolts, removing all the old crud and making sure that the mine is safe for work. Heaps of work going on here, I was truly very impressed as a layperson shareholder!

Bonus pic:

The back of someone's head and a a big chunk of quartz just presenting itself from the wall of the mine