MAGPIE: A tender journey into the broken heart of Australia by Alan Ryan

Author:Alan Ryan [Ryan, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gone Walkabout Books
Published: 2021-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Drilling

One hundred and thirteen metres down, deep within the guts of the ironstone ridge, the blistered face of the tungsten carbide bit smashed countless times a second into the hard cherty rock at the base of the hole. Compressed air roared down the outer annulus of the drill rods and powered the pneumatic hammer driving the bit millimetres deeper with every strike. The returning air blew the drill face clear of debris and lifted the rock fragments up an inner tube to the surface for analysis. In the industrial pursuit of buried treasures, the reverse circulation drill rig is king.

Standing below the towering red mast and its elaborate array of hydraulic piping, Jeff the driller orchestrated proceedings from his footplate at the back of the Bedford truck-mounted rig. A number on a gauge in front of him read slightly high for his liking. In response, Jeff feathered one of the many levers below the control panel. A temporary shift in the breeze engulfed the driller in the stack of dirty-orange rock dust that came off the nearby cyclone. Jeff pulled the dust mask down from the top of his shaved head and covered his nose and mouth. The extended goatee beard compromised the seal between mask and skin, but the wiry black and greying hairs filtered out some of the dust carried in on his smoky breath.

A rugged, handsome man of generous proportions, he had a liking for tight, almost indecent, denim shorts and body-hugging, preferably sleeveless, Ozdrill shirts. A shrink-wrapped, hard-boiled egg came to Andy’s mind when they first met, and someone best avoided down a dark alley. Early in his drilling career, Jeff witnessed what loose clothes caught in a drive shaft could do. The sound of tearing flesh, of snapping bone and screaming, still haunted him. Only outside of work hours, did he relax his clothing policy and let his blood circulate freely. The boss’s appearance always amused his offsiders, but they never joked about it to his face. Although typically quiet and of an easy-going nature, beneath the shell, there was a brooding toughness.

The hammer banged away deep below and the ground around the rig vibrated. Jeff’s gloved right hand lightly cupped the last rod added to the top of the drill string. The six-metre section of steel pipe rotated anticlockwise, sinking imperceptibly deeper into the hole. The amplitude of the vibrations coming off the pipe into his fingers told Jeff all was working well. The deafening noise of the motor and the violent beat of the compressor struck similar reassuring notes. There are equations a driller can use to determine the optimum rotational speed, air pressure or weight on the drill string for different ground conditions, but Jeff worked primarily on intuition shaped by years of experience.

Taking advantage of the brief lull in activity, he removed the dust mask and headed over to the back of the support truck, where the two offsiders kept a small fire going under a steel plate. A pot of coffee pulled to the edge, simmered away.

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