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March 2007
With the wet season nearing an end, it's time to get organized for
our annual trip to Northern Cement's limestone quarry. Located on
the Roper Highway, about 30km east of Mataranka, the pit is flooded
every wet season and has to be abandoned until the rains cease. The
image left shows our excavator, Rocky, on arrival at the panel shop,
back in February, for some much needed L&A before going to the quarry.
Three weeks of cleaning, scraping, paint and polish, and it's almost
time to head for Mataranka. Rocky is a veteran of projects like the
gas pipeline into the now defunct Mt Todd goldmine. First purchased
in 1994, he's hammered his way through mountains of limestone, and
actually started his hammering career in the Mataranka lime quarry,
way back in 1995 :-)
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March 8th and Rocky's loaded for the trip to Mataranka; ya reckon he
looks pretty flash with his new panels and a paint job? Thanks Rossy,
top job!
To give you some idea of the scale of the over-size left after the
blasts are fired, here's Mat's operator Dave standing beside the
stockpile resulting from last years blasting program. We started
breaking the oversize before the rest of the gear was mobilised
to get some necessary feedstock for the kiln while the pit was
being dewatered.
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Lest you think Rocky's just havin' a bludge down there by himself,
let me tell ya him, and operator Russell, are hard at it... and making
plenty of progress too! There's a long way to go though; check out
the over-size, far as the eye can see in the background.
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