It's a new month, so why not have a new ute? While we waited
for a new hammer to arrive from Adelaide for Rocky, Dave and
Neil, operators for Mat and Roo respectively, saddled up the
new ute and headed for Mataranka. Time to start some serious
work at the quarry.
Mat and Roo, our Hitachi twins, arrived on the float from
Darwin, and on May 4th, it was all systems go!
Roo and Mat don't do it all though, Todd and operator Greg,
are hard at it too. In the center forground of the expanded
image, is one of the smaller pumps used for de-watering the
pit. There is another larger pump out of sight, in the waterhole
that is just visible to the left of Todd.
Rocky's new hammer arrived and was ready for action on the 5th;
he looks much happier with his shiny new, colour co-ordinated :-)
hammer and, as you can see, him and Russell are making short
work of the rocks!
Mark, Northern Cement's Mataranka manager and the quarry boss,
is more than happy with progress; as you can see, the place is
starting to look like a quarry again! Rocky and Todd have been
pulled into the main pit... there's plenty of
oversize here now :-)
The enlarged image left shows Nedrill's
Tamrock rig hard at work drilling the shotholes for the next blast.
Blasting is currently carried out once a week; usually Wednesday
nights. In between loading trucks, Mat is kept busy clearing blasted
material away from the face to minimise burden on the next shot.
