Sunday, Jan 31, 2016 at 14:54
Thanks Doug, for the 400th post and a write-up about a spot that most people only zip through, and who have never experienced living there!
My brother and I, and our employees, picked up the job of re-treating the
Marble Bar State Battery gold tailings dumps, during 1988.
This job involved building plastic-lined leach vats of our own perfected design to extract the remnant gold from the battery tailings (which were relatively rich, due to the inefficiency of the old stamp mills).
I can't recall the exact tonnage there, but it was in the multiple tens of thousands of tonnes.
The vat building meant levelling areas with our big Michigan loaders (86 tonne machines) and then building 3 dirt walls on the levelled area.
Then, heavy plastic sheeting was rolled through the vat, to make an impermeable liner for the cyanide solution.
Draincoil was installed in the bottom of the vat on top of the plastic, as the loader placed the tailings to a depth of around 3 metres over the plastic, by reaching over the plastic sheeting roll.
Finally, the top of the vat was levelled roughly by hand and then the cyanide solution pumped in to fill the vat.
The cyanide solution went to work on the tailings, and extracted the gold and the cyanide solution was pumped out of the vat and through steel tanks full of activated carbon, where the gold was recovered.
The solution went back into the vat to repeat the process until all the gold was extracted.
We carried out the re-treatment from March to October to keep to satisfactory working temperatures for the outdoor work.
However, I can recall numerous days when temperatures of 42C up to 47C were common - even at that time of year.
It's the place, where in these kind of temperatures, you cannot put your bare hand on any metal exposed to the sun after about 9:00 AM without suffering burns!
The blokes shovelling the top of the tailings level were the blokes wearing the bulk of the heat.
It was critical to ensure that one kept up the water intake, it was very easy to get dehydrated.
Finally, I can never see a mention of
Marble Bar, without thinking of Victor Courtneys poem! ....
'The Man from
Marble Bar.'
Satan sat by the fires of Hell
As from endless time he's sat,
And he sniffed great draughts of the brimstone's smell
That came as the tongue-flames spat;
Then all at once the devil looked stern
For there in the depths of Hell
Was a fellow whom never a flame could burn
Or goad to an anguished yell;
So Satan stalked to the lonely scene
And growled with a stormy brow,
'Now, stranger, tell me what does this mean?
You should be
well scorched by now.'
But the chappie replied with a laugh quite new;
'This place is too cold by far!
Just chuck on an extra log or two;
I'VE COME IN FROM
MARBLE BAR!'
Cheers, Ron.
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