BOOK PROJECT: TOTAL MINING full service global integrated mining solution specialist

Client: The world’s 4th largest publicly traded, integrated international oil and gas company

Goals:  Authenticity –identification with rugged determinism of industry/work force. Positive outcomes, past, present, future – environmental stewardship and new energy innovation.

No-one digs deeper than mining men

The business of mining pits men and machines against the task of moving heaven and earth. And since the days when mines were lit by candles and carts were pulled by mules, no-one has dug deeper for this country than the mining men.

They meet at dawn, at the bankhead, waiting for the cage to emerge from deep beneath the earth. Silence, or nervous mutterings exchanged, each man has his own way of thinking on the unthinkable. The miners enter into another world. The fifteen minute congested cage ride with its rumbling and noise carries them straight down, down literally into the centre of the earth, close to 12000 feet (or three and a half kilometres) below daylight. And it gets hotter and hotter as they go. Were it not for air conditioners, the temperature would reach sixty degrees.

Ours are the world’s deepest mines and the most labour intensive. Bending beneath the booms, the miners toil against the face, battling to extract the gold from thin seams within hard and competent rock. Dust shrouded men, bent proud and determined, as tough as their work boots. Where angels fear to tread there is a special bond that unites the miners- a shared grace in the face of hardship. For each knows that every shift the other will dig deeper beneath our land, longing for daylight where dust no longer dims the light and men are free to dream.