Sunday 2nd November 2025

Mike Kushy and Tuska. MK to begin with and got onto site for 9.30, set up drill and started to drill shot holes. T arrived just after 10 and cut some bushes back ready for our spoil wall to be built. Charge set and fired fne, fume cloud cleared almost immediately! The pair then worked on bulding the retaining wall and backfill it. T left just after one and MK stayed on for a few more hours. Horrible wet muddy day with on/off showers. Mike.

View of site. Photo MK.

Muddy boots. Photo MK.

The start of the spoil wall. Photo MK.

Saturday 1st November 2025

Mike Kushy and Mikey Waterworth. Clearing for 2 hours, still a little spoil left to clear! Mike K.

*Afterwards MK and Tuska took the breaker to Tuskas house and got it working again, the switch mechanism needs a regular clean out. Would be worth keeping tools for this in the shed.*

Saturday 25th October 2025

Mike Kushy and Lee Venning arrived on site for 10am. The weather wasn’t too bad with a mix of sunshine and the odd shower. We got straight to work clearing the spoil, with MK down the shaft filling buckets and LV on the winch. After about 40ish buckets MK got to work with the breaker and before long it was back to hauling buckets, with some rather large rocks coming out. We stopped at 12.30pm for a quick lunchbreak. After lunch MK went back down the shaft on the breaker and filling buckets and LV was back on the winch.

At about 2pm Dave Morrison joined LV on the surface and took up winch duty while LV emptied the buckets. This continued until we got to 135 buckets (the spoil heap is bloody massive now). MK then drilled 7 x 600mm holes (breaking one of LV’s drill bits in the process). Estimated depth now 9.5m.

MK then got to work setting up so the holes he had drilled could be destroyed, we all retreated to a safe distance and the holes were destroyed. 7 hours. Lee.

Looking down. Photo LV.

Saturday 18th October 2025

 AM: Mike Kushy, solo. Breaker work for 2 hours.

Spoil after breaker work. Photo MK.

PM: Mike Kushy and Hollie London. First we cleared 42 loads of spoil. Then a supervised set up for Hollie, who did the entire set up herself. All went off fine. 3 hours. Mike.

Friday 17th October 2025

Afternoon session. John Cooper, Mike Kousiounis and Kate Lawrence. Cloudy and cool again today. Kate at the bottom clearing out bang debris, then John at the bottom with the breaker and finally Kushy at the bottom with the breaker (he broke the wide chisel bit!). After the generator ran out of fuel we continued until a total of 70 loads had been hauled out today. 3 hours. John.

Looking along, facing North. Photo MK.

Looking down, facing North. Photo MK.

Sunday 12th October 2025

Morning session. John Cooper and Mike Kousiounis. Nice weather again today. Cloudy and cool. Hauled out 86 loads before I said that was enough. Kushy said we could have dug out loads more mud. Was helped towards the end by the arrival of Dave Morrison. Depth when I left was 8.6m. John Gisborne arrived as I was leaving for The Hunters' Lodge for my lunch. He’d been measuring up at White Rabbit’s Hole for a new gate. 2 hours.

Afternoon session. Kushy drilled and then destroyed holes. We will need to consider how to dispose of the spoil very soon. John.

View from top. Photo DM.

Friday 10th October 2025

Mike Kushy, solo. Breaker work for a couple of hours, 30 loads (at least) to clear. Also made a big mix and started bringing the rest of the wall up to ground height. 5 hours. Mike.

Looking at the floor, facing North. Photo MK.

Looking horizontally into the mud filled rift, facing North. Photo MK.

A further away view of the North horizontally. Photo MK.

Looking horizontally, facing South. Photo MK.