The last shift.

My last shift working as an underground geologist wasn’t planned. It just sort of happened. In October 1987, I had 1 month left on a 3-year contract in South Africa. I was looking forward to a change of scene: 3 years in Apartheid-era Transvaal was enough and I needed to get out. I was feeling disconnected from the UK and needed a London fix. I’d already applied to the University of Alberta to enrol for a master’s degree program and the signs were good that I was heading to Canada so mentally I was checked out.

I had the first 2 months of the rest-of-my-life all planned out. Young and stupid with an interest in history, I was off on a once-in-a-lifetime five-week trip backpacking around Egypt and Israel. And then it would be back to London to hang out with my girlfriend for a few months of beer, concerts, and fun! fun! fun! But first I had to negotiate the perils of the Last Shift.

There was a lot of superstition surrounding the last underground shift. People didn’t telegraph their last one; they tended to keep it quiet. No need to tempt fate and encourage the Rockburst Gods or the Demons-who-make-shit-fall-on-your-head by blabbing about how it would all soon be over, right?

It felt real to me. The Leadville Herald put it this way:

“The belief is that injuries or death were likely to occur that last day, and it is a matter of record that many a man who was quitting his job would simply fail to show up for that announced last day. Wives would often prevail on their husbands not to go to work that day, and many miners would get around the problem by quitting without setting any day at all.”

https://www.leadvilleherald.com/free_content/article_4110dac0-dc08-11e1-9aa1-0019bb30f31a.html

It’s All A Gamble

The year I arrived at Vaal Reefs I replaced a 50-something geologist called Malcolm. He sported a thick beard and he loved to gamble, regularly buggering off on weekends to the casino at Sun City to play Blackjack. And he was retiring early so he must’ve been a half decent card player.

He’d been on the mine forever. It seemed like every underground geology plan I pulled out of the map cabinets -going back as far as the late 60s- had his distinctive spidery handwriting all over it. Malcolm had had more than his fair share of close shaves down the years. He’d lost part of a finger in an underground mishap – crushed by a rock early in his mine geology career – but actually considered himself lucky.

I’m Done! Woohoo.

He trained me up for a few weeks, and then one day when he got back to the office, hair still wet from the shower and hard hat in hand, he announced that that was it. He’d just done his last shift. Fuck it all. The bags were packed, and he and his wife were retiring to their place in the Cape to drink fine South African wines and play cards. The unbearable lightness of quitting. He looked so happy, so bloody relieved, I was suddenly concerned about what I’d gotten myself into with my new underground career. There I was, a skinny, naive new geology graduate starting my exciting new career by watching a much older and much less naive one skip out the door after doing the same job for a bit too long. This didn’t bode well.

Three brief years later after a lot of grubbing about underground and it was my turn. After all sorts of adventures and my own fair share of near misses I was heading out the door, back to the UK and thence to northern Canada. But I still hadn’t yet mentally set my last underground mapping trip. I was reluctant to make the decision after soaking up mining lore for three years. I knew what it meant to put a pin in the calendar. In the back of my mind, I thought I’d probably do 4 or 5 more shifts, but in end the decision was made for me.

Oh Sh*t.

The shift was a bad one, mapping steep ore passes that had sat for weeks with no ventilation so they were dangerously hot. I was climbing up one pass to get to the face, aiming to check that it was in the rock it was supposed to be in. Grabbing the hot iron chain with gloved hands and pulling on it to start up the rock face, I heard something come loose above me.

Ouch.

That noise – the dull clunk of a rock breaking free and starting to fall- that was something we all dreaded hearing underground for good reason. Looking up, with my hat lamp beam piercing the dusty gloom, I barely had time to register that a largish rock—maybe 2-3 kilograms in weight — was bouncing down the pass and I had nowhere to hide. It would hit me, or it wouldn’t. Death or serous injury would be on me in a couple of seconds. I pulled myself away from the face, leaning out on the chain, and the grey lump breezed merrily past between my chin and the rock face. It missed my body as well, but landed on my big toe with a cheerful crunch, dropping lazily to the haulage below, where it stared up at me, its work done for the day.

Hanging on to the chain for dear life I climbed gingerly down the ore pass praying that nothing else would fall on me. My underground assistant had watched it all unfold from the tunnel below and helped me down. For the next minute or two all I could feel was warm blood filling my boot. Back on level ground in the crosscut, I hurriedly took the boot off expecting to be missing a chunk of toe, but all I saw was a bruised nail – a whole one at that- and a lot of sweat, but no blood.

Bugger This.

Bugger this, I thought. I’m done. I limped back to the shaft, caught the first cage out and hit the change house. Kit bag over my shoulder, I stopped by the mine captains’ offices as usual to check if they needed our input. I told Pete, Loki and the rest of the guys on 2 Shaft in polite-but-clear-terms that they wouldn’t be seeing me at the shaft again. Nope. Uh uh. I’d attend the weekly planning meetings still and let them shout at me a little more but if they wanted something actually mapped, real geo-type work doing, they could call my colleagues.

And the funny thing is, nobody at the shaft office or in the geology department complained. I had a week or two to go on my contract before heading to Egypt, but everyone understood where I was coming from: my last shift was over and that was it.

And remember…

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