its a long way down

I wake up this morning feeling particularly refreshed, my cold now a distant memory. However, it would appear that it has been replaced with two smaller inconveniences.

Number 1, I cut my right hand thumb a few days ago and it appears to have turned foostie. I can confirm that it is nowhere as near as foostie as Heather at works big toe which was and probably still us oozing green stuff, however none the less, my thumb is mildly infected. I make a mental note to get some anti foost cream for it.

The second problem I have is more aesthetic, it would appear that while I was at yesterdays car rally I caught a bit of the sun, I wouldn?t say that I go burnt per say, however I have a moderate facial glow. Except, I have panda tan, for anybody not familiar with panda tan, this is a phenomenon that occurs when your faces get tanned, every where except around the eyes where your shades have been.

So, Panda tan and a foostie thumb start my day. Neither of which are particularly important but I thought that I would mention it.

We head back to prison today, why you must be asking as they have already been there in a previous update that you haven?t read.

Well, simples, they have another part of the prison that we didn?t see underground, where the inmates were sentenced to hard labour of mining.
Surprisingly, they have to mine lime stone to help build the roads, but this was really only the waste they were discarding as the real prize was water to supply the town of fremantle during the emigrant days as there sewage systems were contaminating their shallow wells and they needed fresh water to drink.

So picture this, you?re a convict and you?ve just finished building your prison, then the warden goes right you horrible lot, dig a hole and keep digging until you hit water, then dig along a bit and down a bit and keep following the water. When your done doing that be a good lad and pump it up. Cheers.

A few years later they have a whole infrastructure of tunnels, mostly filled with water.
Conditions must have been horrendous, living and working down a mine is hard enough without the added complication of having to mine something while up to your waste in water.
To get to the mine though, they have to climb down a 60 foot straight vertical ladder.

Today, I visited that mine and on entry to the prison there is a tour guide from Scotland who looks speaks and acts like Mr Mckay from Porridge, I forgot to mention him in the previous prison story and he isn?t even relevant to todays story as our guide Richard is nothing like Mr Mckay Sir.
Richard shows me and Fletch the emergency exit shaft and you seriously cant see the bottom. Im bricking it already.

Anyways, I digress (again)?. He gets us kitted up with paper overalls, all very CSI Miami style, welly boots, climbing helmet, harnesses, various other different bits of climbing safety bits and tells us to climb down 20 meters of sheer vertical ladders into the abyss. There is two other individuals in our particular tour and they have to do the same. That makes four of us, plus one guide.

We make it down in one piece and he takes us around the mine, how they managed it is unbelievable working in such poor conditions, up to their waist in water every day.
The tunnels are almost perfect in size, equal dimension and even by todays standards are very very straight. Most of them though are half filled with particularly clear fresh water. At a glance it actually looked drinkable.
We complete the rest of our tour in a canoe, paddling our way around the rest of the tunnels. Amazing, I don?t know if you have ever been down a mine shaft of any kind, let alone a water mine, but there is something strange about being underground.

He gets us to switch all our lamps out and we have to navigate the last part of the canoe journey completely in the dark. It was so black you could not see your hand in front of your face until your fingers touched your nose.


I paddled like my life depended on it and kept up with the guide in his canoe.

Now considering the tour is a below ground, we have been harnessed up, safety briefed, climbed down ladders to the centre of the earth and we are in a canoe, all 4 of us, Fletch asks the question of the day, he doesn?t mean to but he does.

He means to say ?Is there normally just 4 people on this tour?,
What he actually says is ?Is there just 4 people on this tour?, I refrain from splashing him with cold water. He delivers this line with comedy perfection without so much as a flinch, that Ronnie Barker would have been proud of.

The tour ends and of course we have to climb back up that same vertical ladder, Im not great with ladders really, you know I don?t mind painting my ceiling or something, but I wouldn?t go and climb onto my roof. However, I am up that ladder like a possum up a gum tree and break free into the sunlight. I feel like Charles Bronson in the great escape.

After this Fletch wants to go to a shipwreck gallery, but I pick a nice spot and lie back and enjoy the sun to try and ease kung fu panda.

We try to go karting on the way home, except it is shut. I presume that they don?t have any karts available due to accidents on corners and they have shut the place.

I phone home late in the evening and Im standing on my jack jones in the middle of a shopping centre car park on a pay phone using my international phone card. There is a twitchy ethnic gentleman waiting to use the phone, except he has a mobile in his hand too, all very suspicious.

If he asks me for a dollar, I have already decided in advance he is getting the sharp end of the receiver across the napper. He says thank you when I hang up the phone in a polite but again twitchy manner so I get in the car without incident, it would seem that he must be a drug dealer and not a mugger. Bonza

Todays photo is a long way down. Godber.