Monty Kleiman
(Heart Transplant 1993)

Going Under in the Year 2001
 
Prior to my heart transplant my wife Leila had a history of gynaecological disorders and partially corrective surgical procedures and operations. Post my transplant Leila has and still is battling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Currently she is waiting to have two more gynaecological operations.

I have a steel plate in my neck, and in arteries of each leg are two stents. Also I am waiting to have another operation on my neck. In spite of these medical irritations, life has to be lived and for today.

We are still in control of our lives, and are not yet ready to take a back seat in the direction of our lives.

My children and especially grand children consider I am old. I mean old. I am sixty-seven years young and being a heart transplantee, their concern for me is wonderful and cherished, also understandable. However my brain does not accept and react to getting older as my body does.

Old age, and or infirmity might mean taking a back seat and letting the younger ones live their own lives and fulfilling their aspirations which is their right, but it also can condemn the retirees to silence with unspoken thoughts whether valid or not. It can be a bitter and frustrating pill to swallow. But growing older has imbued me with a sense of mature diplomacy and when that fails me I resort to diplomatic immunity.

I know the children worry about us as we do them. I can assure you that Leila and I have all our faculties contrary to public opinion, they may be not one hundred per cent, but who has?

We do it because we can.

We towed an 18 ft. caravan from Melbourne destination Karumba, on the Arafura Sea in far north Queensland. A minor detour to Mt Isa was made as we had pre-booked a guided tour deep inside the mine.

Mt Isa with a population of 23,400 is a large country city with wide divided roads and every modern amenity. In fact it claims to be the largest city in the world in an area measuring forty one thousand two hundred and fifty five square kilometres.

Living expenses and the amenities all comes at a much higher cost than we pay in the capital cities. It is due to the enormous transport costs to bring every commodity to the city. Nevertheless the Commonwealth Government has withdrawn the outback income tax concessions for their own incomprehensible reasons. The local residents are not impressed.

We did an average weekly shop in Woolworths and spent a fifth more than in Melbourne.

Mount Isa was the site, where in 1923 John Campbell Miles discovered ore deposits. The deposits proved to be rich in copper, silver, and lead.

The mine provides two separate tours for the public, i.e. a surface tour and an underground tour. The latter is limited to eight. We had booked the underground tour four months in advance.

We presented ourselves at seven thirty that morning at the tourist office to join the tour of the mine. After a short explanatory talk we signed an indemnity form. We were then taken to a shed and handed a white boiler suit, a miner’s helmet with the torch attached, mining boots with steel toecaps, a heavy waist belt, safety glasses, and gloves. Naturally a photographer was present.

We were then transferred per minibus to the mine site. Entering the site the road crossed enormous tracts of land that had been virtually scraped bare, and further open cast (surface) mining was currently in progress, with massive bulldozers and gigantic mechanised mobile equipment. The landscape had the appearance of a vast lunar like complex. It was awesome.

The mine’s total surface area including all the many workshops, offices, staff amenities, services, the copper and lead smelters etc is five kilometres long and one point two kilometres wide

The guide assured us that when each tract of mineral is fully mined the landscape would eventually be restored. The mine and its chemical processing plants more than conform to the highest ecological standards and regulations.

The pithead was a large conglomerate of industrial buildings. Passing through a security check, we were escorted into a small lecture room that was adjacent to the miners' lockers and where the safety equipment was kept.

A retired miner introduced himself as our guide and spoke about the safety requirements followed by a video film. We were then allocated heavy square oxygen cylinders. It was then apparent why we were given the heavy strong belts to wear. We attached the cylinders to the belts.

We are all familiar with the site of a mine’s wheelhouse. It is the control tower for the cages that are suspended on cables from the large wheel at the top of the tower. It controls the descent and ascent to and from the bowels of the earth. It is the main entrance for the work force and equipment of every description, and is the means of bringing the ore bodies to the surface.

We descended one thousand meters in the cage attached to the wheelhouse in seconds. Any apprehensions we had about the descent were superfluous. There was no sensation. I was pleasantly surprised.

We boarded a four-wheel drive; open troop carrier for the tour. Riding in the back, we were shown some of the workings with explanations etc of a few of the kilometres of the nine hundred and seventy five kilometres of roads and tunnels.

Very large caves built into the solid rock off the side of the tunnels housed modern industrial workshops and are located throughout the mine to service the “hi-tech” plant and machinery.

My preconceived impressions based on my experiences of working amongst a Yorkshire mining community forty years ago were completely and pleasantly shattered.

The ten to twenty metre high tunnels (necessary to transport the machinery and mechanised/computerised plant) were clinically air-conditioned and practically dust free. We did
walk through small pools of water on rough ground when we stopped to inspect different parts of the mine.

After blasting at the ore face dump trucks are sent in with buckets capable of lifting forty tonnes of ore and rubble at a time and depositing it into a shaft some distance away. The truck is operated by remote control. The truck had video cameras back and front. The controller sat in his air-conditioned office for twelve hours at a time with two joysticks in front of two monitors, some distance away.

The remote controlled truck tipped its load into a shaft falling eighteen hundred meters below the surface. It is the deepest part of the mine that is worked, and the temperature there is sixty degrees Celsius. We would not be going there.

The blasted ore bodies were then loaded onto the cages and brought to the top for processing in the copper or the lead smelter.

Stopping the four-wheel drive in a cavity to allow heavy machinery to pass, the headlights were the only source of light. The tour guide warned us that without the headlights on, we would be in total darkness, and will prove his point for just a few seconds. It was impossible to see ones own self. It was the longest fifteen seconds that I had experienced.

We then drove to the surface via a long winding sloping road into bright sunlight

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