Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/179

 down eight adventurous souls at a time. There is a bar across to hold on to; two people stand on either side squeezed close together. Then the platform is lowered so that four more can get on to its upper story. With stringent warnings to inexperienced passengers to keep their free arm pressed close to their side, the platform descends the shaft just like a box of matches being pushed into its case. It is quite dark in the shaft. A sound of running water accompanied us, and we could hear it swishing far below. As we got lower it got hotter and hotter, till it felt as if we were suspended above the steam of some immense kettle, producing a curious feeling of suffocation, which, however, wears off. We had a general impression that the bottom of a gold mine would be a beautiful, glittering thing, with shining white walls of quartz and glimmering threads and patches of gold shining in it like the small samples given as mementoes to visitors. Nothing of the kind. It might as well have been a coal mine. On scrambling rather breathless out of the little cage, we found ourselves in a low, small, open space, with walls of some dun-coloured reddish stone, and narrow tunnels running off it with wooden supports for the roof. That was the gold mine, and except that in this Turkish bath of grotto and passage men were "picking"