“My dad was a miner all his life but he did not want me in that mine. He said to find something else to do; that is one of the reasons I only worked there for a year. There were benefits to it though; I knew people who logged all summer and went into the mine for the winter. It was the same weather down there no matter if it was summer or winter. That was one of the good things about it, for some people, but it was pretty scary down there. “Cumberland has a big history in mining. It is amazing how many people died in mining accidents. There was little or no regard for the Chinese workers. If people died in the mine they would list the names of the white men but not the Chinese. There used to be a Chinatown in Bevan too; many Chinese worked on the railway. I cannot remember how many there were in Bevan, but there must have been fifteen or twenty families. When they went to work they rode railway cars, called speeders, which they pumped with two men on each side. Sometimes, when they were coming home from work we would put something on the track so they would have to stop after they had a good head of steam up - take it off - and start over. There was no animosity toward the Chinese, but they kept pretty much to their own community. “My mum did not want my brothers and me to go into the mines; that was one of those things in our family; ‘do not follow in your father’s footsteps.’ There were nine children in our family: six girls and three boys. Harry never worked in the mine and I only did for about a year. I am glad I did it; it was a good experience. When Bob came back from being overseas with the army he worked in the mine too but it could not have been for more than a year. He was smarter than that. “Bill Johnstone lived next door to us in Puntledge. When he first came to No. 8, I actually worked for him for a while down in the mine. He was setting up a system of what they called belts; they were just long conveyor belts that they put right up against the coal face; the coal was shoveled onto them and then dumped into the coal cars. I was there when they were first setting these up in No. 8. I was not a miner; actually, I was what they called haulage; most of the young guys were haulage. When I started, they had a hoist down there just like a big drum with cable on it, and you were either free-wheeling down or pulling back up. They were all run by air, because you just could not have any sparks down there. They would have men go through the tunnels throwing rock dust all over to neutralize the coal dust. “When I started at the mine they had just stopped using horses and mules. They actually had a big barn down in No. 8 for the animals, and they did all the haulage. They had approximately sixteen horses and mules, and they farmed them out down around Little River. Usually, they did not come up until they died. They were well taken care of, and they were funny too; some of those mules would only work for one man! “My dad was a coal miner and a hardrock miner; he was accustomed to six and eight foot seams. No. 8 had as low as thirty inch seams, so when the tunnels were drilled they were below the seam. They had a big coal cutting machine that would cut up there; they would drill it and blow it, then move the belts or pans close to it and just throw the coal on as it came down. It was quite a set up, actually. It was not pillar and post, but they let it all cave in after they took the coal out. They would keep the tunnels open, but let the rest cave back in; you could not hold it anyway. They had massive timbers but that could not hold it. “There were lots of small injuries, you know; my dad had lots of blue scars. Coal miners got these blue scars when they got coal dust in their cuts. The scar would never turn white because it always had the coal dust in it, no matter what they cleaned it with. You could recognize a miner even on Sunday; you could look at him and see that his eyes were black all around from all the coal dust coming out of his eyes. |
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