Peko Mine has since vanished in its entirety. All that is left are concrete house bases and a concrete block placed over the 1,000 odd foot mine shaft to prevent idiots falling in. There was only one shaft and that was located under the poppet head or head frame you can see near the top right of the photo. There was another access point used for emergency exit and also air circulation. Air circulation needs an upcast shaft and a downcast shaft - sucking and blowing. The downcast shaft was a ladder way into the top level of the mine, only a short distance below surface. This has been filled in too and not one piece of metal from the buildings remains.
In the photo is the assaying laboratory in the foreground, the office (shorter building middle right), the main mill complex next to it (the taller building), the diesel-electric powerhouse in the middle and houses in the distant background.
We lived in one of the staff houses.
During school holidays, especially the Christmas holidays that were of six weeks duration, my parents found it difficult to help me find something to do; yes, I rode my bike all over the place, trekked off into the local arid country checking out old mines and a variety of lizards, snakes, kangaroos, and echidnas, but eventually I got bored.
The devil finds evil things for idle hands to do. And I got into trouble on a couple of occasions when I was found on the minesite where I shouldn't have been. At 12 or 13 years of age, I wasn't permitted anywhere on the mine unaccompanied and not allowed underground period.
My father, who was chief engineer, did take me underground on several occasions at Peko and Orlando Mine which was fairly safe given that the Inspector of Mines was located at Darwin, 1500 km away and wasn't likely to catch us in the act.
My father decided to find me a job. He spoke with the then Exploration Department chief geologist whose work was mostly off-site and bingo, I got hired and paid a pittance out of petty cash since I was also too young to be formally employed.
For the rest of my school days I had a job every holiday.
I went out in the field seeking new mineral leases, surveying diamond drilling exploration locations, picking up lunches for the teams going "bush", and doing other important stuff like collecting geologist's hammers, cleaning the Landrover 4WD vehicles, and sharpening the boss's pencil collection.
I really hit the big time when I was shown how to split a cylindrical diamond drilled core in half using an ancient core splitter almost identical to that shown below.
