In May 2006, two men were trapped almost 1,000 metres underground at the Beaconsfield Gold Mine in northern Tasmania. A 2.1 magnitude seismic event had triggered a rock fall that sealed them in a work basket with no conventional way out. The rescue operation that followed became one of the most watched events in Australian mining history.
The drill that bored the escape shaft to reach Todd Russell and Brant Webb belonged to Raisebore Australia.
When Beaconsfield’s general manager called Rod Bertram on the Sunday after the earthquake, Raisebore Australia mobilised immediately. A rig was pulled from an active contract at Rosebery Mine, crews and equipment were brought in from across Australia, and a concrete pad was poured underground to anchor the machine. Eighty hours after the pilot hole was collared, the rescue shaft had reached 13.5 metres through 100-plus MPa siltstone. The two miners walked out alive nine days after they’d been trapped.
That story says something important about what Raisebore Australia actually is, and what it takes to do this kind of work well.
Thirty Years of Specialised Raiseboring
Rod Bertram founded Raisebore Australia in 1994, buying out a raiseboring division he had established two years earlier for a diamond drill contractor. The company started with two machines. Today it is the largest privately owned raiseboring company in Australia, with a fleet spanning small-diameter slot rigs through to large-diameter machines capable of reaming raises up to 6.0 metres wide.
By mid-2016 the company had drilled more than 132 kilometres and reamed more than 116 kilometres of shafts, a figure that gives some sense of the accumulated operational experience the team carries. Projects have run across Australia and internationally, including work in West Africa, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Portugal.
The head office is in South Australia, but the nature of the work is inherently mobile. Where the project is, that’s where Raisebore Australia operates.
What Raiseboring Actually Involves
Raiseboring is a specialist underground drilling method used to create vertical or near-vertical shafts between levels in a mine, or between the surface and underground workings. The applications include ventilation raises, ore passes, escape-ways, service shafts, and civil tunnelling connections.
The conventional process starts with a pilot hole drilled downward to a lower level. Once the pilot hole breaks through, a large-diameter reaming head is attached and pulled back upward, with the broken rock falling to the lower level by gravity. Variations on this process include down-reaming, where the reaming head is pushed downward from the surface or an upper level, and box-holing or up-reaming, where geometry or access constraints require a different approach.
Raisebore Australia introduced the concept of down-reaming to the Australian market at Mount Isa Mines in 1992. It’s the kind of operational capability that reflects both the technical depth and the willingness to adapt that has characterised the company since its founding.
A Fleet Built for Range
The breadth of Raisebore Australia’s rig fleet matters more than it might seem at first. Different projects require different machines. A ventilation raise in a metalliferous hard rock mine has different diameter requirements and depth constraints than a coal mine escape-way or a civil construction shaft. Having access to the right rig for each job, rather than fitting every project to whatever equipment is available, changes what’s possible.
The fleet includes large-diameter Atlas Copco Robbins machines capable of producing raises at the upper end of the size range, intermediate-diameter rigs for mid-range applications, and a range of smaller-diameter units used for slot drilling, cut-off slots, and escape-ways. The Beaconsfield rescue itself was conducted with one of the smaller machines, a CD 1000 raiseborer, adapted to the confined underground access conditions.
Safety as a Structural Commitment
Raiseboring is inherently a high-consequence activity. The work happens underground, often in constrained spaces, with forces being applied to rock that isn’t always predictable. The precision required at Beaconsfield, where the escape shaft had to thread through 13.5 metres of siltstone without intersecting the lifeline hole or the location of the trapped men, is an extreme example of how little margin for error this work allows.
Raisebore Australia was named a finalist in the Australian Mining Prospect Awards for Excellence in Mine Safety and OH&S in 2016, a recognition that reflects the operational culture the company has built over more than three decades. A team where many staff have been with the company for more than a decade doesn’t accumulate that kind of tenure unless the organisation is doing something right.
What Operators Get From a Specialist
For mine operators and civil construction projects that need raises drilled, the difference between engaging a specialist and a general contractor matters. Raiseboring looks simple from the outside. In practice, it involves understanding the ground conditions, selecting the right method, managing the drill string under tension, and dealing with whatever the rock presents. A company that has drilled and reamed well over a hundred kilometres of shafts across multiple continents has encountered most of what Australian ground can offer.
Raisebore Australia’s scope covers metalliferous and hard rock operations, coal mines, and civil construction projects. Whether the requirement is a single ventilation shaft or a programme of raises across an underground development, the combination of fleet capacity, operational experience, and safety culture is what justifies the call.
Image Credit: drillingco.co.uk
