Extractive Stonyfell Quarry, SA

The following sample essay on “Extractive Stonyfell Quarry, SA” is an Extractive Industry Field trip report. It deals with the issues of development and production in a quarry.

Stonyfell quarry started the early stages of open cut mining, or quarrying, in 1837. It mines sandstone quartzite rock, and has been most commonly used as aggregate on Adelaide suburban roads. In 1943, Greenhill quarry started its productions less than a kilometre away, creating competition between the two. Boral energy bought both operations in 1979, and joined them to create a more profitable source.

Stonyfell quarry was an expensive mine to run full time, with machines needing to be replaced frequently, and equipment being so expensive. It decided in the early 90’s that now historic quarry only needed to run half time to maintain profitability.

Most of the material extracted from this open cut mine is done by blasting or drilling. The bench –cut quarry produces quartzite sandstone blocks 1ftx 1metre. It can then be crushed into different sizes, depending on the use, eg.

• Primary crushed rock, 200mm,
• secondary-80mm
• Tertiary (aggregate)-20mm
• quaternary (sand) 4mm

There are more than 25 uses for this quartzite sandstone, including building materials, road aggregate and railway ballast. The material currently sells for $8-$10 per/ton for aggregate, and $16-$18 perton for builders sand. In the earlier years of quarrying, there was a lot more manual labour, men using ropes to scale cliffs more than 100m high, hand detonating with gelignite, and extracting with small hydraulic drills. This was a dangerous business, so in 1954, a mines safety act limited quarry cliff faces to a height of 50m.

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Many more mechanical techniques now used to extract materials in a way that will have minimal impact on the environment. A drill rig now drills holes on one bench of the cliff face at an angle of 10 degrees off vertical.