Early stone crushing 1947-52

Running stone crushing machinery prior to 1950, and in some cases even after that, was a totally different concept to that enjoyed in later years. Back then electric power was seldom if ever available outside the environs of small country towns, some towns still lacked a power supply, and some had small engine driven units capable of supplying the few homes in a small town, this unit quite often operated by the local garage mechanic, or some other mechanical minded person. The actual power reticulation was often quite crude! Lengths of steel fencing wire not being totally unknown! A lot of the generation was done in direct current on ancient units that had been superseded in other towns by either main line reticulation, or by more modern alternating current units in the standard 240 or in some cases 400 voltages.

Even when we took up residence on Kangaroo Island our power was supplied by the local baker! He had the problem of running his mixing machinery when his business expanded, and in the absence of any form of electric power, he, being mechanically minded, bought a very old direct current generating set cheap and made his own power! It wasn't very long before he was supplying the shop nextdoor to power their new refrigeration unit, and so he progressed to supplying power for household lighting and other uses in the town. This eventually led to his selling the bakery and setting up a power generation business – still in the antiquated direct current!

So our stone crushing plants, always being miles from any town or power, relied entirely upon large internal combustion engines, and once again, it was not modern hi-tech units, but usually ancient very heavy single cylinder horizontal units. These were open cranked engines, the single flywheels often three metres in diameter and weighing anything between five and ten tons! The internal diameter of the cylinder could be in excess of 350mm, and the stroke of the piston close to twice that! The fuel was very crude black oil, which is rarely if ever seen these days. All the mechanical workings operated in the open air, and were lubricated in most cases by hand while the engine was running! It wasn't unusual for an operator to become entangled in the working parts, sometimes with horrific fatal results, so it was a case of being extremely careful at all times! We usually had a rough engine shed built from mallee poles and old galvanised iron sheeting that covered the engine and sometimes the first clutch drive shaft. It would also be used as a rough storage shed, but was seldom completely weatherproof!

Starting was usually by means of compressed air which was stored in a pressure vessel, and replenished as soon as the engine was running by slipping a belt on to an air compressor. Slipping belts on to a moving pulley was sometimes necessary, and was an art that was quickly learned. It was basically a dangerous procedure frowned upon by unknowing people, but just a normal operation for us! Before starting was attempted, a hot bulb in the combustion chamber was heated to almost red heat by means of an external kerosine fuelled blow lamp. It sometimes happened that the engine refused to fire for some usually unknown reason, and after checking and reheating, a second attempt was usually successful. However it sometimes happened that even a third attempt failed and the compressed air vessel was exhausted! If this happened there could be two alternatives! The uncoupling of the very heavy compressed air tank, and transporting it by truck to the nearest major town where there was usually a source of compressed air. Or as was usual, using a long length of heavy hemp rope – no woven nylon in those days! The rope was laboriously wound around the flat engine output pulley after one end had been secured to a spoke of the pulley by means of a piece of very light cord that had to be capable of breaking easily to allow the rope to disconnect at the right moment. This occurred after one of the quarry trucks had been loaded, and backed up to the engine house and secured to the other end of the rope, when, after the starting procedure had been completed, the truck would take off with drive wheels spinning, the flywheel would spin, and usually to the relief of all concerned the motor would fire! There was one big plus on these jobs, obviously nothing moved unless the plant was running, and no one made any money, so problems at startup, or a breakdown during the day meant that every able bodied person pitched in to help fix the problem whether they were a direct employee or not.

Country operations were normally paid by piece work, so much per ton on the stone that left the crushing plant. A typical rate in those pre- metric days was the foreman getting 6 pence per ton, and the two workers maybe 4 pence each. With 1000 tons being produced in a working week, this would work out at 25 pounds per week for the foreman, a substantial amount when the average wage in those days was little more than 6 pounds a week, and a basic labourer less than 5 pounds. Sure we were living away from our homes in tents and working long hours, but there was a camp cook and good meals which only cost us a nominal amount. We were always home at weekends, unless as happened we decided to work extra days to fill a contract earlier, whatever, it was a good life most times with good fellow workers. Only at odd times would the operation get stuck with a bludger or a troublesome drunk, but these people seldom lasted more than a couple of days, and would be given some cash and sent packing. We would work short handed for the rest of the week unless, as sometimes happened, a local farmer or one of his sons would volunteer for the job, and the good money for the rest of the contract.

Most times I had my own crew – myself, my brother-in-law and another good mate who were paid a better rate than the usual crews which normally consisted of 4 men, very few of which were dedicated workers. They were prone to getting the delivery truck drivers to bring a few cold bottles of beer back for knock off time and having hangovers the next day. I had a rule of no excess alcohol during the working week, and as the 3 of us were virtually family, we had none of the problems that beset the other camps at times.

The day started early on a country plant, and it was the boss's responsibility to be up well before daybreak, check fuel and oil the engine, get the starting procedure under way. The large bang In the early morning air as it first fired announced the start of the working day. By this time a second worker was usually on the scene, and he would be greasing the plant. If it hadn't been completed the night before, the first of the trucks loaded with large stone boulders would be waiting to tip the first load into the primary crusher. The operator, always someone who was well aware of his responsibility, would slowly ease the main drive belt off it's free spinning pulley, onto the stationary main drive pulley (basically a clutch), this to the accompaniment of loud squealing of belt slip as the main drive started to turn. At the same time the engine governor would start to feed more fuel as the revolutions of the engine started to drop, and the exhaust note would grow from the quiet chuff chuff of idling, to reverberating explosions and clouds of black smoke, until finally the whole plant would be a mass of spinning shafts, rotating flat pulleys, and gently slapping belts, and the engine governor would shut down once more adjusting to the light load.

It has to be realised that here was no collection of electric motors with individual V belt drives, each being switched on progressively, this happened all at one time! There was the main belt from the engine to the manually operated 'fast and loose' pulley (the clutch) on the heavy main countershaft which could be six metres or more long, and have several flat drive pulleys of different diameters along it's length. From here flat belts ran to the various stone crushers (at least 2) and screening decks and conveyor belt drives. Sometimes belts were crossed to reverse rotation, but also at times where direction of rotation didn't matter, but more power needed to be transmitted, crossing of the belt gave much better grip. Older plant designs sometimes used a heavy belt fitted with buckets which lifted the stone up almost vertically, but at a much slower rate.
The very design of flat belts and shafts meant that the machinery was laid out in a long line, and this sometimes meant that a second counter shaft was necessary to carry the drive to the furthest power requirement. This all meant that at startup, there was a large amount of static machinery, sometimes weighing tons to be forced into motion, all in the same instant! It required a special skill to accomplish this, especially in the early morning, with sometimes freezing temperatures, dew or ice coated belts, and shafts that didn't have the luxury of ball and roller bearings, although this did come later!

The belts were coated with a special sticky compound made from boiling old lubricating oil and powdered resin. This was highly temperamental! if incorrectly made, or the application to the pulleys overdone or neglected, it could become rock hard and useless, or if too much was applied it could become a slippery mess! At any time, a shower of rain with the whole plant under full load, could see all the belts slide off in an instant, so the operator had to be forever vigilant if the plant was to operate all the time at anywhere near full capacity. Yet it was in this mode that it was at it's most vulnerable, and losing just one belt anywhere caused immediate chaos as stone suddenly built up and blocked! This could mean an hour or more of shoveling for everybody, and sometimes clearing out blocked crushers, until eventually belts could be replaced in order starting with the last one down the line first, and working back to the crushers, until finally the whole line of drives were running once more, and if it wasn't pouring with rain, crushing could be re-started.

It was the operator's responsibility to ensure that this hopefully never happened – the plant was always driven hard, as the pay packet was dependent on the tally at the end of the working week. A crew was usually of only three men, there were no office workers or a boss sitting in a chair. There were no phone lines ever! Everyone worked full time for as long as the stone arrived at the loading chute, and this never stopped until the day was well spent as the truck drivers supplying stone were themselves working on contract.

The fact was that on some jobs, the limestone that we crushed was actually loaded straight out of the surrounding farmer's paddocks by hand by the farmers themselves who were happy to be rid of the stone, and were well paid for it! So we would have loaded trucks arriving from miles around, all looking for welcome additional cash. Almost all had their own farm trucks, some even had small loaders fitted to their farm tractors, and were able to tip the loads off by means of cable hoists, hydraulic hoists were only just being developed in those days, and some were notoriously unreliable, even the worn steel cable hoists always broke at the worst moment, a fully loaded tray dropping from even a short distance, usually bending the truck chassis neatly at the rear of the cab! The farmers usually went out after the evening meal and loaded their trucks, sometimes in the dark! There was pretty stiff competition to be the first truck in line the next morning, some actually taking the first spot early and then sleeping in the cab till needed. There was a lot of good natured rivalry – working together on a job such as this was entirely different to what most workers could imagine in this day and age!

We actually had one 19 year old lad who was loading stone out of his father's farm, and while he had an old ex-WW2 Ford truck, it had no hoist. He not only loaded it himself by hand (his father was an invalid) but when it was his turn to unload at the hopper, he had to also unload by hand! He still managed to get two loads into the plant each day, and from the first day that he arrived, every available truck driver and spare worker on the job would pitch in and help him get his several tons of stone off his truck. After a couple of weeks of this, someone sold him an ancient hydraulic hoist for practically nothing, and I spent a weekend helping him install the hoist on his old Ford. I will always remember the first time that he tipped a load off the truck!

Some of these crushing plants were considered to be mobile, in the sense that they could be dismantled fairly easily and moved to another location, they were built in sections that could be transported on the trays of the ex-WW2 NR Macks that we normally used to transport the finished crushed stone. Very few of the loads that these trucks carried from one location to the next could have been considered legal. Heavily loaded ex-army, 24 wheeled heavy tank transporting trailers, towed by an overloaded NR Mack, they were well over the legal width at three metres! We also had ex-army low loaders that had once moved smaller tanks, but these were of only 16 wheels, but still three metres wide! When the whole plant had been dismantled, and everything loaded up, we would move off in convoy, sometimes traveling 200 miles or more to the next contract, where everything would be rebuilt to the same general plan. It was usual to make improvements to the layout if experience had shown that there was a better way to do something. and as soon as the concrete foundations had set under the engine, everything would start up exactly as before.

There wasn't much maintenance on these simple plants – greasing of the plain bearing conveyor rollers and plain white metalled countershaft bearings was the biggest task. We were only crushing limestone which didn't wear the crushing surfaces to any extent. Oiling and caring for the big diesel motors was done throughout the day, even having to fit new rings at long intervals was a simple but heavy task that we did with very basic tools. The total tool kit was little more than a couple of large adjustable spanners, and most important a couple of heavy sledge hammers. The lack of any form of welding or cutting equipment on the job meant that any minor breakages were undertaken using what was at hand or with the help of a local blacksmith or, if we were lucky, a nearby town with engineering facilities.

But any major problem usually meant that the broken or worn parts would be dismantled, and loaded on to one of the company Mack trucks. The workers and company truck drivers would call it a short week and head off for the company's workshop in Adelaide, a trip of many hours, with the Mack's engine governed to just under 40 miles per hour. There was seating for four across the Mack's large canvas cab, and anybody else would sit in the front of the large high sided tray, everyone including the front seat passengers, wrapped in army greatcoats or blankets, if it happened to be Winter! A few bottles of beer would be bought at the first town passed through, and sometimes a game of cards would be started on the steel floor of the tray.

A normal working week usually finished around 3pm on Friday, by which time we would have crushed a good tally, and every worker would be looking forward to a good pay packet at the company office on Saturday morning, and a weekend spent on home turf. Sometimes a company vehicle would have a reason to do the trip to Adelaide, but not always, in which case there was usually at least one worker who owned their own car, and it was usual for any passengers to chip in for the cost of petrol for the trip. The problem of extra petrol ration tickets was always overcome by a donation of tickets by the head office as the company enjoyed a generous ration of tickets for the general running of the country operations.

I sometimes used to run my 3-wheeler back and forth to the job and one of my workers used his new motorcycle. We were allocated petrol tickets and an allowance for this service. Privately owned cars were a rarity in those early post war days, and a worker didn't consider it an inconvenience to even ride pillion on a motorcycle for three hours to get home for the weekend! The return trip to the job was usually undertaken late on Sunday evening, but at times we would leave before daybreak on Monday morning.

I can remember one instance towards the end of a job when we had an extra tally-man with his own car, this due to the fact that I, as boss, had extra duties driving a front end loader full time. On this occasion it was mid Winter and we left Adelaide in the warmth of the car with the motorcycle rider along with us. We started to climb up through the Adelaide hills and it began to snow! By the time we had reached the highest point, the rider looked like a snow man! Snow was piled up on the motorcycle tank up to his chin! But he rode on till we stopped at Murray Bridge for a warm cup of tea. Amazingly when asked why he didn't shake the snow away, he replied that it actually kept him out of the biting wind and was quite warm! There was no such thing as full face helmets in those days, but he was wearing a warm balaclava over his head and we all used to ride in Winter with a lap rug. These were quite elaborate affairs in some cases and ranged from a piece of thick canvas that was held against your chest and upper legs by the oncoming wind, to a sort of half suit that stretched from under your eyes, with sleeves to put your arms into in some cases including thick gloves sewn into place, then becoming two separate pieces to go each side of the petrol tank and down the front of your knees. We at least had the comfort of ex-RAAF sheep's wool lined flying boots in the post war years. I was one of the lucky ones, I still had my full flying suit with kapok inner suit and helmet and goggles, which was proof against almost any weather, but did have the bad fault of allowing heavy rain easy access to the entire suit via the wide fur lined, but unsealed collar.

Kangaroo Island was a different matter! I had no transport for the first five months of the contract, the 3-wheeler was stored at Barbara's home back in Adelaide. It was mid summer and the crushing plant was 30 metres or so below the base of a massive outcrop of faulted volcanic stone in a hill that ran down to the sandy beach and pristine waters of Shoal Bay. I used to run the mile or so from my caravan on the outskirts of town, in the pre-dawn light. I was 31 years old and fit, and once more happy after the war years and the breakup of my first marriage. I used to make a couple of sandwiches for lunch, my only real meal of the day being taken at a guest house in Kingscote sometimes well after dark. I never finished on the job until all was prepared for a full start early the next day. Being a one man operation, this included stockpiling at least enough stone at the loading chute at the quarry face to cover the next day's needs, this was pushed into the chute as needed the next day with the diesel loader used as a bulldozer.

It only took minutes to climb up the hill during the day, start the loader and refill the lower hopper, which held enough stone for an hour or so of normal crushing. There were times when the crushing operation was running smoothly, and I could spend time at the quarry face, digging out difficult sections of stone during the day. There was the small problem of occasional stoppages in the stone chutes, but I soon rigged long lines of old fencing wire from a tree branch at the top of the hill to devices that I set up at the usual trouble spots. These wires were easily accessible from the driver's seat of the loader, and as I backed back during the stockpiling operation, a quick glance told if there were any problems, and reaching out and pulling sharply on the appropriate wire brought a steel lever down to strike the stoppage, only rarely was it necessary to have to climb down the hill and fix a problem. The end of a good day would see plenty of stone stockpiled at the chute, the screenings storage bins all full to overflowing, a swim in the bay, then a run along the sandy beach, leaping over the odd volcanic stone outcrops on my way to a shower and evening meal at the guest house.

The crushing plant itself was of the most basic design that was used in country areas. Constructed almost entirely of timber that had been dismantled and rebuilt many times over the years, using the same large bolts that by now slipped easily in and out of the holes that had been laboriously augered by hand uncounted years before. The stone storage bins were constructed using a basic framework, and the bottom timbers of the stone bins just dropped onto bearers, the sides using similar timbers that just dropped into slides incorporated into the main structure.

The stone from the first (primary) crusher was lifted to the top of the storage bins by a bucket belt, and as was usual in this system, there were broken and missing buckets from the previous maintenance neglect. This problem originated from the reluctance of operators to get down under the stone chute at regular intervals and shovel spill into the lifting moving buckets, a terribly dusty hard job, but one that had to be done to keep this type of plant serviceable! From the top of the elevator, the stone passed into a rotating 1 metre diameter, four metre long screening drum, which was suspended over the length of the storage bins. Any oversize material that passed through the screening drum passed down a gravity chute to the second small crusher, and was discharged back into the bottom bucket elevator feed chute.

The whole bucket elevator assembly was very heavy, and lay propped against one corner of the bins, but bad design and neglect had caused it to twist the whole structure on it's timber support legs. In fact, when I first saw the plant in the company of the district council engineer, the whole structure was in danger of toppling sideways on to the beach, and this fact alone was the basis of the contract that I negotiated with the owner as he was in danger of losing the whole structure, which would have been irrecoverable. He was close to being sued by the council over breach of contract, and there was no-one who could be persuaded to come to the Island to sort the whole mess out and complete the contract! He was well and truly over a barrel and was trying to find a buyer for the whole operation.

On the other hand, my offer to buy it, changed his tactics, but in retrospect it all turned out well for me! I ran it the whole time without any financial or local obligations, or restrictions of any kind, the local council engineer being on hand at any time to assist me in any way he could, this involving unofficial use of council resources on several occasions! For instance, prior to my arrival on the scene, he, observing that collapse of the plant was imminent, because the owner had closed the operation down with full bins (so he could sell the crushed stone privately through the winter as it was needed), proceeded to open the hopper doors to relieve the structure of it's weight and spilled the whole contents underneath! The owner was irate! But the action almost certainly saved a full collapse, and it was in this state that I first saw it. The engineer assured me that should I take on the contract, he would have machinery and a gang of council workers there to assist me on the first day. And so it proved to be – a good start to what proved to be a rather difficult recovery operation, the owner actually paying me 20 pounds a week for the first two weeks as part of our agreement.

The three discharge doors in the bottom of the bins were crude slide arrangements that were difficult to operate, and could at times jam. There were three grades of crushed stone, approximately 19mm the large and 10mm the small size. The below 2-3mm fines were just waste in this island location, being considered little more than dirty sand, and so, with no real application it was just dumped at the shore line, the dirt being leached out by the high tide, and the small clean black crushed particles slowly spreading along the short secluded beach at the high tide line.

By the next Summer when we had settled on the Island and I had bought a block of land in Kingscote that sloped up from the street, I also had the use of a company truck that I, as well as operating the crushing plant, used to deliver the finished product the short distance to stockpiles out on the main road. I used this to my own advantage, instead of dumping the fine waste, I trucked it into our block of land and slowly filled the large sloping area at the back of the block into a flat expanse of solid ground. It was here that I erected a workshop and eventually our dwelling, all of which exists to this day in Buller Street, Kingscote!

There were two small crushers, their combined efforts reducing the stone to the required product at the rate of maybe seven or eight tons an hour. The best tonnages were crushed in the heat of Summer, and as the weather cooled and rain made working conditions impossible in the quarry, production slowed a little, until by mid May, the onset of winter would see the leather belts removed from the pulleys, and the plant mothballed until next Summer.

A small International TD4 tractor powered the plant via it's power take-off, and this proved ultra reliable, but the owner later decided to remove it to his farm, and have me install an ancient, but much larger kerosine fueled tractor which caused me untold problems and continual maintenance, and in the end, my refusal to renew the contract. The fact was, that he was now very unhappy that he had entered into the contract in the first place. He had no conception of someone running the plant with just one person and regretted the large amount of money that he had paid me in such a short time – the removal of the diesel tractor was his first move to make me break off the contract. Supplying me with the ancient tractor that had stood unused in a paddock for years, was a ploy that failed when I managed to get it operational! But my determination to get the last of the good money available eventually came to an end with the completion of the current contract. We also became involved in a heated argument because he had tendered on a contract demanding the production of almost 100% of the finer product, this was of course totally impossible and far beyond the simple plant's capabilities.

So next season he was on hand with his son as a helper to run it all himself – with the original power source of course! Unfortunately for him, mechanical ignorance and total lack of experience, and the fact that he immediately closed the primary crusher down too close in a bid to produce more fine screenings for the airport tarmac contract, saw the crusher almost destroyed within minutes of start up. He was on my doorstep asking for my return, but knowing the extent of the major breakages that he had caused, I refused. Besides, I had started up in business for myself, and for me, crushing stone on Kangaroo Island had ended!