Trip to \\\'Big Pit\\\'

Hello.

Today we went to Big Pit. Big Pit is an old coal mine. At first we got on the bus for 1 hour. We sang lots of songs like the wheels on the bus.

When we got to Big Pit the first thing we did is go into the museum, we saw the showers where the miners would have cleaned up and where the miners would have cleaned their shoes. We also had a look at the old lockers and some of them had a little bit of information about old miners and what they would have kept in their lockers. We watched a video about how coal was made and also had a look at how dark it would have been down the mine.

After that we went into a mine simulation. We watched a video about what mining would have been like and then went into a place where they had rebuilt what the mine have looked like in the olden days. There were noises and bangs and it was really dark and lots of the girls were scared.

Later on we went into an actual mine! First we had to have a belt put on which had a mask and a battery on, we had a light put on our helmets and a switch to turn it on and off. Then we got into the lift, I was really scared! It was going down quite slow at first then it got faster, the brake turned off and our knees bent like we were jumping.

In the mine was dark and the only light we had was the light on our helmets. We were shown around the mine and had a lesson on everything we saw. We learnt that you were 5 years old when you started working down in the mine, opening doors! We saw where the pit horses were kept and how they would pull the mine carts up to the surface, damaging their eyes. When the horses were to old to pull the carts they'd be sent to the abatour, that's a company who would kill the horses and ate them. On the way up we learnt the 'Pit Marching Song.' We had to repeat everything our guide said. In the lift on the way up we sang 'We R Who We R' by Ke$ha, that was funny.

It was a great day overall and we had a lot of fun!

By Georgia Jones and Caitlin James.