What if you wake up one day to find out that your simple garden had a huge sinkhole on it?
That is exactly what happened to a retired couple’s backyard one Monday where a sinkhole suddenly appeared and grew to a diameter of 15 meters on Tuesday night. This was the result of an old mining shaft which wasn’t used for decades already.
Lynnette McKay and her husband had people from the mines department review the sinkhole to find out who should be responsible in repairing the hole. According to McKay, people were bringing in pumps and other things to check the situation. She adds, “ “We were seriously shocked. It was 1885 apparently all the mining started out around these areas. I just got that bit of information from a person [whose] father worked in the mines.”
While the sinkhole happened because of a shaft used for mining below the ground, this isn’t the first time that sinkholes and collapsed surfaces have occurred in Ipswich. The place used to be known for its underground mines but has been a residential suburbs for some time already.
Source: NANIXAMI via YouTube
According to Jim Leggate, a former mines department environmental officer, “The engineering of those mines was pretty good but part of their operations was the collaptive roof supports [timber pillars and beams that inevitably rot] and in certain locations that would cause surface subsidence. And it was an inevitability that was conveniently ignored in the [mining leases].The problem is a lot of those underground mines there were operated under mining leases that didn’t extend to the surface.”
These days, Ipswich no longer has a mining industry. But it definitely shows everyone that the past finds a way to haunt us.
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