The Levant Tin Mine

We continued our journey to visit the Levant Tin Mine. We parked the car and almost immediately met a group of visitors with a NT tour guide. Since we are members of N.Trust he invited us to join the group which was the final tour of the day ... so we timed it well. The guide was very knowledgeable and had obviously worked in the mines at some stage. He shared lots of behind the scenes knowledge. He was also an excellent story teller and he did his best to make the mining era come alive with his dramatic stories about the men who once worked there and the issues they had to face each day. One of the stories concerned a tragic event in 1919 when 31 men were killed and part of the mine was closed. At that time part of the deepest area of the mine extended for a mile out under the sea. The guide took us on a tour of the Miner's Dry and Tunnel where the miners once changed into their underground clothes before descending a spiral staircase to a tunnel that led to the Man Engine Shaft. The Man Engine was installed in 1857 to speed up the transport of miners to and from the deep workings. We then walked down to inspect the working whim engine which was used to raise the tin ore from the workings deep under the sea to the surface.