Hanging Treads

This excavator is going to have to do a bit better in the surf if he ever wants to go to Bell's Beach.

Edit 22-6-2013: Additional Photos

Landslip

Rocks from the Heavens

These photos are from the Coppabella coal mine in Queensland. It looks like the excavator was caught underneath a collapsing highwall, and was severely damaged by the rock coming down on it. Another very lucky operator. This would probably be a write-off.

Norwich Park bench failure

These photos are only a few weeks old. The dragline here from the Norwich Park mine in Queensland has had its bench fail underneath it. Sometimes benches will fail slowly, but this one happened only over the course of a few seconds. The operator only had just enough time to jump off the dragline before it fell to its current position, and it's lucky the bench didn't collapse further. Amazingly, there was no significant damage to the dragline.






[ Edit 9/12/2008: Picture of dragline operator removed by request. I didn't realise until I saw the comments below that he wasn't wearing his PPE (I was a bit distracted by the dragline). I have no wish to embarrass him, so I've removed the pictures. ]