Mark Hinman’s Pencil Case

Mark Hinman’s Pencil Case

 

This is a short rendition

So let me start the race

And help you understand

It’s not Just ……..a Pencil Case

 

Long ago and far away

Some mines had stayed their way

Old Cobar, a rusty kind of town,

We worked hard to keep the shafts going down.

But when the managers face was dark

The geos looked for any shiny spark

 

There was little hope, for the bloke from Shell

He was apparently a disciple of Tim Bell

(second speaker explains Mark transferred from Shell to Cobar as part of his Peak PhD…also some context of the incredible dynamic Tim Bell bought to structural geology through porphryoblast studies)

Elura had seen fired a lot of blasts

But no one had ever seen those micro …….porphyroblasts

So we held to more conventional ways

And sent Mark to the core yard maze.

 

A merry dance of Tom Brown’s core

Already cut and half broken ore

There were surveys to be found

That seems to indicate the core could not be round!

An ori mark could not to be seen

And Mark applied his skills to Lotus 123

(second speaker explains that neither Peak or McArthur River had reliable core orientation so Mark developed a rotational calculation based on cleavage or bedding as the reference line…it was all manipulated by his formulas in 123….the fore runner to Excel)

The calculations resolved the gaps

That Pontil drilled to fill the maps

Mark checked the dip and fixed the strike

His wily protractor tracked the bends

And calculated where an ore zone ends

 

No simple case of ABC

He used the Greeks to help us see

That alpha beta was the best

When you  used a stereo net

But here the story takes a bend

Because when we thought he had gone astray.

To find in the end

It was his health that paid

 

Those awkward little kidneys …..never gave him peace

And he left our little home

Though he was happy at the Ox

Between the Chesney and The Peak

While at the CSA we missed his happy smile and the daily chance to speak.

 

Home is what you make of it

And Mark made that work for him

In a renovators dream …. back from EGRUs study grounds

He paced himself like an ebbing tide

With dialysis on a 3 day ride

It was day one … recovery time

Day two …   feeling great

And day three ….thinking he might not make the gate

Still somehow he made it happen

Like the champion he was

And those of us around him

Only hoped his heart wouldn’t break

 

The transplant meant he got back to the rocks

And came across the sufferings of the ol Mt Isa Block

It’s twisted form and hidden charm

So like him, no one could hold him back

From the slippery Merlin moly

To McArthurs broken shales

Across Starra’s hue red oxide

To Kulthors crackled ore

No one else could piece together

And the chocolate box was poor

   (speaker 2 explains that Mark named all of the Kulthor faults after chocolates)

Until Mark dissected it

And showed us there was more

 

Some could not believe that such a magic map

Came from simply looking at the core

But the part I always treasure

Was when he would sit and measure

The history of our world in a colouring hush

With pencil cases open and choosing colours without rush

He explained thin skinned mechanics

Beside inverted basins….. thrust tectonics

And I marvelled at the mix of graphite and wax

To trace the nature of our earth’s twisted tortured tracks.

 

He even spent some time with the good ol CSIRO

When Mark studied core for more than a year ….or so

At McArthur River before the mine began

It seemed a simple seam ……and what could possibly go wrong

There was talk of road headers to sing the company song

They would work, unless someone made the ore zones fault

And so the Feasibility hid that in its vault

Till the hand drawn maps from Mark saw it was not so

For there were faults a plenty and the work was there to show.

 

Somehow these disparate forms

And timely structural shapes

Came to mesh an artful mind that Mark Hinman could curate

In generous lines and careful words he did sometimes amuse

And left us all to follow up the clues.

 

For long ago and far away.

I still hear his call

From a quiet footfall

To the thump his back pack made

Spilling pencils all around

And if you seek the souvenir to see where he has been

Look no further than Hinman et al …….two thousand eighteen