In 1979, half of the National Coal Board’s profits came from the sale of advanced mining equipment to China. Much of it had been developed and trialled in Britain’s coal mines during that decade. The deployment of that technology in the 1980s vastly increased the productivity of mining in other countries where coal was more easily got, and Britain’s collieries could no longer compete.

As a recent graduate of the Royal School of Mines, Dick Wolff worked with the evolving new technology on coal faces across the South Midlands, and visited other collieries in South Wales, South Yorkshire and Germany.

In complete contrast, he also spent ten weeks as a trucker in a gold mine in Kalgoorlie, West Australia.

There have been social histories of 1970s mining and mining communities published, but in this book the author brings together from his own diaries, log books and memories of the time :

- a detailed description of the mining methods and the equipment, clearly explained for the lay reader

- the human experience - what the work underground looked, felt and smelt like, what skills it involved, its dangers and discomforts, a sense of the working culture and the people, and the strange allure of an underground mine.

- reflections on the political and economic context in which the industry operated
- his own story

The final section of the book similarly describes the experience of working at Lake View and Star Ltd in Kalgoorlie, and the social experience of living in the Single Men’s Hostel on the mining leases.

The book contains 96 photographs and diagrams.