This story goes back to the year 1935 when I was prospecting at a place called Southern Cross in the Western Australian goldfields.
Two old prospectors sank a shaft in the main street of the town, opposite the hotel, and spent as much time in the pub as working in the mine.
As the shaft got deeper the bloke operating the windlass would pop into the pub, come out with two foaming pots of beer and call out to his mate at the bottom of the shaft that ‘a beer was coming down’. He would put a pot on top of the bucket attached to the cable of the windlass and ever so carefully lower the beer to his mate.
This procedure was repeated many times throughout the day.
I had the privilege of sharing a couple of beers with them on a few occasions and learned a lot from their experiences as prospectors and Drinkers of Beer.