Tin Miner

​I am unsure of this.  I opened a page and asked Merril to do a random pick of a word.  The word her finger pointed to was “Tinner” or a tin miner.  Fair Dinkum, I have never been tin mining in my life.
I have searched for gold though in Gympie.  A group of us drove up there.  I have never gotten to Gympie so fast.  We had to buy a licence and hire the equipment to do some panning in the specified creek.  We were probably blinded by dollar signs but there is no doubt we had a good time.  The most memorable thing for me were the curious cows.  They were checking us out and we were checking them out.
I have always been interested in rocks.  I have a few at home I have kept because of their interesting colours and shapes.  When I kept fish, they were a part of the fish landscape.  Now they are scattered around the home. 
I reckon I found a stone artifact once.  It was definitely a stone hewn in such a way to be a cutting implement.  Someone else must have thought the same as it was nicked.  Oh well, all I have is the memory of it now.
I was given a metal detector one time for my birthday.  To try it out I started at this home.  I discovered we have a shed.  Actually, that would not be too hard as we have a number of them.  When exploring here the display did light up and made all the right noises, but it told me the item was about one-foot underground.  The ground was really hard, and I did not bother.  It was probably a nail.
We used it on the Sunshine coast one time.  Merril and I walked along a sandy creek bank.  When the thing lit up, sand was much easier to dig.  We did not find anything of value though.  We also did not last long.  It is really sad when having a line in the water with absolutely nothing happening seems more attractive.
A friend told of a property being sold near Canberra.  To make the sale more likely gold was shot into the rocks.  The place sold.  Turns out it really did have gold on it anyway.
That is all very well, but this supposed to be about tin miners.  As I say, I know nothing about tin mining, but google seems to know everything.  So I went there.  Wikipedia told me tin mining dates from the Bronze Age or about 3,000 BC.  It is believed to have first been done in the Near East and around the Balkans.
However, I wanted to know about tin miners.  I saw heaps of images of them.  Tin is mined in open cut sites and underground tunnels.  These days it seems to be performed in airconditioned comfort.  Once it was a pick thing and heaps of people did it.
I do not envy the lifestyle or go weak at the knees over tin mining or tin miners.    It looks like hard work.  I am happy to enjoy the benefits of it though.  Our tin sheds testify to that.  Plus, the tin roof on our wooden shed does the job.