Mining for Gold: Inside One of the Most Dangerous Jobs

I felt like an ant scurrying along ever-narrowing tunnels until we reached the business end of the mine: The plate. We were with the morning shift workers, who start at 4 a.m. They use an enormous drill to burrow deep into the rock, where they plant explosives. The late shift then drags the blasted rock to the surface.

South Africa's Mponeng gold mine is about to reclaim the title of the world's deepest mine at 2.4 miles underground.

(ABC News)

Crouched next to a frighteningly buckled pillar, I had to operate the drill. I enjoyed it, but I only did it for five minutes, not for a full eight-hour shift. They offer these guys cash incentives, enough to double their salaries if they hit targets.

There were women working down there, too. Equal opportunities at the deepest work place inside Earth. It's a comforting thought as you listen to the rock mass creak and crack above you.

Some great scary facts from our pre-mine safety briefing were spinning around in my head. Down in the deep, you're an hour's journey from the surface. And if you get cut down there you bleed fast because of the pressure. I pictured a wild drill bit ripping through my jump suit and deep arterial blood pumping out like beer from a keg. I briefly wished we hadn't had the safety briefing.

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I was soon awed by the sight of what we were looking for -- tiny specks of gold wrapped around ancient pebbles. Three billion years ago this was a huge lake bed. It's pretty amazing to think that, after all that time, Man thinks it's worthwhile to risk life and limb to comb all the way down there to get it.

Anglo Gold Ashanti, which owns Mponeng, is proud of what they've achieved here. We may have gotten a sanitized tour, but they really do appear to stick to their motto of "safety first." I suppose they have to. When you've got 5,000 people working deep underground every day, you really have to have some systems in place. Things have come a long way from the dark days of South African mining, when 500 miners were killed every year.

And up top when the shift was over, we took a tour of the barrack block where most of the miners live. They get a bed, food and free health care. When you consider that one in five miners is HIV positive, free anti-retrovirals must cost Anglo Gold a lot of money.