Far below, where the beams of the sun never shine
The bogger trucks ore on an underground line
Rich in gold or in silver, in copper or lead
The treasure long hidden in earth’s rocky bed

He trucks on an underground line.
As he shovels the ore from stope and through pass
He toils and he sweats in smoke fumes and gas
Fracteur gas, carbon gas, smoke gas, distilled

From hundreds of drill holes with gelignite filled
He breathes when at work on the pass.
He shifts broken masses from under the drill
Where glistening sulphides are mined on the rill

In rill stope and shrinkage stope back stope and drive
Where giant explosives the rock faces rive
He doggedly follows the drill.
He fills in with tailings the cavernous space

Stoped out by mines who worked on the face
With mullock and tailings, with dust dry and damp
All the refuse that pours from the battery stamp
He heaps in the stoped out space.

Comes a day when he’s missed, and you seek him in vain
For White Plague has stopped him from coming again
Silicosis, fibrosis, or that dreaded disease
The scourge of the underground worker, decrees

That the mine shall not know him again.
Perchance there’s a fall, and a bogger has died
Killed by a rock from a treacherous slide
A ground fall or broken plank, a missed step or hole

Another name writ on the lengthening toll
Of men that in deep mines have died.
Not shell fire or rifle ball sent him "out west"
It was Industry’s battlefield claimed of his best

And a mother or sister, a sweetheart or wife
Was robbed of the love light that’s dearer than life
When a plain bogger went to his rest.

J E Dodd, North Perth Feb 1912.
Published "Kalgoorlie Miner".