Right now I am in Cobar, NSW. (pop: 5,000). Crazy experience. I have had a few free minutes here and decided to use the internet at the local library to fire off a quick update.

I drove into town yesterday. The place was already expecting me. For that, I could thank a story on the back page of the Cobar Age, headlined, "Camels set for fame after media hype." Ohgod.

Anyway, Cobar is about one square kilometer of hard-drinking humanity dropped into the middle of red ore and tumbleweeds. The town has three mines, which employ most of the people. It also has a Chinese restaurant. And several caravan parks. The gas station serves a full range of takeaway and sit-down meals. I believe there are at least 10 licensed drinking establishments here. One, called the Great Western Hotel, is evidently known for having the longest wrought iron railing in the state.

Upon arrival in town, I met with the president of the rugby team here, a bloke named Jarrod who is about 6-foot-6. He was already wearing his rugby jumper at 4 p.m. -- a drinking uniform, he called it. Hours later, we were at The New Occidental Pub, where at least half of the Cobar Camels footy players were lining the bar. The New Occ was a classic workers' pub, unforgettable really. Salty nuts sat in jugs along the bar. Peppy middle-aged bartenders (all female) poured the coldest beer. Faint 80s music played on the jukebox. Just about every other person in the place had an Akubra hat and a beard large enough to hide a VW.

Perhaps a foregone conclusion, but it was a long and legendary night. In a way, at least by morning, I was a bit touched by the whole thing. Cobar, after all, is a place where most of the men pull four-on, four-off shifts -- which means that half of the guys in the bar are on long weekends, and the other half are just counting down the free evening hours until they go back underground. The whole scene at the bar felt almost like ancient ritual, healthy for the soul, a giant and collective purge of stress. Everybody knew everybody. Conversations and laughs just seemed to stop at night's end and simply resume the next day at the same barstool.

Funny thing happened at the bar, too. I started talking to one bloke, a stubby guy named Stuart Long, and he said, finally, "Meet me tomorrow morning. I'll take you down in the mine."

I was startled.

"Don't I need authorization for that? Will that actually work?"

(I should mention that during my life as a journo in Pittsburgh, I'd tried -- and failed -- for months to pull off the underground mine experience.)

Well, here in Australia it only took a chance meeting with a guy at a bar.

So this morning, I met Stu just outside the Peak Gold and Copper Mine, some 10 km outside of town. I was handed a visitors' tag, coveralls, a hardhat and an emergency breathing apparatus that I was never told how to use.

Then, down we went. Way down. We spiraled down this dark tunnel in a vehicle until we were about a mile underground. Spooky gushes of mud intermittently shot out of the mineshaft ceiling. The place was sauna-hot. I needed earplugs to defend against the chaos of the heavy machinery. I spent about an hour down there, eyes wide, and though there was no direct journalistic "reporting," I hope the experience can somehow help me understand what it's like for these guys on the Camels. After all, many of them finish these 12-hour shifts and head straight for three hours of rough footy practice. Time off is precious in the mine world, but most guys on the team exhaust all vacation time to travel to road games.

Trust me, when I emerged from underground, all I wanted was a hot shower. I think I had a little gold residue under my fingernails, but I probably washed it away.

Oh well. You can't really lament lost earning power when the salted nuts are free.