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A Chain Of Dredge Buckets & The Bucket Coolie
This photograph shows a chain of dredge buckets, known as the bucket ladder, reaching high up into the dredge. Their role was to cut into the tin-bearing ground ahead of the dredge as it moved forward and transport the tin bearing material up and into the dredge for the first stage of extraction of the ore. The bucket then returned to the water and earth upside down and empty.
The labourer standing by the ladder was known as the 'bucket coolie' and his task was to clear the buckets of any rubbish (wood, tree stumps, construction material etc) that might jam the bucket ladder and so he often had to climb on the moving buckets or alert the dredge master if the problem was beyond his capability. A jammed ladder often led to a broken chain and many days of lost production.
To read more about Dredges, click here.
To read more about the book ‘Kinta Valley ’, click here.