9th October. The Biggest Hole in The World.

Our first stop in the town of Asbestos was the graveyard, to pay our respects to Isabelle's Grandfather. He lies just a few hundred yards from the edge of The Hole and in the shadow of the now silent processing plant. Grandfather's birth coincided with the year of the opening of the mine and his death in 2002, curiously, with it's closure.

Despite the continual blanketing of the town in Asbestos fibre, referred to as "summer snow", which Grandad routinely had to clear out of the gutters, he survived quite healthily to the age of 92 without any apparent sign of lung disease. I noticed that he shared this longevity with both his parents and his siblings. The family Jewellery business continued until the shop, along with half of the town, fell into the ever expanding hole in the early 70's.

After taking Isabelle's Grandmother for Sunday lunch at the "Restaurant Gryzou" I was excited to finally view The Big Hole... The Hole certainly is vast, at a guess two miles across with circular tiers something like Dante's vision. Up till recently trucks the size of houses wound their way up and down, lost in the scale of the enterprise. At that time the hole was so deep the bottom couldn't be seen but now a green coloured lake has formed.

The town no longer advertises its links to the mineral the world no longer wants and has had to adjust to a falling population. Recently the community has been toying with the idea of a change of name from what currently may as well be Mesothelioma-ville...