Rescuers have completed digging a tunnel to reach two miners, trapped almost a kilometre underground in northern Tasmania.
Operators of the Beaconsfield Gold Mine says rescuers will soon move on to the most difficult part of the rescue, where they will work by hand to breakthrough the last three metres to the miners.
And while the final phase of the rescue is about to begin, operators say it still might be another day before the men are freed.
National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Bill Shorten says the next stage will involve manually digging out rock, five times the strength of concrete.
Mr Shorten says rescue workers will be equipped with adequate safety equipment for this difficult phase of the rescue.
“Once they have got excavators with more rock in front of them, then what they'll have to do perhaps is drive steel probes up through the rock to make sure it's coming out of a confined space where these men have been trapped for so many days.” Mr Shorten said.