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Sunday May 7, 9:26 PM Australian mine rescue bid hits problems Photo: AFP Click to enlarge BEACONSFIELD, Australia (AFP) - Two Australian miners buried alive for nearly two weeks are just a couple of paces from freedom, but the final push to rescue them ran into unexpected problems, officials said. Rescuers attacking the last barrier of rock with hand tools for fear of triggering a tunnel collapse found their jackhammers ineffective and had resorted to "low-shock blasting", said Beaconsfield Gold Mine manager Matthew Gill. "Miners report they are dealing with some of the hardest rock they've ever worked with -- up to five times harder than concrete," he told a news conference in a park opposite the pithead on Sunday. Gill would not give a timetable for the rescue, saying only it was "unlikely" they would be freed on Sunday and that "health and safety remain a key concern." The two miners were in "reasonable health" given the conditions they had endured for so long, he said. Todd Russell, 35, and Brant Webb, 37, have been trapped nearly a kilometre (half a mile) underground at the Beaconsfield gold mine in the southern island state of Tasmania since April 25 when an earth tremor caused a major rockfall. One of the miners' colleagues, Larry Knight, was killed. Russell and Webb survived because they were working inside a small steel cage. Although the cage was unroofed, a massive rock fell on top of it, protecting them from being crushed or smothered by smaller rocks. For five days the men were feared dead. Then rescue teams detected movement at the 925-metre level. The miners had survived by drinking water dripping down the rock face and sharing a muesli bar. A slim PVC pipe was connected through to the men last Monday, through which they have been receiving water, food and other personal items. The miners, whose humour and fortitude while underground has captivated Australia, were still in good spirits but looking forward to being freed, said Bill Shorten, national secretary of the Australian Workers' Union. While the rock was harder than expected, the men involved -- both those trapped and the rescuers -- were "tougher than the rock", he said. Only one man at time was able to work at the rockface at the end of a narrow one-metre diameter rescue tunnel bored out by machine and using jackhammers was like "throwing Kleenex at rock". "This is just sheer muscle and willpower," Shorten said. The men have joked about looking for new jobs, asked for meat pies instead of the nutritionally-correct liquid meals they have been fed and expressed the desire for a beer as soon as they are freed. Told of the huge local media coverage of their plight, Russell and Webb now describe their steel cage as a "two-star" hotel, with them as the two stars. Media experts have estimated that the men, both married with young children, could make as much as two million dollars (1.5 million US) if the rights to their stories are bought for television, magazines, books and film. But the large media contingent covering the rescue drama lost one of their own Sunday, when prominent television reporter Richard Carleton, 62, collapsed and died shortly after asking a question at the news conference with Gill. The veteran journalist had a history of heart disease and announced last year that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but the exact cause of his death was not immediately known. As a steady, cold rain fell at the pithead and the men began their 13th night underground, Beaconsfield residents were waiting for the ringing of the church bell signalling that the men had been rescued. It will be the first time the hastily-restored bell will ring out since announcing the end of World War II.