Day 4 - On Solid Ground

The main "head" at GFM.

So I’ve discovered getting an extra hour sleep in doesn’t actually count for much, since most others aren’t getting that hour the various small noises you hear tend to wake you, defeating the purpose. Anyway, all good, as excitement was high due to today being the first day I could step foot onto the mine itself.

Headed off from camp at 7:40 and walked the 500m down the road to the main gate of George Fisher Mine. As it turns out, my dreams of giant haul trucks rumbling past didn’t happen, but I saw the Admin areas and the Clean In Clean Out rooms. The idea behind Clean In Clean Out is like this. Lead is pretty darn bad for you right, too much, and it causes all sorts of problems. In fact, even Admin staff are tested for lead content in their blood every 6 months. I will be more often than that (not sure exactly how often) due to being in higher exposure levels of it. When you are covered in dust etc that can contain lead in a mineral form, you want to minimise that going anywhere else. So you rock up to the mine in your civies etc, and place them in a locker assigned to you. You walk through the shower area to another set of lockers at the far end, in here is your work gear. Everything you need but undies basically (yes that includes socks). You change into your work gear and proceed off to work. At the end of the day it’s the reverse, however, you shower in the middle part (yep, football style showers, how fun) and get changed back into your civies. Thus, lead exposure outside of work should be pretty well minimized.

Underground trucks all lined up.

After a brief tour it was more classroom time. This was a site specific (ie: George Fisher as compared to Black Star Open Cut) induction. Covered various topics, pretty boring, not a lot to it. Following this I did a course in Driving on the Lease. This covered road rules etc for driving on the mine site. Everything is very very procedure driven around here. You can’t enter any vehicle without doing a pre-start inspection (incl’s oil etc). Even if the bloke before you just got out. It’s all about safety etc so you really can’t fault them, but it certainly takes a long time to get a simple job done. I can see my days of “just getting into it” are long gone. Spoke with a gentleman this morning who I believe will be working in the same area as me, and he said the same. You just need the mentality of sitting back and waiting.

What I believe to be my workshop.

After all the theory we did do a small drive around the top. Saw the “portal”, it’s the drive down entry into the mine (and I would assume it’s my most common entry point) and also a very large workshop full of Underground Loaders. Most likely going to be my mine area from now on. The place is huge, about 5 Bunning’s style shed’s tacked together I reckon but about twice the height as well.

Other than that, my still no Haul Trucks, and still no canaries. But I’m sure we will get there. Hump day is over now, and every day is bringing brand new things.

• The ore bodies at George Fisher were discovered in 1946
• They were developed for mining in 1969
• Currently there are approx 1000 people incl contractors at George Fisher
• The main ore bodies equate to 4.5million tonnes
• To remove said bodies is at an estimated cost of $274 million.