Another Day, Another Dollar...

Handlebar Hill Open Cut Mine

Here we are again, my calendar informs me it's Friday. I think my body subconsciously knew anyway as I had told myself all day I would have an early night and no beer, but it's 8:50, although I only had 2 beers... And they were light, that counts right? First time in my life I purchased light beer was out here, in fact, the only beer I have drunk has been light. Started off with XXXX Gold, as I knew it was cheap (nasty stuff though) and now I have worked out that Pure Blond Naked is the same price. $2 for a tinny is not a bad deal if you ask me.

Starting to really get into the swing of things this week. Worked in a few different areas seeing many different things, one day I was in the Dieci hanging cables for a Tele-Remote site (Tele-Remote is a remote operated vehicle from small donga located not to far from the working site, controlled by radio waves), the next I was installing antennas on Trucks, and the last few days I have been doing Preventive Maintenance checks (or P.M's) on Loaders. This has been interesting as I am getting a solid understanding of the entire system.

There has been a few highlights in my week, one day we went up the back of the mine (above ground) and visited a container which houses the repeaters for the haulage road and Handlebar Open Pit. This was great as it gave me a really good view of how big the pit it, and the entire GFM site. Handlebar is set for expansion, apparently to 8 times it's current size, trust me, it's huge already, 8 times bigger is going to be something else entirely. And let's not forget that they are digging a huge hole right over the top of an underground mine, which I am in might I add. Scary stuff really, some real smart cookie has worked this one out for sure.

On Wednesday I did a some driving underground by myself. I have driven a bit with others in the car, by myself was scary, afraid I would get lost mainly. However, I did alright. No accidents and no wrong turns. Driving UG is very different from any other sort of driving. It's quite normal to come round the corner and be confronted by a loader coming the other way. Let me tell you, seeing one of these 60 tonne machine coming at you with the teeth on the bucket being the first thing you see, it makes me very nervous. As quick as you can you get the Toyota into reverse and start looking for a cut in, or a pass you can duck into and let it past. Sometimes this means a hundred metres or so, up or downhill, in a corkscrew fashion. If you can't reverse, don't work underground!

A jumbo being serviced.

As it would happen, on one of my solo trips, whilst waiting in a cut in for a truck, things got very real. "Emergency, Emergency, Emergency" 3 words (or one word repeated 3 times I suppose) you don't really want to hear when you are underground. We were told to relocate to our nearest safe areas. These range from some of the crib rooms or Emergency Refuge Bays which are located all around the mine. Basically a safe area that is very structurally intact, contains radios, phones, water, oxygen etc. Luckily for me, I wasn't to far from the surface so I got straight out. Turns out one of the trucks had a tyre fire. Fire is very dangerous underground, due to all the gases in the air etc a small fire can get big very quickly. Other than the radio call they alert personal using the P.E.D system (Personal Emergency Device) which is part of your cap lamp. It starts beeping, your lamp starts flashing and it shows the words Emergency Emergency Emergency. They also release "Stench Gas" into the mine. This used to be a gas that smelt of rotten eggs, due to people mistaking other smells and gases for this it is now Eucalyptus smelling. It's strong though, and very quickly penetrates the mines, and it stands out strongly.

So yes, I evacuated, and I believe the problem was sorted, no dramas or injury's. I then spent 3 hours on surface doing bugger all waiting for all clears to go back down. The main problem here was my crib was underground in 10L, and I was above ground, and I was hungry. Eventually though I got back underground, had my crib, and the day went on.

So yes, Friday is almost at a close, just need to get through this weekend and I will be on the downhill run. It has been a good week, got "some" tools, makes it a bit easier to do things. Had a few good chats with my boss and got certain things sorted out, makes it easier to when I know what's going on. Nothing worse than everything being up in the air. Really enjoying the time spent with the guys here, for the most part they are a great crew, and I am learning lots, and I think I am also teaching them a few things which is nice. Some people seem to do nothing but complain out here, and yes, that's very easy to do. But when I break it all down and look at what I am doing there is no real reason to complain. The work isn't "hard", the pay is ridiculously good, and at the end of each day I get a decent meal (it's not home cooking but it certainly isn't take away) and a beer or two with some good company. I came out here with a goal and a purpose, and whilst I am here for that I will try to make the most of it. Of course your going to hate it every day if you tell yourself that. Here's hoping that in 6 months time I'm still going strong.

Yesterday's Ore Targets are as follows:

• South Side - Goal of 2815 tonnes, reached 3400 tonnes
• North Side - Goal of 5182 tonnes, reached 5200 tonnes
• All's I can say is that's alot of rock!

4 Down, 10 to Go

Another day dusted, literally, there is dust everywhere out here. I found a brand new pair of leather boots in the container today, (we have 4 large shipping containers, one is fitted out as our main "office" with computers, aircon etc, all powered by solar and a generator as they didn't run lines in, the other 3 are parts storage), they were nice Bloodstone ones that are steelcap, but water proof. Instead of laces etc it has a velcro flap you undo which opens the shoe wide enough to get your foot in, but its all sealed. Anyway, after claiming them as they were my size, I wore them. A lot more comfy then the gum boots, let me tell you. Back to my point, this afternoon, they weren't new anymore. Absolutely filthy and dirty from all the dust and mud around. And I didn't even go underground today!

Still slowly finding my feet. Assisted Michael yesterday and today (Michael is ex Aviation like myself, however he is a 7yr Uni Engineer, as opposed to my 4yr Trade, he designs it, I curse him when nothing fits) with building a unit that could remotely control two barricade setups with warning lamps to be used when we have Remote Loaders side loading Trucks in certain areas. This is meant to stop people going in and getting killed. Sure enough there will be people stupid enough to do it anyway, but hey, apparently that's normal out here. Michael wanted to the program (which he coded himself) to also be able to show if a light was busted. After wiring it up initially, and finding it didn't work, I sat down and went through the schematics and re-engineered it do what he needed. Pretty basic stuff, but as I don't know the equipment etc I was pretty happy with myself once we got it sorted and it worked well. A few of the guys were pretty impressed with my wiring style as well, due to it being a lot more "presentable" (and I believe function-able) than the standard normally used around here. Hopefully down the track I can introduce them to some more Aviation techniques that will hopefully make things last a bit longer in this environment. Although as I saw this afternoon, when a loader runs over a steel electrical cabinet, it doesn't matter how its wired. It's still a pancake!

After we got that sorted I spent the day troubleshooting and repairing some MineGem systems, learning more about there web interface and diagnostic tools, and then we wrote a program to use data supplied from some serial 232 G-sensors we had picked up. We fitted these to a spare 232 port in one of the MineGem units and have now got it installed on two loaders. Pretty impressive stuff really, these things are extremely sensitive and we had to turn them right down, but now we have a nice visual representation of the forces on the loader. The cards are about half the size of a credit card, and the program only took a few hours to write and nut out. I think I am going to have to learn some coding as a couple of these guys are very switched on with this sort of stuff and I was struggling in some places to keep up. The whole idea behind this by the way was about 2 weeks ago a loader got stuck. After everyone looking at it for about an hour and not being able to figure out how to move it etc, someone went to check on it. It was upside down. It had rolled and apparently "no-one" had noticed.

Other than that, we saw a pretty impressive dust devil, I finally got my own uniforms, and tonight was Seafood night which was quite tasty. Not bad for a Saturday really.

• On average the loader can carry between 13-15 tonnes of rock/ore in a single scoop.
• 26% of visitors to this site are using Internet Explorer. Here is the link to Firefox.

Found this video of a Mucker loading a Truck

I've Stopped Counting Days....

Well here I am, back in the Mighty Isa. Things sure do seem "normal" now. Very easy flight, although they may have let the work experience bloke do the landing.... Strange to get on a plane and everyone is pretty friendly and chatting. I knew a couple blokes from around camp. On the bus and out to camp. You get the option to go into town for a couple hours, do any shopping etc. Allows the blokes to buy things like favourite foods etc and keep them at camp. I didn't need anything so straight in, grabbed my room and unpacked. Was easy as I knew where to put everything to set it up like last time. I'm in a different room, right up the back of camp. It seems more run down than my last, haven't sat on the bed yet........ well I can safely report it doesn't squeak. Looking forward to that. Also I have a brand name TV (cough Samsung cough) which is slightly larger than my other one so maybe I can watch it this time.

I bought a new laptop whilst on break, really happy with it. It's a Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook. I'm really happy with it, its feather light, super fast and the screen and audio are fantastic. I have loaded it up with some movies/TV shows (all legal of course) and some music. And it certainly makes writing this that much easier. I also bought 3 books with me, picked up the new Jo Nesbo - Phantom (thoroughly enjoyed his last one, The Snow Leopard) and two Clive Cussler novels - The Jungle and Sahara. That said, with working (still makes me laugh) 12hr shifts, and not having days off this swing I probably wont have time to read/watch as much as last time. Still, better to be prepared than not.

I had a really good break, I thought a week wouldn't be long enough but I made the most of it and it was great. Really relaxing, plenty of time with my wife and friends. I spent more time with my wife doing things than we would normally have together in a month or so. Mainly as she works a lot of weekends (about the only time I didn't work in my last job) plus I wasn't getting home to see her at 6-7pm and out the door at 7 the following morning. Went to the beach, had a surf, did some work on the car, was fantastic really. Looking forward to the next time. Starting to realise I may only have one more chance to be home with her before the baby comes, and we are looking to move house. So much to do and time is disappearing so fast. I know the next two weeks here will fly by.

Anyway, other than that, not to much to report. Hopefully I can really get in and get my hands dirty (I mean that both figuratively and literally) this shift. I think I have a general understanding of the operations, now to really get in and nut it out, work it out from front to back then find something new to learn. Maybe even have a go at teaching some of these guys how we deal with wires in aircraft. Anyway, hopefully I can get some more interesting pictures and info to keep you all entertained. You just never know what your going to find out here.