Antigravity

G'day.

Yet again too flat out to get a chance to update this fully I am afraid. With christmas fast approaching we are all putting in some pretty long hours. I had a trip to Emerald last week which was a 14 hour day and 1003 KM round trip. Good fun.

Have been out at Moura again all this week, we have just made some changes to the radio system and it all went a little haywire so I have spent most of my time chasing my tail trying to fix that up. The photo of the dragline you may notice is on a lean, yes, the dragline was falling into the pit. The bench it was sitting on collapsed and they frantically ran around trying to bank it up with overburden before the whole thing ended up toppling over. All quite exciting.

Anyhow, I shall leave you with some photos, and hopefully might get some time later on in the grand scheme of things to finally get a bit more written.

TTFN!

To the moon and back

G'day.

Yet another busy week this week, and several more to come by the looks of things.
First few days of this week were spent mostly around town for a change, catching up on all the outstanding work I haven't been able to get back to for the last goodness knows how long.

I also spent a fair bit of the week working on my new second hand work vehicle, wiring it up and preparing it so that it will be mine usable. I have probably made the wiring somewhat more complicated than it needed to be, but however, it will be worth it in the end. I spent a fair few hours on it last week, and two days on it this weekend, and I reckon at least another day to get it finished.

Thursday and Friday were spent at Callide putting up a new tower. I have attempted to stitch a few photographs together to give a 360 degree viewpoint, not sure how well it will turn out online but I have attached it regardless. The first day we stood the thing up and rigged the top few antennas, and then the second day we finished rigging the rest of the aerials and doing some testing.

Not much else to report really, I haven't got enough drive to write much more, as it is past my bedtime and I should probably turn in for the evening.

Not long till I'm back in NZ now!

TTFN

Wild Horses

G'day.

Well, now I know what it feels like to be Bugs Bunny. Not to say that I've been eating carrots all week and getting chased by a bald midget with a shotgun. More the burrowing around under the ground bit.

Again, I suppose I best start at the start. Which for the purposes of this update, shall be Monday morning. Regular readers may recall last week I ended up working saturday, so after my one day weekend Monday morning arrived all too quickly. Anyhow, another early start, as I was booked for an induction at Callide. Pronounced "Cal-eyed" not "Cal-eedy" as I heard someone attempt to say it the other day.

So, up at the crack of dawn yet again, and in the truck for an hour and a half. Arrived at site and went through the mostly wasted day which is an induction. Luckily most of the paperwork was similar to Dawson, so as the instructor lady was yapping on I managed to get 3 hours of paperwork done over the course of the morning, so that in the afternoon when she asked us to go and do our paperwork I just handed it to her to be marked there and then.
She gave me one of those "what the hell" looks and proceeded to mark it off, and then let me go. Which was excellent, as it saved me three hours of even more wasted time. When finally got out of the induction I checked my phone and found a message from uncle Grant saying he had just left Callide that morning and was heading to Moura, and was I going to be there...

Typical of my luck, he probably drove within 10 meters of my truck and yet we managed to miss each other yet again, even though we were on the same mine all morning. That's the way it seems to go around here lately.

Turns out that I wasn't allowed on site directly after my induction anyhow, because I hadn't yet had the drug test completed. This was because I was booked to do it last saturday, but of course ended up at cracow instead, so had to miss the drug screen. Job for next week, perhaps...

Anyhow, Tuesday was somewhat unusual, as somehow I managed to actually spend most of the day in Gladstone. Starting work at 8 for a change was strange, by body clock woke me up at 5:00 as it has been used to for ages. I caught up on some paperwork, managed to get some software setup on my computer, and generally had a productive day. I ended up swapping a fan unit out on a cellsite, but luckily the site was in Gladstone, so everything was working out for once. I finally got out of work about 6 o clock, and went home to prepare for the rest of the week out at Cracow again, this time to perform routine maintenance on their above ground comms system.

So, come Wednesday, I was back on the road again in typical Willie Nelson style, heading back to Cracow. Three and a half hours later, I arrived on site. I signed in, and did the usual breath alcohol test, which for some reason I don't seem to ever fail, and was led to the training room to do a site induction. Yes, I know, two in a week. Anyhow, this one was somewhat more to the point, and 10 minutes later I was handed a cap lamp and an emergency breathing device and pointed in the direction of the electrical supervisor. Somewhat confused at this point, as I didn't see why I would need a cap lamp for above ground comms maintenance, I did as I was told and met the electrical supervisor. He then introduced me to his daughter, who was the electrical leading hand that day, and said "here you go, she will take you down and show you the problems we are having". Coming to the conclusion that it didn't look like I was here to fix surface comms, I donned my lamp and we drove over to the portal. "Do you get claustrophobic?" she asked me. "I don't know." I replied, "but I imagine we are about to find out!"

Turns out it wasn't as bad as I imagined, certainly an eye opening experience however. Although I didn't tell them this, I had no previous experience with underground comms whatsoever, and yet here I was sent to repair them. After a bit of a tour around, I slowly pieced together how the system operated, and started to troubleshoot it. Long story short, across the three days I found a couple of issues and managed to repair them, overall giving the impression that I knew what I was doing. A bit of luck really, as I was certainly... in the dark. Boom boom chish.

I probably shouldn't joke, given that on the drive home I was informed about the Pike River explosion. Although that was coal, and I was in a hard rock mine, having just come out from that scene makes you appreciate a whole lot more what those guys must be having to endure.

Overall, a very interesting experience, I guess not everyone can claim to have been over 800 vertical meters below the earth's surface. The air down there is thick, and very humid, and incredibly warm. My test set was reporting 51 degrees C, but that would have been slightly higher than ambient temperature. It was probably closer to 45 I think. Right at the bottom where they are hauling from there is very little airflow to help move the hot air around. After spending 4 or 5 hours underground, it's quite interesting coming up to the surface again, everything seems so light and open. The aircon in our truck failed right at the bottom, so we had a very warm and slow trip back up, as the windscreen kept fogging up. I was glad to get to fresh air after that particular trip.

I probably wasn't supposed to have my phone on me down there, but I sneaked a couple of quick snaps, of course being very low light they haven't turned out all that flash but it might give you some idea of what it's like.

Anyhow, finally back and it's the weekend, so one can't really complain. Except I didn't set my alarm this morning and ended up sleeping in too late and missed the opening hours of all the shops I wanted to visit today. However, could be worse.

Right, better go and do something productive for a change... It may just about be rabbit season again.

TTFN

Walk of life

G'day.

I had just started typing this and my bedside lamp decided to make an interesting buzzing noise and fizzle, and I discovered my air con unit was leaking a large amount of water directly into the lamp. Luckily, I have managed to isolate said lamp and I am going to have to address the problem of the leaking air con tomorrow. Probably par for the course, given the rest of the week. I suspect I should start at a suitable point... lets make it the beginning.

Monday. Typical mine week monday, up at a reasonably early hour, and off to Moura. Not too bad as far as work load went, nothing too strenuous, and all going quite well. Until I got back to the camp and went to connect my phone to my temporary work laptop for my internet, that is. (Because my original work laptop was away for warranty repairs). I discovered this alternative work laptop had no bluetooth to talk to my phone. At this point remembering that was why I had packed my personal laptop, I cranked that up just to find that no matter what I did, I couldn't get telstra to let me authenticate on their network. Long story short, (and believe me, I didn't give up easily...) I gave up and resorted to just using my phone as it was.

Usually I would have been able to use the cable connection, but recently when the "hold" switch fell off my phone, I took it apart to fix it. Good news was the hold switch now works fine, bad news was that for some reason now the USB cable doesn't.

That aside, Tuesday and Wednesday were fairly by the book, if such a thing exists. A couple of good jobs on draglines, one to replace a camera which was no longer functioning. The camera lens was apparently on order, and had been for some time, so I decided I may as well try to chase it up.
Basically, there is an old type and a new type camera and lens. The mine now runs the new type cameras, so we of course require the new type lens. The stores person who obviously meant well but didn't have a clue what they were doing had decided that because we were replacing the old stock code with a new one, it must of meant that we couldn't get the old ones any more. He then researched it, found another supplier for the old lenses, and cancelled the order for the new ones, without realising that we desperately required the new type. Yet another long story short, I now have the new lenses on order... I hope.

Thursday was interesting, another incredibly long story short, there is a dragline which they have been rebuilding, and mucking us around with, and rebuilding some more, and making some colossal mistakes, etc, which they were trying to put back to work. Aside from the fact it kept breaking, they discovered that the radio antennas were in the wrong place, and desperatly required them to be moved before the thing goes back to work. They were planning on doing it the following wednesday, and tried to organise as much as possible to get it done by then. That was all well and good, until they turned around and said "oh by the way, we are now doing it tomorrow". Well, I had other scheduled work, and my supervisor at the mine told them that I wasn't going to be helping them. But in not quite so many words.

They somehow managed to guilt trip another Nixon guy who was working at the washplant to come down and help instead, which suited me just fine anyhow, as they wanted the antennas at the top of the mast. Which isn't a fun task... Believe me on that one.

Well, Friday... he showed up at half 6 as they requested, just to be informed that the dragline had broken down yet again over night and they were going to be an hour or two before they could get to it. So he proceeded to make up some antenna cables etc, and I left them to it and carried on with my first scheduled job, which was to replace some batteries at a repeater site that were faulty.

This was the second attempt at performing this task. These batteries are 2 volt cells, so of course you require 6 of them to get your required 12 volts. When the intelligent electrical planners ordered replacements, they ordered... one cell. That aside, apparently now all 6 cells had arrived, so I managed to get an apprentice leckie and a ute with a hiab on the back and away we went to locate these batteries.

On the way, we got sent to have a quick look at a dozer that apparently was having troubles with his radio. We drove all the way down there, across some really rough rocks, just to call him up on the radio and find that it had come right and he wasn't going to stop for us just to check it out. So, turned around, cursing at the wasted time, and swung past the dragline on the way back to see how the other bloke was getting on. He was having about as much luck as I was, they had decided that the dragline wasn't going to move for a few more hours so had decided to try and do the antennas where it was. Except, the dragline was parked on a ramp. Which is on a slope. So the crane driver got down there, and immediately told them they were idiots and he couldn't possibly set his crane up on a slope to lift 100 meters in the air. In not quite so many words.

The intelligent planners then decided they would get a dozer to flatten a pad out on the ramp to allow the crane to set up, but it turned out this was going to take 3 hours, and they thought that they would have the dragline moving again in a few hours, so they ended up just waiting to fix the dragline instead. We left him to it, and carried on to locate our batteries. Finding the first one was easy, this was the single cell. We went pulled up near to it, hopped out, and found we had a flat tire. Those sharp rocks at the dozer had done an excellent job of slicing through the rubber tire and letting all the air escape. I suppose at least it was only flat on the bottom.

As the truck didn't have a spare (the spares had only arrived that very morning and hadn't yet got into town to pick one up) but luckily, as we had broken down in the stores, they happened to have a stock of them. We put witches hats around the scene, filled out the necessary safety analysis documents *cough* and attempted to crack the wheel nuts. Except, I couldn't. For love nor money. Thinking smarter, I spied a length of pipe lying near by, and proceeded to introduce it to the wheelbrace. It seemed to be moving, and I was right. The pipe had done an excellent job of turning the wheel brace into a banana. The wheel nut was still stubbornly fixed where it had been. Giving up on the pathetic wheel brace, I ducked into the tool store and "borrowed" a 2" drive socket and short bar, and with the help of the length of pipe, finally managed to loosen the wheel nuts. These things were that tight I can't believe that we didn't bust a wheel stud getting them off.

Finally got the tire changed, and the battery loaded up. It transpired that the remaining 5 cells were further down the road, so we got the keys to the laydown area where they were stored and drove on down. We hooked the hiab up to the crate of batteries, and... discovered that the crane couldn't lift it. So, an hour later, we had managed to split the box open and crane the cells on one by one.

At this point it was lunch time, so we decided to call back into the workshop for a bite to eat before heading up to the site. Went to go into the workshop, and saw a lot of guys standing around doing nothing. Not that this is unusual for australians, but they all seemed focused on one thing. Which turned out to be a 1.5 meter brown snake which had decided to make a home underneath a tool chest inside the workshop. This ruddy great snake decided he didn't like the company and slithered out under the door. They tried to pick him up with a snake hook, but only got his tail and he kept on "high-tailing" it out the door and slithered under the workshop. Which is pretty much where he stayed, they ended up giving up waiting for him to come out and made do with some "beware of the snake" signs instead.

So, after a bite to eat, (us, not the snake), we headed on up to the hill. One by one we removed the old batteries, and installed the new. Couldn't work out why nothing was working properly, and then discovered that I had inadvertently managed to leave a negative off the battery bank. However, no harm done, I hooked her up and away we went. I was planning on going home around 2 o clock, as this was when my 8 hours was up, but by the time we got back to the workshop it was pushing half four.

Foolishly, I decided to go back down to the dragline to see how my colleague was progressing before heading back to Gladstone. They had only just at that moment started their job, the dragline had taken more hours than they thought to get repaired and moving, and then it took them an hour to set up the crane, and they had just got it into the air to run the cables. I was having a yarn to the crane spotter and deciding what I was going to do to help, when my phone rang.

It was the boss from Gladstone. The conversation went something like this:
"How's your day going?
"Could be better... I was supposed to be out of here at two, and now I'm still here, down a pit looking at a flaming dragline."
"That's alright, it could be worse."
"Oh yes? How so?"
"Did you have anything planned for the weekend..."?
"I'm not sure if I should answer that... carry on?"
"I might have a small urgent job for you out at Cracow..."
"Oh great..."

He went on to inform me that a dozy grader driver had managed to hook his grader up in the guy wires to a 100 foot tower, and tore the whole thing to the ground like a house of cards. The "urgent" status was because on that tower was the towns TV channels, the police comms, and several other subscribers communications, all whom were of course now off air. As I was already at Moura, I was only about an hour away from Cracow.

I figured I had nothing really to lose, and informed my workmate that I wouldn't be able to help him with his dragline after all. I jumped in the truck and headed off to cracow, with very limited materials given the task at hand. I finally arrived in Cracow around 6:30. I was instructed to give a certain fellow a call once I reached the town. I drove into what the sign said was Cracow, and saw a pub, and nothing else. I drove back and forwards, couldn't find a town as such, so I parked outside the pub and rang him anyway. He asked "where are you?" I replied "outside the pub". He said "well I am on the front veranda of the pub, come on over". So I did. He informed me that this was the town, all of it. A very nice pub actually, very country feel to it, and the pommy barmaids weren't bad either... good thing I'm goind back at the end of this week too.

Anyhow, this fellow introduced me to yet another fellow, who took me up to the tower so I could get a look at what I was going to be dealing with the following day. As my old boss used to say, "a picture is worth a thousand words" so I'll attach a few at the bottom of this. I took some drawings and about an hour or two later we left the site, and I signed into the camp for the night. I did ended up talking to the poms until closing time at the pub however...

The next morning, I arose at 5 and headed up to the site. It looked even more of a mess in daylight than it had the night before. I proceeded to map out exactly what gear was there, and what was running off what. Once I had identified everything, we attempted to straighten out what we could. We ended up with two semi usable sections, so we cut the bent ends off and welded the two sections together to give us a basic form of tower. Half the antennas were complete write offs, and the others were very bent. I straightened out what I could, and remounted them to our makeshift tower, doing my best to point them in roughly the right directions. When an antenna is shaped like a banana this can be easier said than done.

I had to re run every cable run, as the heliax cable that originally was on the tower was completely bent and useless. Luckily I had a couple of drums of coax in the truck, as I used every bit, right to the last meter. Once the tower was more or less rigged, we got a telehandler up there and stood the tower up against the side of the hut. We tied on some of the old guy wires, and tied them off to waratahs hammered into the (very) rocky ground. It's a temporary measure, but at least it got the television back on air, and kept the towns people happy.

Once that was all done, we did some more testing, and decided that was the best we could do. Two TV channels were solid, the other two were slightly fuzzy, but given the type of cable used and fact there was half the antenna gain, this made sense. I threw my tools back into the truck and headed off to start the 3.5 hour drive back to Gladstone. The people of Cracow were really friendly, I felt quite at home there. This might have been because I was the only thing that could get their TV going again, or they might just generally be happy to see visitors, I'm not sure.
13.5 hour day on a saturday... Wasn't what I had planned on, but hey, I came here to work, so why not.

Anyhow, it's off to Callide mine tomorrow for a day in the classroom doing another mine induction... what fun. So, it is well past my bedtime, I should be asleep long ago. Hopefully this week goes somewhat smoother... A day at Callide, hopefully a day in town, then three days back at Cracow. No rest for the wicked, so they say.

TTFN.

Black Dog

G'day.


Yet another fun filled week, some interesting moments in it. Not entirely sure where to start, so I'll try the beginning.

Monday was pretty uneventful, which was good, it gave me a chance to unpack from the previous mine stint and get back into the Gladstone way of operation. Tuesday I ended up helping the installer with a taxi... taxis are the same the world over I have discovered, impossible to please. We put all the metering, taxi signs, cameras, and everything in, so it is a mammoth task as you may well imagine.

Wednesday I had a bit of a lollipop job, a mine not too far away had a failed repeater which I had to go and swap out. It took longer to travel there and back than it did onsite actually doing the job. I like those nice straight forward ones now and again.

Thursday was when it all started to get more interesting... The catalyst which started my main problem I believe is my new computer. You see, on the previous evening I was playing counter strike online and decided to remove my wallet from my back pocket, where I was sitting on it. I placed it next to my keyboard with the intention of not forgetting it. That was well and good, and I continued to be slayed by my online counterparts, until I finally decided to go to bed. Next morning, I of course arose and loaded my pockets with the usual junk I carry around, but of course my wallet was not on my bedside dresser where it usually lives, it was still camouflaged on my computer desk.

You can probably see where this is leading, but of course I ended up at work without my wallet. Now, this would not normally be a major problem. One would usually be able to carry out their daily tasks and it would not affect production whatsoever.

However, of course, being my luck, today was the day which I had booked in to go and apply for a marine security card. So come 9 o clock, I went trundling down to the marine office with the appropriate paperwork. We went through most of it, and then came to the point where she requested my multiple forms of ID. Feeling smug at this point, as I had remembered to put my passport in my pocket, I retrieved it and she ticked it off. She then asked for my drivers license as a supporting ID document, and, fully prepared to hand it over, I reached into my pocket. Which of course was empty.

After a brief period of minor panic at realising my wallet was not there, my mind immediately recalled where I had left it. A second or two passed, where the cogs in my head were frantically spinning, trying to think of a way around the problem, when it hit me that I was indeed sunk. There was no getting around this one. I sheepishly confessed to the lady that it appeared I had misplaced my wallet, and the corresponding license which she was requiring. She immediately froze over, and became icily cold. (I suspect she thought I was a terrorist trying to break into the secure marine environment and had forgotten my forged documents.) She informed me that she "was incredibly busy today" and I would have to rebook at a later date. Which turns out it will be 2 weeks in the future.

So, I left, kicking myself for such a simple mistake which on a normal day would have 0 repercussions, but today had me totally snookered. As it transpired, I was also booked in to obtain some safety glasses too, which I also required my wallet for, so I ended up going home and retrieving it.

The day continued to get better and better. I had a job about an hour and a half south, so I jumped in the car and took off. Made it to the site, it was pouring down with rain. This was supposed to be another easy as job, swapping some batteries out and plugging in a power supply. How difficult could it be. Firstly when I opened the door a huntsman ran at me from the left, and a giant lizard from the right. It took me a few seconds to identify the lesser of the two evils and I ducked towards the lizard. Huntsmen are really really fast, and this one was doing his best to beat his high school sprint record. He shot behind the rack where I was about to begin work and hid. The lizard meanwhile shot out of the door and took off. Regaining my composure, I began working on the rack, expecting Mr Huntsman to reappear at any moment. I eventually spotted his legs around the back of the rack, so I figured as long as I could see his legs I was pretty safe. I don't believe they would usually bite, but I wasn't intending to find out.

Anyhow, after putting all this new gear in, I fired up the existing on site UPS and discovered it was completely shot. So I jerry rigged the system to run without the UPS and took down it's name and number in my notebook in a manner consistent to that of any good police academy.

So, I proceeded to jump back into the car, and drove back down the road towards Gladstone. It was pouring down, cats, dogs, small elephants, you name it. I was driving along, thinking about the fault, and how to best solve it, and eventually started to think the road was a little different to how I remembered. Dismissing it as just my imagination, I continued on. 25 minutes later, I reached a T intersection leading to Bunderburg. Which is the opposite direction to Gladstone. Realising I had missed the turnoff, I turned around and retraced the 30 KM which I had overshot the turnoff by. How I missed it I have no idea, there is a large restaurant and a huge sign pointing down the road... I must have been completely immersed in thinking about the fault and not concentrating on directions. I remember when I left the site and started driving I thought "next major landmark is the next town", but I had of course forgotten about the turn off. So my autopilot kept going, expecting to see a town. So that added 60 KM to my trip for not much gain really.

Friday was marginally better, for a start. The original plan for the following week was I was going to be going to Callide mine on monday for an induction, and then putting a tower up at Callide later that week. That was sweet as. Then, it was changed late Thursday night, that I was going to Callide for the induction on Monday, and then going to Clermont to put up a tower there instead. (That's about 500 KM away). So, I was all prepared for that plan. Then the guy from Callide rung me up asking if I had a current drug screen, which I had not. And I was miles away, doing a vodafone fault, so I had no chance to come into town to get it done on the Friday. So the induction at Callide was postponed, and I was going direct to Clermont. Ok, no worries. Carried on with the task at hand, finally got back to work about 4:30, and the supervisor tells me that the plans have been changed yet again, and I now am going to Moura all next week.

Turns out the guy we had lined up to do the Moura work did the induction and one week training, and then threw in the towel and got a job with another crowd out there instead, and gave us 2 days notice. IE, the weekend. So if I ever meet him I might have a word or two to say to him.

That's the way it goes over here at the moment, you never know where you might end up at a moments notice. On the bright side, it looks like I might end up with this guys vehicle, on the down side, it appears to be falling to bits. Anyhow, waste not want not.

Righto, I think I've rambled enough for one sitting, I better go and prepare for... the unexpected.

TTFN.

Friday

G'day.

Sunday already, who would have guessed. Yet another week under the belt... I know I say it a lot, but I am convinced time travels faster in Australia.

Well, another interesting week at the mine, that makes for four out of the last five weeks I have been out there now. I shouldn't really complain, I don't mind it that much, and it's good for the income. And it could be worse, there is another fella who has been out there for around 7 weeks straight I think, so I'm sure he is popular with his wife.

After the fun we had with vehicles last week, this week was realitivly uneventful in comparison. If you don't count the glow plugs not functioning, the handbrake not working, and the radio intermittently losing power, that is. Not having glow plugs is interesting first thing in the morning, firstly it makes it rather difficult to start, and secondly, a cold non glowed diesel doesn't develop much power, and I had to use low range just to get out of our slightly sloped driveway.

However, at least the wheels didn't fall off. You may think I am joking, but it has happened in the past.

Some warm days out there this week, 37 on Wednesday, and 39 on Friday. Interestingly enough, I was cooking like a baked potato on Wed, but I thought Friday was quite acceptable. Strange how the human body works at times. Everyone I talk to keeps trying to tell me that this summer is going to be a warm one, so coming back to NZ around Christmas time might be a wise move. I suspect I am going to freeze, from what I hear.

This update is coming to you from a slightly different means this week, I finally crumbled to the pressure and purchased myself a new computer, to enable me to start to edit some of this HD video footage I have been slowly filming around the place. It is a little nicer to work on than my poor old laptop, far more screen area which is nice for a change. Not quite as big as the 42 I used to have in my room in NZ, but better than the laptop all the same.

Had some pretty long days this week, we are short staffed at the moment so everyone is running around trying to keep on top of the work streaming in. I pretty much ended up doing two days work in one day to try and get the job complete, and ended up missing the meal at the camp where I was staying. I went to town and nothing was open, so I ended up driving around 20 km to the next town to get some dinner. Luckily they still had some chips available, so that was the answer to the hunger problem.

We have a couple of guys lined up to take the pressure off a bit, one is starting to do the mine stuff as of next week I believe, and the other will come online at some point with a bit of luck. It might give me a chance to get some of the day to day stuff done that I have been unable to get any time to do.

To top it off, one of the jobs last week was to program some radios for a company, and it turned out my computers programming port decided to randomly stop working right at the same time as I needed it most. So I went for a plan B, which didn't work either, and in the end by about plan G I managed to get the radios programmed successfully. So that will be my first job come Monday... get my laptop working again.

Nothing else too major to report really, that I can think of off the top of my head anyhow. I'll attach a photo of a bird and a mirror... this bird's mother obviously hadn't taught him about mirrors, and he was constantly flying into it trying to play with his reflection. Every time I walked past this mirror over a period of three days, he was there. After the third day, he either gave up, or got eaten by a snake or a large grasshopper, but either way he was gone. I couldn't believe the amount of time he was there, every time I walked past and saw him it became more and more hilarious.

Right, I better go and carry on setting up this new calculator...

TTFN

D.A.N.C.E

G'day.

It appears that I may have missed an update last weekend, not entirely sure how that happened but it was probably something to do with me forgetting and/or not getting around to it. However, as the baboon said... "it's in the past!".

Yet another busy week at the mine this week, being a man or two short at the moment is certainly keeping the rest of us on our toes. I'm doing the contracted work at the mine, and then doing installs etc after that as overtime, just so we can try and knock some of the extra work off.

Originally the plan was to take the dual cab navara as usual, but it turned out it had a cracked bearing and the universals were shot. So that went in for a service, and it was decided that I should take the 70 series landcruiser instead. Which I didn't mind much, although I would never admit it to Tom, I have a certain appreciation for 70 series cruisers. So I proceeded to use my weekend getting it up to as close to mine standard as possible, fitting reversing buzzers, fixing tail lights, replacing wiperblades etc. Come Monday morning I jumped in and got a few KM up the road when the slight odd sound in the drive train turned into a loud persistent very odd sound in the drive train. So I pulled over and did some fault finding, and began to suspect something somewhere in the transfer case. I decided it wasn't wise to carry on for a week on the mine wearing that out, so I rang the boss. Which was good fun as this was about 5:30 in the morning and he was well asleep.

Long story short, we had no other vehicles other than his own one, so he told me to drive back to his place and he would give me that for the week. So I limped back into town, took all his gear out of his truck, and put all my gear in. Luckily it goes alright, so I took it out and finally got the mine, albeit a little on the late side.

The first few days were pretty busy, catching up on all the work that the fellow the week before hadn't completed, and also fixing any new stuff that came in. This was made more interesting by the fact there were no 2 ways, no am/fm radios, and no microphones in the mine stores whatsoever.

I rapidly used up my own spares which I had tucked away, and then basically had no other way to repair any swapout faults. I even ended up losing my workshop radio to a truck that urgently needed one. Luckily by the end of the week, some AM/FM radios appeared and I could carry on and tidy up the AM/FM jobs. Which involved two installs into drill rigs... which took a while. At least it was a good feeling wiping that job off the "to be done" list.

After hours I had to deinstall and reinstall a radio from a vehicle that had been hit by a roo. I'll attach a photo... you would think bullbars would stand up to a roo, but not so. Bent the bar completely and wiped out the front corner of the truck.

Speaking of roos, I was parked up at a repeater site having a bite to eat, when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and saw this large kangaroo staring back at me through the passengers window. I immediately reached for my camera, but he started to bound away. I got a couple of photos as he hopped away, I was hoping to get one of him right at the truck but it wasn't to be. I also encountered this strange flying creature which was bright metallic green, again I'll attach a photo but it's a bit small.

One other job I had to do was program some radios in some road trains which another employee had managed to get wrong. These things are long... real long. I saw one guy backing one, although admittedly only in a straight line. I imagine it would get real interesting going backwards.

So, aside from working and getting ripped off by the NZ government and customs, not much else has been happening. If you ever import "scale replicas" into NZ... be aware. They charge you an importation surcharge, a biosecurity levy, and GST on the item, including on the freight, even if you have already paid GST in the country of origin. And, they only have an 0800 number listed, so you can't ring them internationally to abuse them. This time I just paid up, but if they try it again I'll be complaining. How they get away with charging GST on an item not purchased in NZ, and even more so, on the freight to get it there, beggers belief.

Anyhow, enough from me, I'm intending to attempt to get some more done on my train layout, as the poor thing is getting neglected with me being away from home so much at the moment. I'm back out at the mine next week too, although hopefully that will be it for a week or so. We have a new guy starting the mine run shortly so that will take some pressure off.

TTFN

Long Run

G'day.

Hard to believe another week down. Looks like I finally get a week back here in town for a change, only a week mind, the following week I am back out at Moura. I may as well just move out there the way things are going, we have so much work on it isn't funny.

And our friendly south african is leaving us... so we are a man down too. Anyone know of any radio tech's after a job in Australia? Send them my way. I'm serious, we need more staff.

Well, an interesting week, as most mine weeks tend to be. I was cruising around on my own this week, so didn't have any major driving encounters this week, luckily.
First job on tuesday was a good one, I had to go and change a solar panel out for one of the environmental blast monitors. So I collared a spare apprentice to lend a hand, and collected an enviro to show us where it was, and we went for a drive. I almost ran over a 1.5 foot long lizard just as we left the carpark, if it wasn't for the screams of the enviro I probably wouldn't have seen the blasted thing... so that was a good start. If a lizard wants to camouflage himself as road, then proceed to sleep in the middle of one, it's hardly my fault for not seeing him.

After doing my best to placate the visibly shaken enviro, we carried on our way and finally made it to the property where the blast monitor was housed. The enviro wouldn't let us drive any faster than 20km/h incase we stirred up too much dust. We got a large gate, behind which was an equally large bull. The enviro panicked and started to call the farmer to open the gate. I said to her to stop worrying, and that it would take more than a gate and a bull to stop a determined kiwi. So I went and opened the gate, and we drove through. The bull gave us a strange look and carried on chewing grass. When we got to the monitor, we found that the mount we thought was going to be there and the mount that was there were two completely different things. So we took some measurements, battled the gate again, and drove back to make up a better bracket. I dropped the enviro off and told her I would let her know once we had it going again.

My first problem was finding a suitable material to fabricate the bracket out of. I was intending to use alloy, but finding alloy on the mine is about as easy as finding a donkey tree on the moon. So I abandoned that plan, and located some steel instead. There is a lot more steel available than alloy. So after drilling the appropriate holes and bending the appropriate bends, I managed to book some paint out of the stores and gave it the once over. We had to give it about 1/2 hour to dry of course, then we loaded it up and drove back to the monitor.

Once we got there, I discovered that the "alloy" brackets which I had thought where in place, where actually galvanised steel. And that where I thought I could bend it, I could not. So, out came the hacksaw and plenty of elbow grease, and we made some minor modifications. Which took a long time, as hacksawing thick steel a foot above your head isn't terribly straightforward.

I then had to drill the steel mount to fit my predrilled brackets I had made up. Where I could use the drill press for my brackets, out here in the middle of nowhere all I had was my trusty dewalt. So, starting with a small pilot hole and working my way up, over about an hour I managed to get 3 holes drilled. The fourth one gave me considerable grief, and cost me three drill bits... but we made it in the end. As it turns out I would have been better just to weld it, but I didn't realise that at the time. So, bolted the new panel and mounts up, and it worked perfectly, first time. Wired it all up, checked the monitor was working, and it had about 100 alarms up for "excessive noise"... I guess all that hacksawing was a bit much for it's microphone. We cleared the alarms, and all was well in blast monitor land again. Not bad for an entire day's work really.

The next few days were more of the usual, fixing an antenna here, and a microphone there. Dodging large trucks, and trying to keep out of the sun... 36 degrees it got up to at one point. Summer is going to be a killer.

I spent another day mounting four solar panels to a portable networking trailer too, that was another good way to kill a day. Over all, quite a productive week for the nixon fabrication department.

I was staying at a different camp this time around, for many reasons which are far to laborious and not interesting enough to warrant me recounting them here. But the food was much improved over the usual camp.

Righto, I better go and attempt to repair my cellphone... I lost my one button which locks and unlocks the phone, and finally my spare arrived from Hong Kong. Now I just have to find out how to pull it apart without damaging it beyond repair...

Here's some photos from the week.

Ciao.

I remember

G'Day.

I realise that this might be a day or two later than usual, but never mind, we made it in the end.

What a week.

It seems a while ago now, but it was just last week that I was out here at Moura chasing lighting plants around a giant mud bath. I had the intention of attaching some photos, but they are now on my other computer, which I don't happen to have with me. So that can wait till this weekend if I get a chance.

It made a change having someone else with me for a week on the mine, the week seems to go by faster when you have someone to talk to and share the driving with. Even if they do get the 4WD to both ends of it's limits... Getting stuck, and also sliding out of control. I would like to think that during the course of the week we have managed to make a better 4WDer out of him :)

Now that I have mentally moved into this week I can't really remember much from last week, not specifics worth writing about anyhow. I did get a lot of video footage, which as I get the chance to trawl through I may upload some to youtube and supply the links. Some interesting footage of some big toys anyhow.

Our workshop supervisor has gone away on holiday for a month, so it will be interesting to see how well the place runs without him. This is the first week away, so it's probably a good thing I'm out here again. Except it's pay week... hopefully whoever is doing the pays gets it right...

The vehicle was yet again falling apart around our ears, I suspect the ECU or wiring might be playing up. Strange things like no glow plug output, and the oil pressure light showing up when you turn the ignition off and remove the key. It's due to go back in for further work once I am finished with it this week, so fingers crossed it makes it through. If not I might be better to push it into a pit and drive over it with a D11 a few times, that would probably sort it out once and for all.

The weekend was good. Brief, but worthwhile. I ended up getting involved in a poker game with some guys from work, we started around 6:30 saturday evening and I didn't get home until around 5 the following morning. Good fun indeed. We were down to two people left, another fellow and myself, and ended up deciding it was only going back and forth and we may as well call it a night... err, morning. So we did, and I spent most of Sunday asleep, ready to get up at 4:30 on monday and drive back out here to the mine. No rest for the wicked... but it is good fun.

Work is still flat out busy as, we have a heck of a lot of work coming in which is good. Keeps one on their toes anyhow. The trick is keeping the paperwork up to date... it can be easy to get the jobs done and keep eveyone happy, but if you don't get the paperwork done there and then it generally gets forgotten about I have discovered. However, we live and learn.

Right, I think that's about it for now, I shall endeavor to construct more next weekend if I remember, and I may even try to find some good mine photos.

TTFN

Do her wrong

Glub Glarhgla.

That's "G'Day" in underwater speak for the uneducated.

One is getting good at speaking that, just at the moment, as it has been raining for over a week now. We had a brief respite yesterday, enough to spend the day stuck on a roof with a South African tied to a bucket truck anyhow. It was an interesting day, shall we say. I would love to have video cameras for eyes, as there are certainly some entertaining aspects of this job which are just too priceless to even attempt to put into words. I shan't even attempt it as I know I would never be able to give them suitable justice.

Work has picked up a lot this week. We are stretched to find the man power within the company to get all the work completed, so things are fairly flat out. I have two weeks at the mine coming up for the next fortnight, so that should be an interesting couple of weeks too. The plan is two of us are going out to check the GPS on all the lighting plants. Problem being, the GPS is currently not working, so we have no idea where the ruddy things are. The mine lease is a lot of land, so I suspect that a giant game of hide and seek is about to unfold. On the bright side, having someone else to drive will be advantageous as it should allow me to get some good video footage.

I've been on call the week, usually the only callouts (if any) are to vodafone cell sites. Not so this week, a couple of direct customer callouts. Of course the first thing they ask is "how much is it gunna cost me?" Which of course I had no idea, I don't do the billing. So I tell them that it's minimum charge of 4 hours at overtime rates, and apart from that I can't be much more help.
First callout was a good one, to a pub, and given the friendliness of the stunning waitress that I was dealing with, I was quite happy to get out of bed for her. (I would have been even more happy to get IN to bed for her now I think about it)...
And the second callout was to a boat to fix up a satellite phone, so that wasn't quite as interesting.

I had an interesting job up at a cell tower about 2 hours drive away, it's up a 8 KM 4WD track, which was good fun after the week of rain. There were some serious ruts on a steep bit near the top, but low 1st and a strategic approach angle allowed me to traverse them without too much hassle. The ruts were about 1 foot across and easily 2 feet deep. Just goes to show how a little bit of previous experience can be handy, if I had tried to drive straight over I would have been instantly struck, likewise if I had tried to drive down the rut sideways I would have just slid into it. The poor old apprentice sitting next to me didn't have much faith that we would make it up there though. The last bit was seriously overgrown, with grass taller than the truck. Couldn't see a helluva lot, but given the "beware of snakes" sign, I was buggered if I was going to get out and walk it first.

I also had an interesting job down at a place called Agnes Waters, we had to go and perform a routine check on a country radio station transmitter. The trip down was different, as I was going with an old guy from work who drives the only remaining range rover in the fleet, so it was good getting to ride down in a real vehicle.
Well, when we got on site, we discovered that the power supply for the transmitter had carked it and of course this meant that the station was off air. Just goes to show how many people in Agnes actually listen to country radio, then. Usually when a radio station goes off air it's a major panic to fix it, these guys didn't even know it was down. After a bit of bodging repair work we managed to get it on air, but not before we managed to blow the protection fuse. Which of course we didn't have a spare for. So I ended up soldering a single strand of power cable across the blown glass fuse and deciding that it looked pretty close to a 1 amp fuse. Worked OK however, so eventually I'll get around to replacing it with the genuine article.

Apart from that, I can't think of any one major event worth writing down... the week has been that busy I can't even remember what else I got up to. I remember something about trying to use a power cable to pull another cable up a wall, and getting them both stuck half way so I couldn't go up or down. That wasn't much fun. Typical short cut really, ended up adding 1/2 hour on the job where as it was supposed to save about that time.

I really ought to write all of this at once instead of ducking away to do other things in the middle, I imagine the whole thing would have much better continuity if I remembered what I had just written. Never mind, we get there in the end.

I've been too busy to take any interesting photos this week, shock horror. I'll try and make up for it next week.

TTFN

Lady Madonna

G'day.

Yet another week has disappeared without a trace, time is certainly flying by. Before we know it I imagine it shall be next year.

Again a busy week, fairly full on. Spent monday messing around with concrete truck repeaters, installing new bits to it and testing it live to see if it fixed the problems we had. Which it has appeared to do, so that is good. Tuesday I spent a fair bit of time wrestling with an induction for Optus, to allow me onto optus sites. Their stupid online site kept crashing and I had to do each of the 4 tests about 3 times each before it actually worked. Good old inductions... will be interesting to see how long before NZ is as bad.

Wednesday was spent preparing and programming a wireless internet system, and general bench work, and then Thursday was spent installing the pre prepared wireless internet system. And a small afterhours job, just as we were packing up to leave for the day the supervisor came out and asked if we wanted to do some overtime, as we needed to get a vehicle to Biloela (about 160 KM away) by tomorrow. So we ended up taking two vehicles out to Bilo then coming back again, so that was thursday evening buggered.

Friday most of the day was spent trying to get equipment ready for a big three day microwave install job, half the parts still haven't arrived though so I'm not sure how well that is going to go for us. I don't think there is any techs left in the workshop next week, we are pretty flat out and all tied up with fairly good sized jobs. Apart from Ryan, the slacker, who has jumped back to NZ for most of the week. Alright for some.

Ended up getting up at 5:00 on saturday morning and driving to Moura for a mine golf tournament, Nixon's sponsor it and haven't entered a team for a few years. Was a brilliant idea, apart from the fact none of us had played golf before. We were playing Ambrose rules, so you basically have four people take a crack then you all play from the best of the four ball locations. Which was mighty lucky, as it increased our odds somewhat. Was quite a unique experience, dodging the kangaroos that were bouncing all over the course. I think I personally lost around 20 balls over the 18 holes, and my team mates were not much better off. Water hazards are indeed a hazard, although I had one excellent shot that managed to skim the water hazard, bouncing off the water three times then up onto the bank on the other side. That was a very lucky shot. Some practice at the driving range before we went would have probably been beneficial also...

We ended up winning a the NAGA prize, for the highest score. By about 20 points. But we were definitely improving by the last few holes. NAGA is an Australian term for "Not A Golfers Arsehole" meaning basically that you are no good at golf. I figure they got that bit right. I might have to come back and get some tips from the golfers in the family so I can have a crack at winning top prize next year.

I did score some free hats and stubbie coolers however, so all was not lost. The prize we won was some jams in a display case and a margarita kit. So I might have to find someone suitable to offload that onto, I don't think I'll get through the amount of jam that is there, and I don't drink, so no point in the margaritas.

The other downside to the golf day was the blasted mozzies. They breed in the water hazards and these were big suckers. You kind of get enveloped in a cloud of them and they just go for ya, they will even bite you through your clothing. I am feeling the effects today... Mongrel things. When you squash them the explode and about a litre of what you hope is your blood goes everywhere. These are not small every day mozzies, these are big fat slow flying, and about the size of a Boeing 747 with needles about the size of the skytower. Apparently if you tense up and rush blood into them while they are feeding it chokes them, a bit like someone squeezing your paper McDonald's cup whilst you are drinking through a straw I guess. I lost count of the number I killed, they stick to your back in big swarms, we kept on having to slap each other on the back to stop them sucking blood through your t shirt. You could get 10-15 in one hit if you were lucky. The joys of this country...

Well I have managed to get the lawns mowed today, now I just need to track down a whipper snipper to do the edges, and round the blasted palm trees on the front lawn. Whoever planted those is an idiot, they are a pain in the neck to mow around. Especially on a slope filled with rocks.

Better go and do something productive I suppose, here's a photo of the kangaroos on the golf course.

TTFN

Don't look back in anger

G'day.

As the aussies would say... "not happy Jan!" After all my effort spent on the mighty Range rover... turns out the block's cracked. Bit of a major, then. Might be time to cut my losses... either that or do an engine transplant from the old discovery... might not be worth the hassle. We shall see. Will be interesting telling the manager, after being pretty confident I could get it running. Well, I did get it running... just happens that the stuck thermostat and the overheating wasn't part of the original equation. Not sure how easily they are going to be able to shift it now either... guess if we sell it as is where is with the discovery too someone will get a bargin.

Anyhow, fairly interesting week out at the mine, typical mine scenario, the rules kept changing. Turns out the dragline shutdown is weeks behind schedule, so I won't be out there next week as previously thought.

I went out first thing monday to be onsite by 6:30 to do an induction for the dragline area, and boy was it wet. Raining cats, dogs, and small elephants. I got to the usual mine road, and it was cut off and closed due to flooding. So I took the alternative route, and the water was deep there too, but crossable with the 4WD. Brendan was going to meet me out there in his commodore, so I rang him up and met him in the town just before the water. He asked why, and I told him he would soon find out. So he jumped in my truck and we forded the river across the road, and finally made it to the camp. We carried on towards the mine, just to be told that the mine was closed as there was yet more water across the road and they couldn't get mines rescue personal on site. So, that was pretty much monday buggered, Brendan ended up going back to Rocky, the other tech went back to Gladstone, and I ended up staying at the camp incase there were any major repeater outages when the mine opened again.

Tuesday the rain had eased off a little, and there was access to the mine via a third route, which involved going down the main haul road as the usual access was still cut off. (And remained so until Friday). I went and completed the induction which was going to be on Monday, and then carried on doing the usual mine stuff that I was sent out to do. The other two guys carried on doing the dragline stuff, and found out that the place we were going to run all the cables to had been deleted off the new dragline plan. So, they are going to have to build us a new room to put the camera stuff in before we can run any cabling. That pretty much was the end of the 2 week job at that point, so the other two guys went back to town.

I had a few jobs to look at on Tuesday, but nothing too serious. Wednesday was pretty busy, installed a new radio to a dozer, looked at a few faults, had plenty of work to keep me out of trouble.

Thursday was the opposite, pretty much dead, not much to look at at all. I did some site checks on a repeater site, just about got stuck twice because it was so wet. Friday was looking good, started with an hour long safety briefing on faults with EWPs and what to do if you catch measles. Not too many jobs on, I was hoping for an early escape back to Gladstone... when the call from dispatch comes through, "Help, channel one is cutting in and out, needs fixed". This is rather an urgent problem, as channel one is their main operations and haul road channel, if that isn't working they pretty much can't run the mine. So given the bad weather, I figured it could be a battery problem. I collared a passing apprentice and told him he had an important job to do for king and country and got him to give me a hand to put the generator on the back of my ute.

They seemed to be having more problems at the northern end of the site, so we drove up there to the northern most repeater and almost got stuck several times. We eventually managed to get to the repeater, and after scaring off the local wallaby population we checked the battery condition. All was OK, and I couldn't fault the channel one. Thinking I may have got it wrong, we left and went to the next repeater in the chain. We finally managed to get our way over the rills and onto the access track, slowly crawling our way up the seriously rutted hill, trying not to fall down crevasses, and just as we were almost at the top, I see a haul truck appear over the horizon. Which was unusual, as they don't generally drive haul trucks to repeaters. Once we finally made it to the very top I discovered that in the few weeks that I had been away they had formed a new road right up to and past the repeater for dumping more mining spoil, hence the truck.

We checked the batteries here also, all OK. Just as I was lowering the lid to the battery compartment, I was hit with the sudden realisation that I had got sidetracked and forgotten to lower the cover on the battery box at the first repeater we had been to. So, back down the hill, this time taking the easy haul track, and drove back to the first repeater to fix the battery box lid. That was all pretty straight forward, but I still hadn't found a problem. Time was getting on, and I was keen on getting out of there, so I decided to check the last main repeater and leave the other 3 for someone else. So I drove to the last major repeater, just as the rain set in again. Checked the batteries, all OK, and checked the channel, all OK, and dispatch said it was OK, so I left it as it was and headed back to the workshop.

The rain was setting in well by now, so I went and washed down the truck and got off site. The trip home was very wet, in places the water was falling so heavy even with the wipers on full you couldn't see the front of your own bonnet. Finally made it home and called it a day.

Saturday we went to Rocky and I bought some ARB recovery gear for what now turns out to be a non usable range rover, however, always handy to have in case one gets stuck. Bought some more bits for the rather neglected train layout too, hopefully will get a chance to do some more on that soon.

Right, better go and get some dinner cooking, here's some pics from the week.

TTFN

Enter Sandman

G'day.

Well, another week down. I've said it before and I'll say it again... time flies when you are having fun. And fun is indeed what I am having.

If nothing succeeds like a toothless parrot, you better call me polly and hand me my dentures, as it appears I have succeeded in getting this Rangerover running :)

It has been an interesting quest so far, I have learnt a fair bit about the Lucas "hotwire" EFI systems that's for sure. Turns out my problem was with the distributor amplifier module. I went to grab a spare one off the parts discovery, just to "discover" that it was a different type. I thought it out for a while and worked out that I could modify the rangerover system to accept the discovery dizzy, so I spent a day doing exactly that. Long story short, I finally got it all wired up and installed, turned the key, and... nothing. It wound over fine, but no cigar. Feeling somewhat intrigued by this response, I had a gander under the bonnet, and discovered that in my wisdom has managed to leave the coil disconnected from the distributor. Feeling like an idiot and also feeling pleased that it was a logical easy fix, I made the necessary connections and wound her over again... bingo, she fired first pop.

And, fingers crossed, has been running ever since.

I did and oil change today, and discovered that the rocker cover seals are somewhat lacking... the oil was pouring out the seam almost as quick as I could pour it in, so that's going to be the next mission. Not as easy to get to as a series 2a either...

Work has been crazy busy, I am running around like a headless chicken trying to stay on top of everything. No matter, it's interesting work. Was told I have to be at an induction for the dragline rebuild site at 6:30 on monday morning... it's a 2 and a half hour drive from here, so I'm not looking forward to monday morning getting up stupidly early.

Life in general is certainly busier than it was, a case in point, I started constructing this update about 3 hours ago and have only got this far.

I did find an interesting website in my travels though... "iamageek.com

Gave me a laugh anyhow.

I can't really remember much about what I got up to this week, I do remember it involved a lot of concrete trucks though. And doing a site survey at Moura, basically spent the day driving around proving theories, which was good. The gasfields there are quite interesting, makes a change from the mine side of things. They basically have huge fields with a whole heap of wells dotted around, with pumps going on them getting the seamgas to the compressor station where it is compressed (funnily enough) and sent down the high pressure pipes.

I think I have some photos of a couple of them, I'll attach them if I remember. I got some interesting video footage anyhow.

Still haven't had time to do much on the train layout, but I am intending to give it a nudge tomorrow. I have to get some stuff ready for the mine but apart from that I should be free to model till my hearts content.

Righto I better go and get some dinner, I may get more time to write more in the evening while at the mine.

TTFN

Because

G'Day.

Thought I better scratch together another update seeing as I missed last week. I've been a little tied up trying to repair the famous range rover. Long story short I've ended up with a range rover as a work vehicle provided I can get it running, it has a bit of an intermittent fault where it randomly decides to stop running. Nothing too major, then.

I've spent the last two weeks fixing minor issues with it, and thinking each one might fix the big issue, but so far no cigar. I think I'm on it now however, I made a few discoveries today which should help me isolate some more tomorrow. Fingers crossed I get it nailed this time...

I can't even remember what I was doing 2 weeks ago, so I probably can't write much about that week... Probably fixed some radio gear in there somewhere I would imagine.

Last week was pretty easy going nothing too major. Mostly bench work, making up new repeaters and the like. Sounds like we have a couple of weeks at the mine coming up, there's a dragline down for a major service so we are re-running all the camera and communications cabling while it's down. Should be an interesting couple of weeks. I'll try and get a couple of photos while I'm there, add it to the collection of interesting mine moments.

Unfortunately the model railway is getting a little neglected over the last couple of weeks due to the time spent on the truck, but however, we will get there in the end. No hurry.

Right, I better go and do some more research on landrover ignition systems...

TTFN

I've got the world on a string

G'day.

What a week. It never rains but it pours, quite literally. Apparently it is highly irregular to get rain in winter in Gladstone, but someone forgot to tell the clouds this of course. Monday looked fairly overcast, luckily I was in the workshop most of the day working on some security camera stuff if it had decided to rain. It held off, and trusting the locals, (foolish move), I didn't bother to even contemplate the possibility of rain. Tuesday was an early start, I met up with the boss at 6:30 and we left for a place three hours away called Woorabinda.

Woorabinda is an aboriginal settlement, which makes it a fairly... interesting, place.
The first thing you notice when you get there was the dogs. Everywhere. Running around, up and down the main street of town, walking everywhere, no boundaries. The next thing you notice is the litter, pretty much just strewn most places you look. We worked our way down to the place where we were putting up our aerial mast, and waited for the other fellow we were supposed to be meeting to arrive.

As we were waiting, a horse walks down the main street, quickly followed by another 4, and a Shetland pony. No owners, just wandering down the main street of the town. Nibbling on trees and walking into peoples back yards.

Finally the other guy showed up, and we started installing the aerial. We had just got everything up to the roof and started the job when the rain started. It was just a few drops at first, and we thought nothing of it and carried on. Then it started bucketing down, as only the tropics can. We slid our way off the now incredibly slippery roof and hid in the truck for a while. After half an hour we decided the rain wasn't going to abate anytime soon, so we decided to just go for it. We were already half way through the job and neither of us had a burning desire to return to this town anytime soon.

So, out of the truck, and back onto the roof. It was slightly less slippery now, as the rain had washed all the dust off. It took us nearly an hour to finish the roof work, standing up a new 30foot telescopic mast and guying it off. I reckon you could have jumped in the ocean and been less wet than I was after we had finished, I was completely soaked to the skin. Of course it isn't cold, but just very wet. And about this time a couple of locals grabbed one of the passing horses and jumped on bareback, and took off down the street at a great rate of knots.

We finished off the job, ran the cable along inside the roof, and as I got down the owners of the building enquired as to if I had seen their carpet snake which lives up there to eat the rats. I told them I hadn't, and it was probably a good thing I didn't know about this previously. He the showed me a photo of a brown snake which had been inside, apparently he was a very angry snake. Luckily they had removed him too.

So all in all a very educational day really. After some of the stories you hear, you can see why the Australians are fed up with it all, and why they get incorrectly labelled "racists". The NZ government is rapidly heading down the same path, they need to wake up and stop what they are doing before it is too late.

Anyhow, Wednesday was a good day, as it was a public holiday for Gladstone region. Show day. Except it was still pissing down so there wasn't a heck of a lot to see. They were going to have monster trucks and skydiving and fireworks, but not much eventuated due to the rain. Bit of a shame really. However, there is always next year. And they do say lightning never strikes twice, although there is proof otherwise.

Thursday I was out of bed at 4 AM and on my way to Moura again, I had a two day security camera installation job down at the coal handling plant. Luckily this was pretty straight forward over all, mostly involving running 260 meters of cables in conduit. I had one of the mine apprentices helping me out so that was handy. While we were up in the JLG hanging the cameras a coal train came through and loaded up, which was interesting. It took under 30 seconds per wagon to flood load. The train just keeps on moving slowly under the loader and they drop the coal straight in. They basically run the trains like a huge conveyor belt from the mine to the ships, mostly dual tracks the whole way.

Right, I better go and do something productive for the day. Here's some pictures.

TTFN.