Intermission

Gidday,

Mostly work, and a lot of it, so haven't got time to construct an interesting update yet I'm afraid. Here's a gem I discovered somewhere on the Internet, it's pretty much true.

You know your in Australia when:

1. The best parking space is determined by shade instead of distance.

2. Hot water comes out of both taps.

3. You learn that a seat belt buckle makes a pretty good branding iron.

4. The temperature drops below 35°C and you feel a little chilly.

5. You discover that in February it only takes two fingers to steer your car.

6. You discover that you can get sunburnt through your car window.

7. You develop a fear of metal car door handles.

8. You break a sweat the instant you step outside at 7:30am.

9. Your biggest bicycle wreck fear is, "What if I get knocked out and end up lying on the pavement and cook to death?"

10. You realise that asphalt has a liquid state.

11. Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to prevent them from laying hard-boiled eggs.

12. The trees are whistling for the dogs.

13. While walking back barefoot to your car from the beach, you do a tightrope act on the white lines in the car park.

14. You catch a cold from having the aircon full blast while you sleep during the night.

15. You learn that Stocklands isn't a shopping centre, it's a temple to worship air-conditioning


That's all for now folks, I'll attempt to actually write something when I get a chance.

Somewhere over the rainbow?

Gidday.

Long long day today... (15 hours in fact) but it was one of those days which is probably worth writing up. Typical of my luck here is all I shall say.

The plan was for me to travel one of our northern sites, approximately 4 hours drive away, reset the site, and then return to base. Simple in theory I hear you say. And you would be right. In theory.

So, up and left home about 6:45 this morning. Headed to the site, which was interesting in itself as I had never been that far north and didn't really know where I was going. Managed to locate the site entry, to find... this:


The lock which I had the key for was the one at the bottom, not in the loop. Not a brilliant start.
So, with a bit of cunning, I decided to utilize my socket set and removed the gate hinges from the post. First obstacle overcome.

Drove towards the site, and encountered some terrain, ie mud, in which 4WD would have been beneficial for forward progress. So, I engaged the free wheeling hubs and selected 4WD. Upon moving off, I was met with a loud clicking from the offside freewheeling hub. Not a good start. I was pretty confident after some experimentation that the hub was slipping under load. Not useful.
I managed to get to the site with a combination of lucky 2WDing and occasional gritted teeth intermittent use of the slipping 4WD in particularly steep bits.

Got to the site, and went to ring the controller to log on to the site. Except... my work phone had no coverage. Luckily my personal phone did, so I ended up calling them on that. Managed to log on, and get in, and reset the fault. Rang to confirm the fault was cleared, and they hit me with a list of other things which needed repairing. Anyhow, 2 hours later, I had completed the site work, and logged off site.

I rang the supervisor to advise him I was finished, and told him about the hub slipping, and he told me that there was another job which had just come in for a site another hour up the road. I said I may as well go to that as well, and headed down the hill.

Well, attempted to. Using the almost 4WD for the steep descents, and hoping it didn't give way completely, I crawled down to the flat again. I went back to 2WD where possible, until I hit a particularly soft bit of ground in which I had almost got stuck in on the way up. I decided I would be safer to engage the semi working 4WD, and worked up a bit of momentum and went for it. And got slower, and slower, and slower, and then stopped. With plenty of protesting from the nearly completely bust freewheeling hub.

And that, as they say, was that. I was not moving anywhere. After trying all the usual tricks I decided it wiser to ring work and get some recovery gear out. (As they don't carry anything in the trucks, not even a spade - this will be changed as of now if I get my way).

I sent a pxt of the stuck truck with the text "help?", and they called me back with a bit of a laugh. Righto, best we can do is leave now and see you in.... 4.5 hours. Great.



So... back to attempting self recovery whilst waiting.

I didn't have a shovel or spade, so I raided the truck for anything useful. The best I could find was a piece of pipe. So with the pipe and my bare hands I attempted to dig my way out. That successfully killed about an hour, but unfortunately the silt was filling the bits I was digging out as fast as I could remove it.

After giving up on that plan, I decided if I could get some material under the wheels I may be able to get some traction. So I went looking for some trees/rocks etc. Rocks, I couldn't find any. Trees, I found a couple of bits of dead wood, but they were about 50 meters away through long thick grass. So I took the pipe as a bit of a prodding stick and worked my way to the trees doing my best not to step on a snake.

I eventually managed to get some wood under the wheels, but no go, still bellied and the wheels were just spinning. Remember I only had 2WD in effect, as the front energy was all going out in the shot hub and not getting to the ground. That killed another hour.

After that, I sat in the truck and thought for a while, as my water supply was getting low and I didn't want to run out. I came up with the plan that I could use the pipe, hammer it into the ground, and then use some ratchet straps that were in the truck to strap the pipe to the wheel, and then the wheel would drive the pipe which should work me back out of the hole.



Didn't work.

And I now owe Ryan a new ratchet strap.

So at this point I had pretty much exhausted all available options and had run out of water, so I decided to go to sleep. Which took care of the remaining time period, until finally, the guy from work arrived!


Luckily he had purchased a spade on the way out upon my instruction, so we dug the wheels out and then managed to snatch the vehicle out. I miss my landrover. And my recovery gear. I managed to crawl my way out of the remaining track in 2WD, luckily.

Then I was in for the 4 hour drive home, in the dark by now. At least most of it is at the legal speed limit of 110 kmph, and in all the 8 hours ish of driving I did today, not one police car to be seen.

About an hour from home, the hub decided to start to seize, and the truck started to pull more and more to the left... luckily I made it home before it seized or gave way completely. Yet another Nixon vehicle in for repair...

And here was me thinking I had finally found one with no faults. Ha. Like fun.

To give you kiwi's an idea...

Drive from Christchurch to Dunedin, get stuck, then call up your mate in Christchurch to pull you out. He will drive down, recover you, and then you both drive back to CHCH. And you pretty much have my day.

Here's a few photos from the day...

I for one am off to bed.

TTFN.

The Distance

Gidday.

Time for a very brief update only at this point I'm afraid. Things are flat out here, we are run off our feet trying to keep on top of all the work happening. Thought I would post a couple of interesting photos for those interested.

Spent the last few days fixing various things, sky satellite dishes, cellphone site maintenance, etc. All pretty interesting stuff. We are constantly battling with getting suitable vehicles for each job, hopefully soon we should have a few more to pick from.

I am starting early tomorrow, I have a site reset to do on a site which is four hours away. So I drive four hours to the site, flick a switch off and on again, and then drive four hours home. And that's my 8 hour day gone, and probably some overtime too.

It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Met my first snake yesterday, a red bellied black. I'm told they are pretty lethal, because if they bite you, it's game over. Luckily he was outside the truck and I was in it.

Also met a large rat. He shot across the garage floor, up the wall, and into a concrete piller. I shall have to invest in a large rat trap, as a shotgun might annoy the neighbours.

Will attempt to write more once I have some more time available.

Here's a few pics of a Caterpillar conga line I met outside our house, it was pretty long, but only on account of its length.

CIAO.

You Learn

Gidday.

Time for another update I suspect. Another busy day today, which is good. Makes the days whizz by, that's for sure. The only downside is having several unfinished jobs and without the time to get back to them.

The day started out OK, with a bit of bench work for a change. I was planning on spending all day fixing things in the workshop, until about 1:00 when the supervisor asked me to quickly duck up to one of our repeater sites to swap out a part. I was going to meet a bucket truck, (which had been booked for another job at the site, but the guys were still getting gear ready for that job, so I was a delay tactic to keep the truck busy). He told me there was a painter up at the site, and to just get the keys off him to get in.

So, I headed up to the site, met the truck, and went to open the gate. Except, of course, I didn't have the keys. And, there was no sign of the painter. Rang the supervisor... arranged for some keys to be bought up. Finally got the bucket truck in, and I was elevated up to the area where I was to make the change. I swapped out the part, and then proceeded to descend. I decided it would be a good idea to go and check the status of the equipment after I had made the change. Unlocked the door, took one step in.... right into the wet paint. Turned out the painter had been and gone, and he had painted the floor in the hut in the process. Didn't tell me that though.

So, I gave up on that idea, and went back to the bucket truck. Still no sign of the other guys. Rang the supervisor, he told me to move another aerial while I was waiting. Except... they didn't know which aerial it was, and, they didn't know where it was supposed to be moved to. Great help. Gave up on that plan, and decided to change some guy wires over. Except, we didn't have any equipment to do so. So, another call to the supervisor... he arranged for another guy to run out some gear.

So, we waited. And waited. Eventually, the other blokes showed up, about the same time as the gear to do the guy wires. Luckily, they happened to know where to move the aerial to as well. So, we did their job, and moved our aerial, and then went to do the guy wires. Until we discovered the bits that had been bought up were the wrong ones. So, rang work again... finally got the correct bits bought up. Then the other (Australian) guys decided to go back to work, as it was long past knock off time, and they conned Ryan (who had bought up the spare bits) into helping me to do the guy wire change over. So, us good old Kiwi's carried on working and got the job done.

So, for a quick "duck up to the hill" half hour job, it turned into all of the afternoon, forget about getting anything else done, job.

On the bright side, cyclone damage here was minimal, although we have a bit of work checking sites just in case. Plenty of work on anyhow.

Right, I'm going to call it an evening, this week is going to be one of those weeks I reckon.

TTFN.

(Here's a photo of our duck pond)

It's a long way to the top...

Gidday.

Pretty warm here again today, funnily enough. Wind is starting to pick up, cyclone is about 500 KM off the coast currently. Look's like it is gunna strike a fair bit north of us now, so that's probably a good thing. Unfortunately the affected zone is still well within our callout area, and I am still the one who drew the short straw and is on call. However, it will be an interesting experience.

We are flat out like a lizard drinking at the moment, there is plenty of work on. I did a 12 hour day yesterday, starting at 5:30 in the morning. Went for a walk up Mt Larcom to repair a repeater up there. It's about 2000 feet, took about 2.5 hours up and 1.5 down. Would have probably knocked half an hour off each time if we weren't carrying so much gear. Including a large skeleton to get in, as no one could remember which type of key/lock was used when they put it in. (By skeleton key, read: Large bolt cutters.) Good snake terrain, but luckily I didn't encounter any. They say a thousand snakes see you for every one that you see, so after that trip I would say I'm getting closer to seeing one.

Saw a few werid bugs up there, a bright blue insect was probably the most exotic. Plenty of brightly coloured butterflies, and the odd large spider. A little smaller than the size of your hand. The webs are a bit of a pain, they are pretty thick. If you walk into one you pretty much stop in your tracks, it's just like being clotheslined.
These are crafty spiders, they stand with two legs together in pairs, so to look at they only appear to have four legs. You might easily mistake one for a small dog instead, for if you were counting the legs you would not for a minute suspect it was a spider. Until he runs at you using all 8 legs, then it becomes pretty obvious.

Finally made it back to work, to carry on with the other jobs which I had on my list of things to do, including fixing a modem and a satellite telephone system.

Got back to work again, and found out we needed to stabilise a mast on a hill, as a guy wire had broken and with the cyclone coming we thought it prudent to tie it down. Got to the mast, and discovered it had no pole steps, and no ladder. Great. I ended up managing to get to the top using a mixture of shinnying up and making a bit of a rope ladder and throwing the end of the rope over one of the cross arms. The Auzzie's think us NZ'rs are mad, nothing is impossible to a Kiwi. We tend to just get the job done, where as the Auzzies moan about it and give up more often than not. Got a difficult job to do? Send the Kiwis! There's three of us, one pom, one South African, and 2 auzzies, so we outnumber all of them now.

Just don't mention the cricket.

So, it is good to finally have a day in which we can catch up on the little things still waiting to be done after moving in. This is the first weekend we have had here to more or less relax, which is handy.

As I may or may not have mentioned, we have a large duck pond out the back of our place. People come by to feed the ducks, etc. I had a bit of a plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel. I purchased a cheap remote control boat today, and I have managed to locate a large yellow rubber duck, wearing a shower cap.

I intend to "modify" the boat/duck, to end up with a motorised duck. Wearing a shower cap. Which I intend to hide in the reeds on the side of the lake. Until an unsuspecting granny comes by with her grandkids to feed the ducks. Upon which time I shall craftily maneuver my motorised duck (wearing a shower cap) out from the reeds, and proceed to chase the real ducks with it and eat the bread.

It might be a few weeks before I have it constructed at this rate, but I'll keep you posted. Should make for some light entertainment anyhow.

Right, here's some pics to keep everyone happy, and I shall endeavour to construct another update when I get a chance. Things are pretty busy here currently.

Tallyho!

Local Hero

Gidday.

Hooray. We finally have an internet connection again! It is amazing how much you rely on the internet these days, especially when in a completely unusual country.
However, we should be on the home straight now, hopefully telstra won't have any reason to make our life any more difficult.

Well, we are now in our new house, it is much of an improvement on the old one. Much more room, much quieter and far more comfortable. We have a duck pond out the back, which is pretty good. There are hundreds of frogs though, when you walk over the lawn it is pretty much crawling with baby frogs. If I was French I would have no reason to be hungry that's for sure.

A few teething troubles, TV aerial fell to bits for one, but nothing we couldn't fix. Digital TV is great, I do hope Timaru gets a transmitter to cover it with terrestrial hi def by the time we come back.

I can't quite remember everything that's been going on since I last had a chance to write a proper update, as it has been an extremely busy couple of weeks.

Spent a couple of days doing cellphone site repairs, which is pretty interesting work. Good sized towers here too, it's a bit of a climb to get to the top of a 60 meter tower. Unfortunately I just managed to get the connectors up at the top of the tower untaped and ready to test when it started to rain. When I say started to rain, I am referring to the instant-on tropical rain which we get here. Within a few seconds I was soaked to the skin. 2 minutes later the rain stopped as soon as it had started, so I managed to get the antennas tested. Just as I was finishing taping the connectors the rain started up again, so it was an interesting trip back down the tower. I was well soaked by the time I got to the ground.

That's the first time I have had the aircon control on anything warmer than "full cold" since I have been here. Still getting 28 degree days here at the moment, no sign of it getting much colder as of yet. It's pretty good.

Have seen a few unique trains over here, mostly coal trains of course. Each coal train is usually 88 wagons, with 2 locos at front and 2 helpers in the middle. I think each train load of coal is worth around 2 mill.

There is a few container trains, similar in size to NZ ones. The odd passenger train (tilt train), and I saw a really interesting one the other day called the "cattle train" which, funnily enough, transports cattle. A complete train dedicated to them. Wish I had got a photo, I will hopefully get a chance to see it again.

We have a bit of a cyclone heading our way at the moment, so everyone is going around preparing, bolting things down, and removing any debris that might break stuff. We have to move all the vehicles from our yard inside, and clean up the yard to stop stuff blowing around. I'll know more as it happens, but at this point they think it will hit around Sunday morning.

Guess who's on call this weekend...

At least I have about 6 teams on standby waiting to be deployed when the cell towers start falling over.

I have a job tomorrow I have to go and walk up a mountain and fix a repeater which went off air today... I'm starting the walk at about 5:30 in the morning to try to avoid the wind, as it is slowly building up with the leadup to the hurricane. I imagine it will be blowing at the top of the hill. If I manage to dodge the snakes and don't fall off the top in the wind, I'll update some more of this thing later on.

Here's a pic from a tower I was up.

TTFN.

Tango

Gidday,

Successfully managed to move locations in the weekend, unfortunately Telstra have failed us yet again and we are still waiting on internet. It will be a miracle if this even manages to upload successfully as cellphone coverage is patchy at best in our new house.

After much waiting on the telephone listening to the same on hold track on repeat, they managed to tell me that I would have to wait until the end of this week. Even though I gave them two weeks notice well before we moved. They managed to cut us off at the old place a day early... but no sign of reconnection yet.

Have some pics of the new place which I will upload also, again, hopefully be online by the end of the week.

TTFN

The Green Door

Gidday.

Figured it was about time for another update. So far has been an interesting, albeit busy, week. Managed to fix a satellite telephone on Monday morning, even if I did have to run a 6 meter ribbon cable through a trawler.

I then went and did the usual other jobs which one does, and then mid afternoon was advised that I would be going out to Dawson mine the next day to help run a cable up a dragline boom. Shouldn't be too bad, it's only... 100 meters in the air.

We decided it would be prudent to preassemble the cables in their armoured conduit that afternoon, and I would take the completed 105 meter loom up as one.

Well... long story short, several hours later, we managed to get the cables fed down 105 meters of conduit, which I then proceeded to roll onto a spare cable drum which was luckily sitting nearby doing nothing. Once I had the cable ready to go I proceeded to attempt to locate a suitable vehicle to take it out to the mine. Again, long story shortened somewhat, the plan was hatched that we would load the cable drum into the mazda bravo, which was going out on a job that night, and I was to take the 100 series cruiser home where I would unload my tools. The idea was that the bravo would come back into town after their job ended about half 3, and they would swap vehicles and leave me the bravo to take and they would make the cruiser disappear.

Simple in theory I'm sure.

Except come 4:00 when I went to load the vehicle, it still looked remarkably like a landcruiser, and not a bravo. I did however notice that the cable drum had magically appeared in the back of it...

I ended up ringing the supervisor, and it transpired that the blokes in the bravo still had issues at the site and needed to go back, so they drove 1.5 hours back to Gladstone to drop off my cable so they could go back to their job and I could go to mine.

(The cruiser was booked for a service that day, which is why I wasn't going to take it originally.)

So eventually I ended up at Moura with the cruiser and the cable. I met up with the on site tech, and we loaded the cable to his vehicle and drove off to the dragline.

Once we found the dragline and signed in, we scoped out the job and attempted to hatch a cunning plan, as we had 100 meters of heavy armored conduit which we needed to get 100 meters up the boom and cabletied with steel ties all the way down.

After a bit of thought and a lot of head scratching we determined the most logical course of action would be to bring the cable up from the bottom of the stairs, in as longer sections as we could drag.

So, we unravelled 105 meters of this cable out on the ground below the dragline in a large s snake shape, and I climbed to the first section with a rope and lowered it down to be attached to the end of the cable. I pulled the rope up to where I could grab the cable, and then proceeded to walk my way up the boom dragging the cable as I went. After about 20 meters it got too heavy to pull, so you worked your way down to the bottom and grabbed the next 20 meters, and so on, until all 105 meters was up on the bottom of the stairs.

At this point the onsite tech and I took turns at walking the rest of boom several times in 20 meter stretches... and to make matters more interesting we also had to feed it around several obstacles in the way on the ascent.

About 5 hours later, we finally had the cable to the top of the dragline, where we terminated it to the camera and started the process of cable tieing it all the way down the boom.

We were supposed to be removing the old cable run, but we got to the first cable attachment and discovered it was physically bolted to the boom with a metal clamp, and the nut was rusted. We mucked around with it for a while, and then I looked at the next one which was also rusted, and it slowly dawned on us that there was one clamp per foot, totalling approximately 300 for the length of the boom, and 90% of them were stuck. I looked at the on site tech and we decided if they wanted the old cable down, they could flaming well do it themselves. (It was about 39.5 degrees up where we were.)

Once we got the cable to the bottom of the boom it was a relatively easy job to get it inside the dragline house, and into the main camera room. Over the entire 305 meter length preassembled the day before, and starting at the top of the boom and working downwards... we were only 5 mm out at the bottom. 5mm! We could not of possibly got it any closer if we had even measured it.

So, once inside, we terminated that end and plugged it in, and what do you know it actually worked. Thankfully.

Turns out they are dropping the boom to rerun all the cabling in 3 months time anyhow, they tell us after we had done the job... but that's the mine logic for you.

I'll post a pic of the dragline cable path, looking downwards from the top as unfortunately I forgot to take any photos from the bottom looking up.

So, that was my adventure for the day. Not a job I would want to undertake every day, but an interesting one to add to the ever growing list of "jobs experienced".

Oh, and here's a link to a shovel video I took while we were there and uploaded to youtube: Click here for Shovel Video

TTFN

Pictures of matchstick men

Gidday.

Well, not a lot more to report really, it has been a fairly standard couple of days as far as I can recall. It's been raining here. A lot. By a lot, I mean that there is an area the size of Victoria state under water here in Queensland. Some places have had 1.5m of water flowing through them, some rivers are up to over 15 meters deep. That's quite some river.

Luckily being right on the coast here Gladstone is pretty well draining and we haven't had to deal with water flowing through the house yet. When I finally get a landrover sorted over here I'm thinking a wading kit and snorkel will be useful investments.

Having said that, this apparently doesn't happen often, no one can remember the last time it has rained so much.

Man the grass grows quick! You need to mow the lawn weekly at the moment, with all the rain and the heat you can practically see the grass growing taller in front of your eyes... Some places have grass about my head height. Ideal for snakes I'd imagine.

We have a big empty lot just across from our (soon to be ex) house, and someone decided it would be a good idea to knock back the grass with a weed whacker... at 6:00 on a Saturday morning, right outside my bedroom window... it was a good excuse to get up early I guess.

We drove a borrowed ute to Rocky to get some bits for the new place, which we will be moving into next weekend. I'll post a couple of primitive pics to give you an idea, but it's a much nicer place than where we are currently. Ended up with a new fridge, made by toshiba. I figured if they make fridges the same way they make laptops, we should be in for a good run. And, it has "Advanced LED technology" so I just had to buy it. And it was on special. See, I am saving money... honest.
It also has a "UV Ray LED" in the freezer to kill bacteria, and a "hybrid plasma deodoriser" which supposedly keeps vegetables fresh for longer.

We looked at the option of renting appliances, but over the 5 year time period it actually works out cheaper to buy outright.

Somehow I have been roped into dealing with satellite phones on trawlers, so that looks like another job for Monday... I should have cocked the first one up then I wouldn't have had to deal to the 2nd... and 3rd...

Right, I better go and do something productive for the day.

TTFN

Dreadlock Holiday

Gidday.

Well, the days are certainly whizzing by. I can barely believe that it is March already. I am going to have to think about getting an Auzzie drivers licence sorted, your NZ one is only good for 3 months from date of entry. At the end of the day there is no way the cops are easily going to be able to tell how long you have actually been in the country, so at the end of the day it probably isn't too big of a deal.

Pretty reasonable sort of day here, a little humid again because of the torrential rain we experienced last night. Luckily the frogs have refrained from coming back. I'll attach a pic of one if I remember.

Signed yet more paperwork for the new place today, they certainly make you jump through a few hoops. Did I ever mention nothing is straightforward over here?

Got a phone call from the guy who's house it is today too...

Me: "Hello"
Him: "Hello... good day?"
Me: "Yea not bad, you?"
Him: "Yea good... you remember that I told you there was a 2 seater and a 3 seater couch going into that new place?"
Me: "Yes"
Him: "Well, now there's only a 3 seater..."
Me: "Oh, righto..."
Him: "You see, when we left my place I asked old mate if he thought we should tie them on, and we decided they would be ok..."
Me: "Carry on..."
Him: "Well, they were ok. Until we got to 110kmph coming down the main highway..."
Me: "Go on..."
Him: "Well we heard a rustle and a bang, and turned around to see the couch bouncing down the road... long story short, we took that one to the tip"
Me: "Brilliant."

My day was a bit like that all over really... I was sent down to the marina to have a look at a satellite phone. The instructions I was given was look for a green trawler on the concrete wharf.

As my good friend Tony would say... "Those instructions were totally 100% perfect! Apart from the fact the boat was actually blue... and the wharf was made of wood. Other than that, spot on!"

Such is life in the continent that is Australia.

That's it for now.

What is Rock?

Gidday.

Not much to report today, have spent the majority of time working of course. Sunday was pretty quiet, mostly catching up on paperwork and making plans for the move to the new flat.

Monday was pretty run of the mill, the Australians strangely quiet about the cricket... I must remember to rub that in a bit more while I can. A bit of bench work, and then back to school to do more blasted whiteboard/projector installs. On the bright side, I can now troubleshoot and install these things pretty much without instructions by now.

Ended up driving a guy from works van to the job today, he's down in Brisbane at the moment. Again, vehicle in poor state of repair. Put foot on brake to stop... kept pushing, kept pushing... just managed to stop in time. Pushed a bit more and foot ended up at the floor... a bit of a problem with the hydraulics, then.

The amount of warrants I have failed on brakes tells me that this vehicle needs attention. I duly "advised my supervisor" as the catch phrase is over here, and it is now booked in for a service tomorrow. I don't hold much hope for it, the Australian "services" appear to be of the same quality of the rest of their work, which I am growing to believe is little above shoddy at best. Australians like things easy I have discovered, us Kiwi's are certainly hard workers compared to these guys.

Probably because in NZ you have to be a hard worker to stay on top, unless you choose to depend on the government of course.

All cars which have been "serviced" usually come back with faults.. and all vehicles I have checked so far have been significantly over filled with oil.

So, the list of useless services so far includes: Telephone, Internet, Postal services, Boot shops, Car servicing.

I'm certain there will be more.

Right, that's all folks.

Here's a picture of a shovel.