Goldrush

G'Day.

So, another week down. I've said it before and I'll say it again, time flies when you are having fun. Einstein hit the nail on the head... “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.”

Anyhow, interesting sort of week really. A lot of people away at the mine this week doing various jobs, I spent most of the week catching up on bench work, with a couple of site checks thrown in for good measure. Work had a bit of a "social gathering" down at the bowls club last night, so I tagged along and had a crack at it. Interesting sort of game really, there is more to it than meets the eye. I had a couple of alright bowls, but most of them were nothing to write home about.

I somehow managed to get tangled up in a bet with the office staff... the young office trainee reckoned she could outrun me in a sprint race. I said "I bet you can't"... and it was all on from there. The phone tech even wrote up an official contract stating the stakes and conditions and we both signed it. If she won, I had to wash her car. If I won, she had to come to work for an entire day with no makeup on. This may not sound like much punishment, but she normally comes to work covered in war paint so it shall be very difficult for her indeed.

So, half time arrived at the bowling match, and the race was set up. Unfortunately it was run to a marker (one of the other office staff) and back again, which makes it a bit more difficult than a straight line. However, not one to complain, we took our starting positions, and then the race was on! To be honest she was very quick, but fortunately I was quicker. I bet her out of the starting blocks, made it first to the other end, where I went around the marker and started back to the finish line. I realised that my worthy opponent had not gone around the marker, merely touched it, and was at this point ahead. I stepped up the pace a little and caught her again, and managed to stay in front long enough to cross the finish line first.

Luckily really, as I doubt I would have lived that one down if I had lost against a pretty girl...

So, it shall be most entertaining seeing her at work next week. I will have to make sure to get photographic evidence and then whenever she winds anyone up we will be able to bring out the photos and put her back into her place. I do enjoy winning.

Apart from that excitement, we had another interesting experience on the way to bowling. Long story short we ended up taking a landcruiser home which had apparently just been repaired. We got about a KM down the road from work and all of a sudden we smelt something burning. It smelt a lot like insulation burning off wire so we started looking around and noticed some smoke coming through the airvents, so we rapidly pulled over. The smoke sort of disappeared for a bit, so I had a look under the truck, and then Ryan mentions there was more smoke coming out from under the bonnet. At this point I ran to the back of the truck and grabbed the fire extinguisher out, and made my way to the front of the truck where smoke was pouring out of the bonnet. As you are not supposed to open a bonnet in an engine fire I had a bit of a look and couldn't see flames, so I poked the hose of the extinguisher under the bonnet and we slowly opened her up to find that it was the air con belt producing all this smoke. Luckily no fire as such, so I set the extinguisher down and we waited for the belt to stop smoking. It appeared that the air con pump had seized, so I cut the belt to the aircon pump and that seemed to solve the problem. Put the extinguisher back and went to carry on, and found the extinguisher pin still in my pocket. Went and put that back in so it didn't go off in the back of the truck, and we carried on our way with the windows down trying to clear the burning belt smell from the truck. The funny thing was that the truck had just been in to get the aircon serviced... obviously they didn't do a very good job. It was a brand new belt before it melted too.

All in a day of the life of a Nixon's employee. The day when something doesn't go wrong will be a day worth remembering I reckon.

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

TTFN.

New Strings

G'Day.

Probably about time I wrote another update.

Well, the weekend is almost over, they say time flies when you're having fun, and this year seems to be speeding up.
I had a fairly interesting week out at the mine, it was the quietest week out there that I've yet experienced which made a change. Gave me a good chance to get a good look around some of the repeater sites and try to get my head around how they are set up.

The Tuesday was pretty wet as it had been raining, unfortunately the truck I had only has ATs on it... I could have done with the ute I originally had which had MTs. I was slipping and sliding around all over the show... going at about 10KM/H sideways down the main haul road is interesting to say the least. I took my video camera with me this time, so hopefully I have managed to capture some interesting footage. There are a couple of spots where I had to drop the camera to grab the steering wheel when the truck decided to rapidly change direction in the mud.

I also somehow managed to crack the windscreen, every bump I went over (and there are a lot at a mine) caused it to crack a little further, so I've now got a crack a foot long across the windscreen. The guy going out to the mine this week has to use this truck too, as the usual mine truck is still away, so by the time he gets back the windshield will probably be split in half.

Since it was a quiet week it was a good chance to get some video of the big machines out there, and eventually I might put some online.

I spent half a day trying to find a site that I hadn't been to before, just to find it was half buried by rock... good old miners. They called up moaning about radio reception to their OCE and I happened to hear, so I jumped on the channel and said "Nixon's here, I'm currently looking at it, seeing as you guys buried my repeater I haven't got many options here." They replied: "Oh it wouldn't have been us..."

I don't see thousands of tons of rock moving around on it's own...

I ended up putting a portable repeater trailer up there to get them going. While I was driving along this emu jumps out in front of me and takes off up the track... I got some good video footage of that too. Took me a bit by surprise, in NZ you don't really see giant 2 legged birds jumping out in front of you. Seeing as there's no Moas left.

Also had a couple of skippys try and commit hari kari in front of my truck, they bound out in front of you and then sit in the middle of the road until you slam on the anchors and screech to a halt, then they carry on bouncing away.

Right, better carry on and take the supervisors lawn mower back to him.
Here's a few pics.

TTFN

House of the rising sun

G'day.

Well, another weekend is upon us. The weeks are whizzing by at a great rate of knots, or so it seems. I've had a pretty quiet week if you don't count Friday which went a bit crazy. Got a fair bit achieved which was good. And off to the mine next week, which being a short week, is good too.

Had some fun with sorting out suitable vehicles to take of course, nothing is straight forward. I spent most of the afternoon re wiring and installing some new LED lights to the dual cab Navara to make it mine legal as I was going to take it out to the mine. Finally got it working, and then was told I would have to take the single cab instead as the dual cab was needed to go out to a different mine, as the truck which normally goes to the other mine was in being repaired.

I agreed that was the best plan, and then remembered we needed to repair the 2way in the single cab. I went to go and do that, and then was told I could take the dual cab after all as the other truck was going to be worked on over the weekend and ready by Monday. That suited me even better, so I loaded all my tools and equipment back into the dual cab and took it home.

Then on Saturday the supervisor rings me up... "I've got a bit of bad news for you".
Of course I expect someone has died or something, but he goes on to reveal that the landcruiser won't be repaired in time after all and I'll need to swap the dual cab for the single cab Navara.

So, back off down to work, swap all my gear over into the single cab, swap all the gear from the cruiser to the dual cab, and then had to fix the 2 way in the single cab so I could use it at the mine.

Finally I seem to have it sorted, so fingers crossed it holds together long enough to last the week without losing a door or a bonnet or something. The acidic mine water has got to that truck pretty badly and it's more rust than metal in places.

Anyhow, that's that really. I should probably go and lay some more track on my layout, unfortunately I haven't yet found a local supplier who can get me a set of track cutters, so I am having to do it all with a dremal cut off tool, which works OK, but is more labour intensive than the cutters. I have a set back home, but like everything I go to use over here... it's in NZ. Never mind, there is usually more than one way to skin a cat I am told. Not that I have actually ever attempted to skin a cat, I imagine it is harder than it looks. I suppose it would pay to stun it first, or else you would get clawed quite badly.

Besides cats, I have also spotted a collectors edition box set "Dad's Army" set, which I may just have to save up and purchase. I reckon it would be well worth the investment... probably a good thing mine weeks mean extra pay in that case.

Right, I better go and do something productive, here's a few more pictures you may or may not have seen. I shall no doubt have another report ready after my week mining.

Tallyho.

Diamonds are forever

G'Day.

I finally have a chance to at least upload a couple of pictures from the weeks events.
As mentioned previously I was away at a coal seam gas field for the week, which was interesting. I learnt a bit about coal seam gas, and a bit about the procedures etc that come attached with that.

Not a bad drive out there, about 5.5 one way it turned out, but mostly long straight roads so the cruise control came in most handy. I knew there was a reason for taking the Falcon. Arrived to the place I was supposed to meet an "engineer" from Brisbane, and he was still on the plane... ended up having to wait 2 hours for him to show up in a rental 4WD for us to use. We also had a guy from the pipeline crowd with us to drive, as you are only allowed to drive on site if you have a current authorised "4WD certificate" saying you can handle 4WDs.

I had a bit of bad luck with my lunch while I was waiting, ordered two sausage rolls and they turned out to be spinach. Not only were they not sausage, but they cost me about $9 in the process. However, I will know for next time.

Finally this engineer fellow showed up, and we drove another 20 KM out to the camp. I did an onsite induction as is the norm over here, and then the nice office girl tells me that we picked a bad time to come as they were all sick. However, the engineers schedule was at stake and he was not going to fall behind, bugs or no bugs.

So, to somewhat condense the next few days, I pretty much spent my time bouncing around in the back of a hilux pushing the occasional button on my radio and telling the engineer the results. We went to around 200 gas wells, once you have seen one they are all the same let me tell you. I'll attach a pic of the only exciting one, it was broken so they were flaring the gas off. Apparently with coal seam gas if you don't keep the gas flowing then the well fills with water and you have to pump it out and start again. So they figure it's easier just to burn the gas for a while.

They pipe the low pressure gas from the ground wells to a couple of compressors around the place, and these bump the pressure up a heck of a lot and push it down the main trunk gas pipeline to the consumers.

All was going well until Wednesday night when the bugs that were running rampant in the camp decided to introduce themselves to me, and I ended up spending Thursday in bed crook. Friday the engineer decided that was all he needed and we packed it in and I drove home again.

Spent most of the weekend working on my model railway layout, finally have managed to get some track laid, although this weekend seems to have disappeared rather quickly compared to normal. I have also invested in a video camera so I can get some more of Aus on record, once I work out how to drive it no doubt I can post some more video footage from time to time.

Right, I better go back to track laying... one more week in town then I'm off to the mine for a week, there's no rest for the wicked let me tell you.

TTFN.