Gold

G'Day.

It must be my lucky week. The unfathomable has finally happened... I actually have an air conditioner installed into my room! The landlord was going to install it before we moved in, about 4 months ago. Things don't tend to move too quickly at times. We also managed to score a new cooktop, so I installed that yesterday as well. It heats up considerably faster than our old one, so we might actually be able to cook on this new one.

Not a bad week this week, spent two days at a training course learning how to perform rope rescues from the tops of towers. So if you ever get stuck at the top of a tall tower, you know who to call. There wasn't a heck of a lot of other exciting jobs worth writing about, I guess when most jobs have strange things happening with them you tend to dismiss them as "normal" and just carry on.

I did go out to a historical village near Gladstone where they have just built a new shed for rail memorabilia, and there is a small model train group running out of there now as well. I introduced myself and they invited me along on a tuesday night, but I might have to see how we go. They seem interesting but no where near as advanced in their modelling and exhibition techniques as the Timaru crowd. They had one layout on display, but they had most of the actual "display" side facing away from the public, and they only had one train running and absolutely no animation whatsoever. Not even lights in the buildings. The modelling was OK, but it just looked plain dead. Most people seem to be shying away from DCC due to the initial cost, so most layouts are analogue DC, although a few members apparently run NEC DCC.

So between housework, installing household appliances, and visiting the old village, I haven't had much time this weekend to work on my own layout. So, I am off to do exactly that now.

Here's a few more pics from the last week/end.

TTFN.

For lack of a better name

G'Day.

I missed my usual weekendly update as I was on holiday down in Hervey Bay. We decided we may as well stay somewhere nice, as last time we were in Hervey Bay we stayed at the cheapest motel possible and it wasn't ideal. We may have overdone it on the other end of the scale this time, this place had a bit of a "Hotel Babylon" feel about it. Not that that was a bad thing of course. I had to laugh when I saw the receptionist's name tag though... Manuel. Marvellous.

It was over all a pretty good hotel, excellent views, I'll attach a pic or two. We explored Hervey Bay a fair bit, went and saw the museum which was very interesting. On the Sunday we decided to head over to Fraser Island for a bit of a look, what a brilliant plan that turned out to be. It started with an early start unfortunately for a Sunday, but it was going to be worth it to get time to see the Island. We went to the collection point and we were picked up by a tour bus. The day was getting better, as the tour bus was well stocked with young attractive female tourists. The odds were certainly in our favour for once. After a short bus trip and a detour or two, we finally made it to the barge terminal where we boarded the barge which takes everyone out to the island.

The barge trip was excellent, mostly because I managed to befriend a selection of backpackers and spent the 45 minute crossing talking to them. One from Florida, one from Italy, and 3 from Ireland. All good lookers too I must say. They were staying a couple of nights on the Island, I was very tempted to extend my one day stay and take some sick days from work, but I doubt I would have lived that one down.

Once we arrived at the Island, we decided to hire a 4WD to get out to one of the large freshwater lakes which are in the middle. This island is quite long, over 100 KM tip to tip. I asked the lovely young lady behind the counter if she had a landrover for hire and she said that they did. Growing quite excited at the thought of being able to finally get behind the wheel of a landrover again we sat through their half hour training session and then went to jump in the vehicle... to find it was actually a 100 series cruiser instead. Feeling somewhat dejected, we accepted that was the only option and decided to make the most of it.

We drove an hour or two inland to the lake, luckily not getting too lost in the maze of sand tracks all over the island. By the time we got to the lake we realised it was well time for us to be heading back, as between the briefing and the driving to the lake we only had 2 more hours before the return barge left at 14:00. So, back into the truck and this time Ryan was driving. I may have navigated us into a track which we didn't recognise, so we decided to turn around. We turned around and started to head back to a known signpost when the engine stopped dead. Thinking he had stalled it, Ryan proceeded to wind the motor over. Nothing. Great. Stuck in the middle of a sand island with no comms and a broken vehicle.

We popped the bonnet and had a bit of a look at the situation, after half an hour or so I had come to the conclusion it was a lack of fuel getting to the motor. We had tried all the usual solutions, bleed the fuel lines etc, to no avail. Luckily at this point a vehicle arrived behind us, and also luckily for us he happened to have a tow strap. He pulled us backwards out of the way so he could get past, and then manoeuvred himself in front so that he could tow us back to the main central point where there was a public telephone.

Once we reached the central point, he dropped us there and continued on his way to the other side of the island. We went down to the public telephone to find... it was out of order, with the main lines cut. It was unable to easily be repaired, so I decided to have another look at the truck instead. After much mucking around I managed to knock a piece of plastic conduit near the motor, out of which dropped a wire which wasn't attached. Sensing I may be onto something, I looked at it further and found the wire went to the fuel shut off solenoid. The old cogs in the brain started ticking over at this point and I managed to find another orphaned wire. I switched on the ignition and touched them together, which produced an audible "click" from the fuel solenoid. Feeling I was onto it we cranked over the motor, and bingo! she fired up.

The next problem I had was how to fashion a fix which would last long enough to get us the 16 KM back to the start. We had by now lost all hope of meeting out 14:00 barge cutoff of course. Resigned to the fact we were now here until 17:00 there was no longer a hurry. Now, I religiously carry a leatherman tool over here, I am very rarely caught without it. Well this one day I had changed into a more tidy pair of trousers and of course left my leatherman on my other belt. Big mistake. The one day that I needed a knife to strip the wire... We managed to flag down a passing 4WD and asked if he had a knife or something similar, and he produced a 12" bread knife. It was the best thing we had, so I proceeded to strip this 3" piece of wire attached to the engine with this ruddy great knife. This was no easy task. Eventually I managed to strip enough back to twist the wires together. I then had the problem of insulating the join so that it didn't short out or come undone. Luckily, I always carry a band aid in my wallet. So, out with the band aid, and used that to tape up the join. I tucked the whole contraption back into the plastic conduit and crossed my fingers. Wound over the key... and we were away laughing like a mad kookaburra.

We drove the cruiser back to the hire depot, where we left it with a note explaining the situation as the office was unattended. I managed to raise the young lady on the telephone so I explained to her how we had averted a recovery for her. She was most impressed, I told her it was good old Kiwi ingenuity. The Auzzies try and tell you that that phrase is an oxymoron, but they are just jealous. She must of been more reasonable however, as she offered me a job working for them on the island. I told her it was tempting, but they would need to get landrovers.

After that the rest of the day was pretty straight forward, we worked our way back down to the barge and waited for the 17:00 sailing. This was actually a good time as we caught the spectacular sunset. Shame those backpackers weren't on this trip, as with that sunset as a backdrop, they would have been been but putty in my hands.

There's always a next time...

By the time we got back to Hervey Bay and took the bus back to our car, it was well dark, and by the time we got to Gladstone it was after 22:00. A very long weekend, but one well worth the effort. I shall definitely be returning to Fraser Island, there is still so much left to explore.

After that weekend, the work week is going to be pretty uneventful I hope, we have a two day training course in Rocky on how to rescue people from towers so that should be interesting.

Here's some photos for the record.

TTFN

Koladi-Ola

G'day.

Yes, it is the weekend again. After the week I was having out at the mine I was wondering if it would ever actually arrive. After my last update it basically poured down all night, and then most of the following day. All the scheduled down days were cancelled, as no one could drive anywhere. I was sliding around all over the show trying to even get to the workshop.

Probably a good thing the downday was called off, as I originally had to go and install a mobile phone "car" kit to a dragline cab. Now, usually, this would be a fairly straight forward task. Except, when I unpacked everything on my bench to set it up, the SIM card appeared to be missing. Not too worried at this point, I rang the tech at work who had installed the first of the three kits to find out where the SIM cards were.

He informed me that even though the phones were in a locked office, he had feared for the safety of the SIM cards, and so they would not get stolen, he hid them in the folds of the box. This sort of made sense so I terminated the conversation and went and ferreted through the boxes. I managed to located one of two SIM cards, but there was no sign of the second one. As there was originally three kits, and thus three boxes, I formed a hypothesis and rang the tech at work back...

"Hello Mr X, when you hid those SIM cards... did you have all three boxes on the bench?"
"Why yes, I think I did..."
"Is it remotely possible, just maybe, that you possibly got the boxes confused, and put the simcard into the third box?"
"Uhh yes, I suppose that is possible."
"And then, what did you proceed to do with that said third box?"
"Uhh... I threw it out."
"So, you are telling me that the SIM card is now well on it's way to being recycled?"
"Uhh yes, I suppose so."
"Brilliant. Thanks."

So, on the phone to the IT department who supplied the SIM cards...
"Gidday mate, Carl from Nixon's here... you know those SIM cards you supplied us for the draglines?"
"Yes..."
"Well, my esteemed colleague managed to throw a perfectly good SIM card out."
"Oh crikey... well I suppose I'll be able to get you a replacement... let me guess... Mr X?"
"Got it in one."
"Say no more. Card's on it's way."


So luckily I managed to obtain a replacement, but that didn't arrive until Friday anyhow. Friday was intense. All the jobs that I would have preferred earlier in the week when I had spare time all appeared at once, right when I was trying to pack up to get home on time. I managed to tackle the important ones, then I delegated the remaining ones and finally managed to get out of there.

Driving home I noticed occasionally that the clutch pedal wouldn't return up... it only did it a few times and so I thought no more of it, until last night when we decided to go and get our Australian fish and chips. I struggled to get the truck into gear, and then put my foot on the clutch again and it stayed on the floor. Brilliant. We limped it home and took the car instead.

You know people tell me that landrovers are supposed to have a reputation for breaking down, but I have never experienced so much trouble with vehicles until I came here... give me a landrover any day.

When I did finally arrive home, I found that all my plaster of paris on my hill for my model railway had cracked... I must have got the mixture a little wrong. Some plastic kits that I had ordered had arrived as well, so we went down to toyworld, and amazingly, I managed to find some plaster bandage type material. I had been looking high and low for this stuff everywhere, trying to pull strings with hospitals and everything, and here this stuff was sitting in plain view for sale. Couldn't believe it. So I bought some, and now my hill is looking much repaired.

Ryan managed to fool me at toyworld, one moment he was standing next to me, or so I thought, and I started talking to him telling him how I was going to form the hill on my layout and then asked him where the knives where... then I looked up and realised that this was indeed a complete stranger and not Ryan after all. I said: "Good heavens, you aren't at all who I thought you were." He said "Well that's all very interesting, but unfortunately I don't actually know where the knives are sorry." We both had a bit of a chuckle about that one.

There must be something about toyworlds and mistaken identities, last time we were in toyworld at Hervey Bay a random guy came up to Ryan and said "Hi Ryan, where's Steve? Does he still work here?" Ryan, looking startled, replied "Sorry mate I have no idea, I don't actually work here."
The guy looked most surprised... I mean why not, I'm sure all toyworld employees have high viz shirts with "Nixon Communications" written on them.

Right, I better go and have a look at this truck and do some more on my layout.

TTFN.

When I'm cleaning windows

G'Day.

Unexpected, I know, this mid week update for a change. I thought seeing as I have finally obtained my new work laptop and have finally managed to interface it to my cellular telephone, I may as well kill some time. And well, here we are.

I suspect I may have jinxed the weather with my comments on Saturday about the good old sunshine. Maximum today out here at Moura was 14 degrees, it was 9 degrees when I left site about half an hour ago. I had forgotten what 9 degrees feels like... it's flaming freezing. Especially when you only bought T shirts for around the camp. At least I have my good jacket for when I was at work, because by crikey I needed it. Most of the Australians went into hibernation actually, they didn't enjoy the temperature one bit. At least being a Kiwi helps.

I can't recall if I mentioned last weekend or not, but I managed to take the better of the nixon mine fleet out this week, the good old dual cab Navara. It is comfortable to drive, and usually doesn't let you down. I say usually, except for that time it got me stuck for 6 hours. And except for today...



It all started late yesterday when I noticed a clunking sound when cornering to the right. I found a handy roundabout and tried to work out what it was, to no avail. Then the clunk progressed to appear when under braking also, and got worse on corners. At this point I had it narrowed down to two suspects, the lower steering balljoint and the wheel bearing. The ball joint was suspect as the boot was split. Hoping it was the ball joint only, I finished the days work and drove back to the camp. I had a bit of a look but couldn't determine which part was causing the problem. As I only had scissor jacks I decided to wait until today and see if I could get it on a hoist out at the mine.

So, back out there this morning, noise getting steadily worse, only to find that all their light vehicles come into Moura for service and are no longer done on site. Great. My poor wee truck wouldn't fit in the big machine workshop, so I decided to attempt the useless scissor jack. So, up in the air it went. I rolled the wheel, and heard that familiar rumbling sound which I got so acquainted with on my good old Discovery for a while there... definitely the wheel bearing then. I grabbed the top of the wheel and managed to get about an inch and a half of inward/outward free play... not ideal. As I didn't happen to have suitable tools to strip a hub there and then, onto the phone and call up the supervisor at work... "slight problem here chief... I need a new truck".

The photo above is my truck going back to Gladstone, they bought down the single cab for me to use for the rest of the week. Still with the smashed windscreen, and with a PVC pipe taped onto the rusted out bullbar for a flag holder.

And then it started to rain. And the wipers on this truck are slow and intermittent. At the same time, usually, and only if you are lucky. And the tires are only all terrains, whereas the dual cab has good muds on it.

*Sigh*

Just my luck really.

And it's freezing in here. Reverse cycle air conditioning here I come.

Where's the sunshine?

Gidday.

I'll tell you where the sunshine is, it's right here. I'm very impressed with the Queensland winter weather, certainly beats NZ winters temperature wise.

Well it has been a pretty busy week this week, spent two days down south doing site checks, and then spent the rest of the week doing repairs on emergency services systems.

The trip south was interesting, first time I had been to Hervey Bay so it was good to get a look around, got some good video of some weird stuff, pelicans, kookaburras and the like. Am looking forward to going back down there when I have a bit more time to look around. The town is a lot bigger than I expected, the beach is huge.

I think Ryan upset some cockatoos when he cleared their nests from the radio tower, he tried to hide from them but dressed in hi viz yellow he was having as much luck hiding as a giraffe wearing a mask would have if he tried to enter a "polar bears only" end of year function.

As usual, nothing is easy, the checks turned out to be a lot more than just checks, and took way longer than they should have... but that's a whole 'nother story.

We were pretty much on time heading home, until all of a sudden there was a huge queue of traffic in front of us at a stand still. We jumped on the CB and asked what was going on, and it turned out the queue was already about 4KM long and there was a car off the road, a lady was driving her 3 kids home and fell asleep and drove into a tree. We were that far away we couldn't even hear the helicopter come in and land.
So that delayed the trip for about 2 hours. It's probably hard to imagine for a Kiwi, because in NZ they just set up a detour and your away again, but over here there is only one road and it's a long one, and surrounded by bush. If it's blocked, you sit in your car and wait, and hope you have water on board if it's going to be a while. The good thing is everyone has CB so everyone more or less knows what's going on, and most people help out. If the emergency services need a doctor or medic, or even supplies, they jump on the radio and ask and it gets passed down the line until someone can help out, and then they radio back saying "I'm on my way" and then they drive up the wrong side of the road (cos it's blocked anyway) and go and help out.

Very impressed with the way most Auzzies just all pitch in and help when someone is genuinely in need.

Back to the mine next week, should be interesting as usual.

Right, I better go and get ready for dinner, we are heading out to the yacht club a meal with the other Kiwis we know.

TTFN