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.

Rock the boat

G'Day.

Figured I better make time to scratch out a brief update, seeing as I missed a week already. Either I must have been too busy, or else the Australian cruisyness is beginning to grow on me. Here's hoping it's the former, I think.

Being a Kiwi is brilliant this week, nothing like walking up to an Aussie and mentioning the Bledisloe cup. When we beat them again tonight I shall enjoy pointing out that fact too.

Well I can't even remember what I did last week, so I won't be able to write much about that. I think I mostly was around the workshop doing bench repairs and programming repeaters from what I can recall. This week was interesting, quiet at times and then all go the rest of the time. Monday I had my marine hat on most of the day, I was working on boats for a change. Fixed a satellite phone and had a look at an HF radio which was playing up. I would have had a chance to drive a patrol vessel around but I haven't got my boating license so they couldn't let me and had to get someone else in to do it instead.

Tuesday started out with simple bench work, until we got a phone call with a repeater out at one of the mines, so I had to drive out to Callide and fix that. Turned out it wasn't able to be fixed on site, so I had to remove it and drive back to Gladstone to get a replacement. By then it was well past going home time so we decided to take the new one back the next day, even though they had to shut the pit down as they didn't have any comms.

So, Wednesday I ended up back at Callide, fixed the repeater, and then got asked to bring some gear out to the guys working at Moura, so ended up carrying on and gave them a hand for half an hour or so before finally hitting the road to head home again. I ended up doing about 650 KM those two days, luckily I managed to get a vehicle that was in reasonable condition for that trip.

Thursday and Friday were a bit more sedate, finally caught up on the bench work, and then found out that Tuesday I'm out putting a mast up, wednesday is a holiday, and thursday friday I'm back out at Moura... It's all go here.

Finally got some more plaster for my layout this weekend, and plastered up my second and third hills. Hopefully when they are painted they will come up alright, I'm not entirely convinced I have enough texture yet but time will tell. I have used a couple of rock moulds so that should help.

The ducks in the pond are getting more and more tame, they will try and take the bread out of your hand from behind before you can tear bits off to throw to the other ducks. It is quite entertaining walking out the back gate with a bit of bread, as once you throw one bit the entire pond becomes a flapping mess of ducks and swamp hens trying to get there as quickly as possible. Also spotted our lonely Egret again today, he doesn't seem to do much, just hangs around.


Right, I better go and get some lunch, so I shall leave you with some more pictures.

TTFN.