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
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