Fire and Rain

G'day.

I have finally managed to scrape together a few spare minutes to attempt to write a little more of an update, as looking back it has been a couple of weeks. I would make the usual "time flies" comments but I imagine any regular followers will be well tired of that line by now, so we shall just take it as read. It's been a while so the old memory is a little vague on what exactly I did the last couple of weeks...

One job I did undertake was inspecting an underground system at a gold mine, that was pretty interesting. That's the second time I have been under ground now, it's quite an experience. I think this mine is down to about 1000 vertical meters down, which is about 4 KM to drive, and takes about an hour to get down, depending on how much traffic is around. It gets surprisingly warm down there, especially when the aircon in the vehicle is intermittent... but however, we made some discoveries as to how the system could work better, so it was a worthwhile exercise.

I think the rest of that week was mostly around Gladstone from memory, the odd bench repair here and there, and a couple of other antenna installation jobs. We had a bit of a tower job to do at one of the mines, all was going well until my pocket started ringing. Usually I don't have a drama answering the phone up a tower, but this particular time the phone got caught in my harness and by the time I realised what was happening it was merrily sailing on it's way 30 meters to the ground. Needless to say, it ended up in a thousand pieces. Luckily Dan managed to recover my sim card, and surprisingly enough I managed to piece everything back together enough to actually connect it to my computer and remove all my data from the phone itself. That really is a testament to the bullet-proof quality than Nokia handsets are known for.

This last week I was back at the mine chasing dozers and trucks and all sorts of other equipment around trying to repair faults. Mostly just the usual "rock hit aerial" problems, but there was the occasional interesting one. Anything in a dozer tends to get a pretty hard time, as they rattle their way around everything gets shaken up, including the drivers brains it appears. This makes for a lot of intermittent faults, where everything works perfectly when you test it stationary but the moment they try to drive off it all goes haywire. I have spent many hours chasing my tail over faults like that at times. I went to have a look at one dozer, parked up in the usual "safe LV park", and was working away when there was a dull "thump". The dozer driver looked at me and said "did you see that mate?" I replied that I hadn't, and he pointed at my truck. A large rock had fallen from the wall of their "safe" area and rolled right into the rear corner of my truck, removing the bumper mounts in the process. It's probably a good thing it hit the wheel rim as otherwise it would have done more damage. I managed to bend it back into shape and a couple of cable ties should solve the problem for now.

Other than that, not a lot to report at this stage, just the usual work eat sleep pattern. Next week should be interesting, I've heard on the grapevine that we could be doing a fair bit of driving, but I won't know the details until I get to work on Monday. I finally caved in a bought a new phone yesterday, my poor old N97 has finally got to the point where the continual crashing is more than just a mild inconvenience. Hopefully the new one doesn't follow suit, but so far I have been pleasantly surprised with its performance.

Anyhow, despite the lack of depth in this update I am going to leave you with some photographs, I will endeavour to construct something a little more entertaining next time around when I have more time.

TTFN!

Barricades and Brickwalls

G'day.

It's a surprise, I know, actually managing to update this thing two consecutive weeks in a row... but I thought I better write up some of last week's adventure before I forget. A reasonably busy week, this one, I think I managed to drive just over 2100 KM all up in the last 5 days. At least 100 series land cruisers are comfortable, even if somewhat lacking in power.

The week started early, about 7:00 on Monday to be precise. Ryan and I were tasked to visit around 16 of our cell sites which we look after, performing routine maintenance and also labelling some cables in preparation for a new upgrade which is due to happen shortly. We hit the ground running so that we could try to get them done in three days, as we have quite a bit of work on at the moment. Leaving Gladstone, we saw some of the results from the bushfires that we are experiencing at the moment. You couldn't see the end of the road for all the smoke in the air. You could see still smouldering trees, and the ground all around was black from where the fire had come through. There were hardwood power poles lying down, and others with only about 3 inches of wood left at the bottom holding them up, swaying around in the breeze, just ready to fall over at the slightest provocation. As we got further out of town and the smoke cleared a little, we cranked up the music and settled in for the 3 and a half hour drive to the first site on our list.

The drive itself being relatively uneventful, we arrived in due course and performed the necessary works. We discovered that I had forgotten to bring a broom to sweep the comms huts out with, so we ducked over to the local supermarket in order to purchase one. We know about two people in this particular town, and we joked that we should have visited them whilst we were here. We arrived at the super market, jump out of the truck, and who do we run into but the exact person we had just been talking about. Good old small towns... we yarned to her for a bit and then proceeded to purchase the required broom. As we headed out and climbed back into the truck, who should we see but the wife of one of our techs from another branch, who had recognised the Nixon logo on the door. After briefly saying hello to her, we finally got on our way, laughing at how you can go miles away from anywhere in a huge country and still run into people you know.

We travelled to the next site, completed it, and then headed on the next big leg of our journey which took us back out to the coast, just below Mackay. I hadn't driven up in this area of the country much, and we saw some interesting things, including a road train with 4 trailer units. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a photograph, but I will be on the case next time. Even after being here as long as I have, I was still amazed by the amount of mines up in this area, probably a good indication of why the district is known as the "coalfields". There is one heck of a lot of coal coming of of this place, and the flow on effect of the money that generates is phenomenal. We arrived at the town we were booked in to stay at just on dark, but in order to give us the best chance of getting the job done on time we decided to go to the next site, seeing as it was in the same town, and get that done before we knocked off for the day. Surprisingly, we managed to find the site without too much difficulty and the job was reasonably straight forward. I heard a couple of possums in the trees, but luckily the giant spiders hadn't yet come out for the night. (They were probably still trying to catch the possums). We signed off for the day, and headed back down the hill to our motel.

After obtaining our keys, and having the usual "yes, we are kiwis" conversation with the proprietor, she suggested we head down the road to the local steakhouse for our dinner. We decided that sounded a sterling plan, and proceeded to do exactly that. As it was reasonably late by this time, there weren't a lot of people there, so the service was excellent, as was the steak. They were handing out $2 free on the pokies, which was a cunning ploy to get you in and start spending your cash. I had $1 change in my pocket, so that combined with the $2 they had supplied gave me $3 of gambling credit. Being no good at pokies whatsoever, I hit random buttons and eventually managed to get $6 out of it, which I promptly cashed out and bought a drink with. Not too bad for what in essence was a $1 outlay. I suspect the idea was to keep gambling it, but knowing my luck I would have then walked out $1 down instead of $5 up. It gave us about 30 seconds of entertainment for the evening if nothing else. After thanking our hostess, we headed back to the motel, which as it turns out was rather appropriately named "The Tramway". I say appropriately named, because right next door is the main railway line, which I thought nothing more about until I tried to get to sleep. One thing about being near the coalfields... that coal has to get to a port. Usually, this involves trains. And a lot of them. Every half an hour or so, whoosh, it sounded like the world was about to end, for about 2 minutes while the 2km long train went past. Just as you got to sleep again, crash bang there goes another one. The only other slight disappointment was the quality of the mattress, which in my case, I suspect they had forgotten to install. It felt like I was sleeping on solid planks of wood. Not the best nights stay, but it was the only place which still had room.

The next morning, we left the motel at 6 and headed off to get another site done before breakfast. The next site had a huge sign on the gate, saying "do not lock anyone else's padlock out! by order." Thinking "yes, that's common sense..." we went to unlock the gate... and found that we had been locked out. Curses. After some slight modifications to the gate with a pair of cutters, we managed to work our way around that little hurdle. When we got to the top, we found 3 other vehicles up there, they were holding quite a party at this little site. We managed to get enough room to do our bit, and then we carried on. We kept on like that all the way down the coast, and a few sites later we were just putting on the final touches when yet I heard a loud revving noise and eventually another 4WD showed up. The fellow got out and explained he was here to label some cables... I said "what, like these ones?" and he said "yes, those ones exactly". It transpired that in their wisdom, the company who had sent us out to do the labelling had in fact doubled up on several sites, and he had already done about 3 on our list and we had done the same off his list. We swapped photographs and both signed off on them, so that saved us all a little time.

We carried on down the coast and just on dark (yet again) hit our final planned site for the day. We finished that one off, signed off for the day, and drove into Rocky where we were planning on staying the night. Well, we probably should have planned better and actually booked ahead, as about the only thing we managed to find was "no vacancy" signs. Toying with our options, we eventually weighed up the odds and decided to drive the hour back to Gladstone and then start early and return in the morning, as we only had 4 sites left to inspect. We did exactly that, and first thing the next day we headed back up the road. By now I was starting to feel my steering arm shoulder a little bit, as we had spent a great deal of time on the road. We drove out to the first site of the day, and found that all we had to do was stick two labels on. We went to the next site, and found much the same. Thinking we were on to a good thing, we headed off to the second to last site for the day.

That was about where my luck ran out, of course. When we arrived, I stopped for a few minutes to grab a bite to eat. I was consuming some chips, when a loud swooping sound sailed past my ear. Turns out that the natives crows up here seem to be quite partial to chips. I threw a few to them to keep them off, and all that did was encourage more to appear from thin air. I decided to play a game, and held a chip out at arms length to see if he would be keen enough to eat of of my hand. He looked at me sideways, and hopped a little closer. He thought for a minute, looked at me again... and then made eating motions with his beak. I told him to stop being silly and just come and grab it. He looked at me sideways again.. and hopped a little closer. I told him if he didn't hurry up I would eat it. He looked at me again, opened his beak, and made a mad dash for the chip, grabbing it, and then flying away at a great rate of knots. Just as he sat down to eat it, another one came along and pinched it. I felt a little sorry for him, after all his hard work getting the chip just to lose it like that, so I threw him another one which I am certain he appreciated.

Crows aside, we then decided to actually do some work and I began to get ready to climb the tower. We then discovered that a ladder probably would have been a handy tool to have... Not one to be beaten, I decided to lasso the bottom pole step with my pole strap and use that as a leg up. I had my harness on by this point, and attached to the front was a reasonably heavy metal device known as a "ladsafe" which clips around the wire rope running up the tower and supposedly catches you if you happen to let go. I decided to have a crack at it, jumped as high as I could and threw my rope. I missed, of course, but that wasn't the worst bit. Jumping up was all good. When my weight began the downward motion however, this metal ladsafe was still trying to go upward, and smacked me in the chest. I landed on the ground again, thinking all was well, and then the ladsafe which was now about at chest height decided to continue it's downward motion, with a sort of pendulum effect. Which travelled on a perfect arc, and smacked me straight in the crutch. I spent the next 5 minutes somewhat speechless, rolling around on the ground cursing the fact that I hadn't foreseen this major incident. I eventually picked myself up, looked at Ryan, who was still laughing, and moved the ladsafe to the back of my harness. "Righto, ready for another go?"

Eventually I managed to make it onto the tower, and of course once I was onto the pole steps we were away like a rat up a drain pipe. Just a rather slow rat today, as I was still feeling somewhat drained of energy. We carried on with the rest of the job, and finally managed to sign off and head to our last job of the day, which was on top of an 8 story hotel. We eventually managed to get the correct keys from the girl at the front desk, and then jumped into the elevator, pushing the "8" button to take us to the eighth floor. The door had only just closed and the elevator just moved, when the door went "ding" and opened again, as there was a woman waiting to get on. I noticed that this was only the 1st floor, and expected her to get in and we would continue on our way. The woman looked at us and said "Are you getting out here?" Ryan, in his wisdom, said "Yes, thanks!" and walked out. Wondering what on earth he was doing, but following his lead in case he has spotted something that was worth looking at, I followed him out. He went to the door to the stair well, and said "righto, just up here isn't it?" I looked at him and said "Yes, about 8 floors up... this is only the 1st floor you idiot!" He looked at me in disbelief, but as we climbed flight after flight of stairs it dawned on him that I wasn't making it up. Ah well, I guess I could do with the exercise.

We managed to finish the job at this site, and just as we were preparing to leave, we got a call. It transpired there was another site on the way home that was off air for some reason, and would we mind having a quick look? Thinking it would be simple, we agreed to take a butchers on the way past. Luckily we had GPS on Ryan's iPad, which had the site marked, as neither of us had been to this particular site before. We looked at the track on the satellite view and it looked like it was going through a motor camp, so we drove into the camp and drove around for a while getting stared at by all the campers, as it was almost getting dark yet again. We eventually spotted a track that looked like it headed in the right direction, and long story short, eventually made it to the site.

The first thing we notice, is that the equipment is mounted half way up the pole. Really would have been a great day to pack a ladder. Yet again, not to be beaten, we had a bit of a measure up and worked out that the width of my truck was just less than the distance between the pole and the fence, so we backed it in and managed to reach the box on the pole by standing on the roof rack. As I went to open the box, I heard a reasonable buzzing sound.. thinking it might have been coming from the power supply, I had a quick look underneath and came face to face with a wasp. I frantically leaped off my truck and when I realised that I wasn't yet being chased, I had a closer look. Sure enough, a wasp nest was on the bottom of the gear, right on the bit I needed to move to get the box open. Would have been a great day to pack some flyspray too, then. Not going to be beaten by a few wasps, we decided a can of Inox spray would be the go, perhaps making their wings too slippery to fly or something. I could only see about 4 wasps at this point, so was reasonably confident I could get them all. I snuck back up onto my truck, and let rip. I managed to hit about 2 of the four, then the other two came at me. Yet again, I let out a yelp and dove off the truck, and hared off down the track with Ryan hot on my heels. Once I was confident we had out run them, we headed back to investigate the situation. The spray must of upset them, because there were about 30 other wasps beginning to crawl out of the nest. Brilliant. I jokingly asked Ryan if he had a lighter... and he said "Yes! Do it!" We tested the waters, and sure enough, it was reasonably flammable. Weighing up the options, and knowing that it was rapidly getting dark and we had to get into this thing somehow, I decided to give it a shot. I lit my improvised flamethrower and those wasps didn't know what hit them. Little balls of fire falling from the nest, it was pretty successful. Until I stopped spraying, but the nest didn't stop burning. I looked at Ryan..."it will go out shortly" But it didn't... I was watching the fire get closer to the plastic insulation on the cables, and weighing up whether or not to hit it with the fire extinguisher that we had prepared just in case... when "Whoosh!" Ryan disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Turned out he had decided the fire wasn't going to go out, and he had hit it with the extinguisher. But, standing downwind, he wore most of the powder, and emerged spluttering and coughing away.

A couple of the wasps that had somehow survived decided to interject at this point, so he hit them with the extinguisher too. They didn't like that much, and flew away. After sweeping up the mess, we finally managed to get into the cabinet and traced the fault. I was standing on my truck on the phone to their head office, ordering a replacement part, when I felt this thing brush past my hand, and found yet another wasp... I let out another yelp and jumped off the truck yet again. The girl on the other end of the phone thought the world was about to end, but I explained to her that it was OK, I was just escaping a wasp. She mentioned that she was glad it was me out here and not her. After getting the order under way, we closed everything back up, and by now it was very dark. We managed to navigate our way down the track, and made it back to town in one piece.

The next day, we were tasked to yet another site, down south this time. Luckily for us, this one was somewhat less eventful, if you don't include hillbilly farmers spending half the day trying to talk to Ryan, and complaining about people stealing their "cleanskins" which are apparently cattle. Friday, I spent the day on a dragline at a nearby mine, fixing some cameras.... a bit of a story there too, but I suspect I may have written enough for one update. I shall leave you with the customary photos, there are more on the camera at work, but these ones will do for now.

TTFN!

Hold On

G'day.

I decided it must be time to attempt to scratch together a few words, seeing as it appears to be a few weeks since I last wrote anything in the public domain. As usual, time is flying by, I can barely believe that is is October already. 3 more months and then the year is gone. They do say time flies when you are having fun.

A couple of fairly busy weeks, as per usual. One week I had a cabling job to do in town, where we had to set up a wireless link system and also install a rack cabinet and around 24 odd data points in a few nearby buildings. As we had to use an elevated work platform to access the roof to install the radio gear, we expected to have a few hoops to jump through. We asked the fellow in charge what paperwork he would require, and was pleasantly surprised when he replied that they don't need work method statements on that site, they prefer to just get the work done safely using common sense. I couldn't believe that we were actually still in Australia for a moment there. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we got stuck into the job and managed to get it all completed in a reasonable time frame. The job was done safely, smoothly, and economically, and it was refreshing to find there are still some companies out there who realise that paperwork isn't everything when it comes to working safely.

That weekend, I had just cooked my dinner and was settling down to enjoy consuming it when my telephone rang. It was a fellow workmate, and it transpired that he had been out for a drive and had managed to get his 4WD hopelessly stuck. I decided that I had better go and give him a hand, so I wolfed down my meal and made sure I had my snatch strap on board. About at this point I remembered that I had no spare tyre, as I had managed to obtain a puncture whilst out at the mine the week before and it was still being repaired. I decided to call into work and pick up the spare spare, just in case...

I picked up yet another Nixon bloke and we took off towards our bogged colleague. He was about 60 odd KM out of town, and it was well dark by the time we got nearby. I called him up on the radio, and by then he had walked out to the main road to guide us in to where he was stuck. We managed to locate him and we went on a bit of a journey in through the bush to his truck. When he said hopelessly stuck, he wasn't underestimating the situation. He and the people with him and attempted to dig it out, and of course ended up with the vehicle sitting on the axles and going nowhere. I sized up the situation, and determined the closest possible distance I could get my 4WD in without ending up bogged myself. I ended up having to join a winch extension to my snatch strap to get the range, and luckily remembered to put a stick in the join so that I could separate them again after the operation. I said to them, "we are going to try this once... it is either going to work splendidly well, or else not at all". I instructed my workmate to hop back into his truck, and to be sure to fasten his seatbelt... I called him up on the radio and gave the countdown, and then began to move forward. I felt the snatch strap take the strain, then, exactly as they are designed to work, the strap sprung him out of the situation at a great rate of knots. He later informed me that he only remembered the seatbelt as I was counting down, and was frantically trying to fit it before I pulled him out. He was somewhat thankful that he got it on just in time...

We packed up the equipment, had a bit of a laugh about it, then I began to drive out so he could turn around and follow me. I had got about 500 meters down the track when the radio crackled into life... "Yea, Carl... you better come back mate, I've done it again."

Sure enough... in his attempt to turn the truck around, he strayed into the soft sandy mess yet again and managed to become stuck yet again. This time it proved a little more challenging, as he was 90 degrees off the track so it was a lot more difficult to achieve a straight line pull. A winch and snatch block would have been handy, but unfortunately my land rover is across the Tasman... I went past him and attempted to pull the nose around, with little success, so I went back behind him and managed to get myself in a position that allowed me about 4 meters worth of pulling, before I would run into a tree. We rigged up the pull, and I crossed my fingers and we went for it. The strain took up, he bounced out, and I just managed to haul up about 6 inches in front of the tree. Lucky on that count, then. We packed up yet again, and this time I made him drive out first. He stuck to the track, and made it out in one piece. We followed him out and, he carried on to his camp site. We decided seeing as there wasn't much else happening that night, we may as well join them for a while. After deciding that there was no suitable camp sites anywhere near where he got stuck, we drove another 30 KM and eventually found a suitable beach. Yet again following him, he drove straight through an estuary and I couldn't believe that he didn't drown the poor old vehicle there and then. I went around the water, and met him up on the other side... apparently once he started through the water he realised it was a foolish decision, but of course stopping half way through was guaranteed disaster so he kept up it and was extremely lucky to get through it OK.

We found a suitable site, and had a bit of a campfire, sat around and chewed the fat for a while, and then just after midnight I decided it was probably time to call it a night, so I headed back to Gladstone. So, an eventful evening all in all, probably more entertaining than sitting at home working on my computer.

This last week has been fairly straight forward, we had a bit of a tidy up in the workshop, new lino on the floor, a few splashes of paint here and there, and a general clean up. I ended up moving benches, as during the course of the cleanup I discovered that the benches on the other side of the room are about a foot longer in work space, and have an extra shelf. I couldn't believe that I had been there almost 2 years and had only just discovered that. Anyhow, I'm almost totally moved back in and am beginning to get my bench set up how I'd like. I was supposed to go out to the mine and install some alarm broadcasting equipment, but half of it still hasn't arrived so that never happened. I went for a drive out to Callide, but the fellow who organised the trip had left the country for 3 months and the other fellow who he left in charge was too busy to discuss the job with me, so we ended up taking a few photos and leaving it at that. A bit of a wasted trip really. Mind you, I still get paid, so I'm not complaining.

Next week could be an interesting one, I think there is about 1500 KM of driving involved... 2 of us off to audit some cable labels and perform routine maintenance on a selection of sites to the west and north of Gladstone. A few nights away, a few long days, should be an interesting week.

Anyhow, I shall leave it at that for now, I haven't taken any terribly exciting photos this week but here's a couple for the record.

TTFN!