Hap Working The World

This is officially my last swing at work. I have 3 more days of being an Exploration Field Assistant. It’s always in the last days of a job that you start to appreciate (more) your surroundings. It’s a time of “lasts”, eg the last time I will sleep in my donga, the last time I will have a laugh with my work mates, the last time I will go four wheel driving in the outback, the last time I will get on the plane to Perth etc.

This past year I have been lucky enough to have experienced the unique Austrlian Outback and all its glory. A big part of that glory are the animals that inhabit this vast red wilderness, animals that are as Ozzie as beer and barbies.

Below are photos of animals I have come across throughout the past year.  There have been some animals that I have failed to snap photos of, emu’s, wedge tail eagles and others I can not think of, but enjoy the ones I got.

Dingos. I’ve seen plenty of  these wild dogs cruising the outback. Dingo stole me baby!

Kangaroos, my new favourite animal, they’re so bouncy, happy and unique, plus they don’t want to hurt you, unlike most of the animals in OZ.  I’ve taken a lot of Kangaroo photos at work, but decided to post this comical one that I took 3 weeks ago when camping in Margaret River.   ”Mum have you seen my socks”?

Cattle.  Woodie Woodie where I work is located on a cattle farm, so there are always our bovine buddies walking around camp feasting on the green grass of the camp, which is very much a delicacy in the outback, its like eating lobster in the desert.

Camels.  Australia is home to the largest wild camel population in the world!

This is my pitiful photo of the first snake I saw. And yes I was scared shitless, that’s the reason the photo’s taken from a million miles away, check out my blog post I did on my my encounter with my first snake.

Donkies.  Now that’s a great arse!

Bungarras.  Otherwise known as Goanna’s are commonly sighted around the camp. From the tip of their tale to their head they are easily over a metre long. When you walk around the side of a donga (sleeping cabin) and startle one of these miniature dinosaurs, it requires a change of underwear afterwards.

Frogs.  Now I’ve heard of  toilet ducks (toilet cleaner in NZ), but toilet frogs! You can imagine my surprise when busting for a pee and being confronted by this little fella (frog), to pee or not to pee? Now that is the question.

It wouldn’t be an authentic outback post without mentioning those annoying little flying maggots that are so abundant this time of year. The flies applying first aid to my cut.

The Australian Outback is a harsh unrelenting place to be, especially if your a sick/elderly camel.

The story behind the photo below is, I was riding shot gun with El at the wheel and the two passenger side wheels start sliding down the river bank into the boggy area. El giggling as my passenger side sank down so that I was nearly face to face with the decaying carcass of the camel. As you can imagine I exited the vehicle through the drivers side, but didn’t last long before I jumped back in as my gag reflect was about to start due to the stench. Luckily I was able to unbog it from the comfort of the odourless drivers seat.

As mentioned before, carcasses are part of everyday work up here, especially when travelling on the 400km of sealed outback highway-on any NW Australian highway for that matter- to Port Headland.  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that cattle and fast travelling road trains hauling our manganese don’t mix.  But I had never seen anything like the photo below that I took a couple of swings ago while doing a field trip to Mount Sydney. It’s a mystery to me, maybe it’s the site of  a camel cult mass suicide.

OK Hap, enough of the dead animals.  Best I leave you with a warm fuzzy cute animal photo.  Although I have not come across any of our woolly four legged friends during my Outback chapter, they deserve a place in the blog.  Why? Because although us kiwi’s get the reputation as…….how do I say it ………as “sheep lovers”, it is our big brother Australia that has the largest sheep population in the world! (NZ has 40 million sheep and Australia has 90 million-and yes I realise that’s a ratio of 10 sheep to every kiwi and only 5 sheep to every Ozzie, but let’s not focus on that, Australia has the biggest sheep population, end of story).  

PS, while googling for a “sexy sheep photo” (weird I know), this website came up as first choice,  AdultSheepFinder – The Worlds #1 Sheep Sex and Dating Personals Site  – now that’s weird! (bet you its an Australian site – haha, come on Australia I’ve had my fare share of sheep jokes, it’s about time you guys got your share). The website was blocked on my work computer, I just hope the IT guys don’t over my internet browser history!

Stay posted for my next post, it will be the last post of my Australian chapter.

The end of last year Woodie Woodie (the mine where I am working) got the best Christmas present ever, a new airport!  Gone are the days of the red dirt runway with the outdoor shade cloth terminal. 

The new airport was built so jets could land.  This is great news for the workers of Woodie.  It means that we no longer have to fly in the Brasilia airplanes.  If you don’t watch Air Crash Investigation, your probably not familiar with the Brasilia aircraft.  At work it is nicknamed the flying coffin, and everybody has countless stories of the aircraft being grounded for maintenance problems and dodgy landings by the trainee pilots they use to transport the miners into the outback.  To sum up the Brasilia aircraft, before taking off the air hostess hands out ear plugs, becasue as soon as its in the air, you can’t even hear your ipodon full volume.  OK, it’s not that bad, I’m sure it would be the pride of the Air Ethiopia fleet.

The new fokker 100 jet, woop woop.

So now its all big pimping for the Woodie workers, we don’t have to worry about the red dirt runway getting washed away in a down pour, we now wait in an air conditioned terminal while the flies wait outside and we are all guaranteed to get on the flight, as the jet seats 100 people compared to the 30 on the Brasilia.  It was pretty classic, one of the first flights from Perth, the jet brought up 2 passengers, haha, if you work it out, that’s probably atleast $20,000 per passenger (but a contracts a contract and the jet has to fly)!

With the new airport, I volunteered my services to the “jet pit crew”, helping out with baggage handling, refuelling, marshalling etc.  I saw this as a great opportunity to get experience working around aircrafts, as this will be invaluable when applying for work in Antarctica. 

Here’s some photos kindly taken by my photographer Jacko of the first dreadlocked marshaller, you can imagine the pilots thought as he’s bringing the jet full of 100 passengers into land and sees the state of the guy marshalling him in, he’s probably already said his “hail mary’s”.

“Hey Hap you poser, you forget to pick-up the baggage”

Chilling out in the baggage compartment, it’s amazing in there, as it comes down from altitude and its still freezing, a welcome relief from the heat (And people wonder why it takes so long for their bags to come off the plane).

Jacko guarding the “stairway to heaven – civilisation”

Theres only one word to describe Running Waters…………… oasis.  It really is amazing to have an idylic spring fed swimming hole nestled amongest the baron red dirt of  the isolated, unforgiving Pilbara outback. 

We are lucky enough that it is only a half an hour drive (very rough tracks, 4WD only) from Woodie Woodie where I work. So, what better place to have our christmas party. Its definitely the most unique place I have spent a christmas party during my journey.  Check out some of the photos.

Last swing (duration of time spent at mining camp working) I had the plessure of stopping off at Marble Bar to check out the sights on my way to Port Hedland.  

There’s not too much to do at Marble Bar, established back in 1893 to support the mining boom, and it currently has a population of a couple of hundred. Its a typical Ozzie outback mining town, scorching sun, red sand and a pub (Ironclad Hotel which has been around since 1893) and that’s basically it. Its not really a town that you are drawn to, especially when its claim to fame is being ‘the hottest town in Australia. Its not really a holiday destination, “umm should we go to Hell or Marble Bar?”  Read the following from the Australian Governments Bureau of Meteorology:

 The world record for the longest sequence of days above 100°Fahrenheit (or 37.8° on the Celsius scale) is held by Marble Bar in the inland Pilbara district of Western Australia. The temperature, measured under standard exposure conditions, reached or exceeded the century mark every day from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924, a total of 160 days. Temperatures above 100°F are common in Marble Bar and indeed throughout a wide area of northwestern Australia. On average, Marble Bar experiences about 154 such days each year.

If your reading this and it sounds appealing, and maybe your thinking of buying real estate there-I’m sure its cheap- then take a look at my previous post I did on the climate up where I work, which is an hour and a half drive inland from Marble Bar.

Me with a Marble Bar. 

 The Largest Shire in the world (with bugger all in it)

Boody modeling the new sign.

My highlight of Marble Bar was the memorial in the main street dedicated to the early inhabitants, settlers, explorers, proscpectors and residents that had died in the East Pilbara region and had been buried in make-shift graves around the shire. It really gave you a feeling of what a rugged, savage and unforgiving (no air conditioning back then) place it must have been in its early days, with many of the early inhabitants cause of death being ‘speared’.

One of the plaques at the memorial was for Dr Ed Vines. Coincidently I had come accross his grave early in the year whilst taking a back road to our remote Ripon Hills Exploration camp.  

Dr Vines story was that he was the 3rd or 4th Doctor stationed at Marble Bar and had made the journey out to Braeside Station 130km east of Marble Bar to assist in the birth of the station managers wife. He arrived 3 days prior to the birth but unfortunately got caught up in an early morning attack on the station by Aborigines.  He was speared on the front verrandah where he died and was buried.

Checking out Dr Ed Vines headstone on the way to our remote exploration camp.

Dr Ed Vines headstone, “speared by natives, September 1899″

Memorial Plague erected in 1991. To me this sums up how the Aboriginals are treated, what would of been wrong by writing “killed by Aboriginals”.