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Woodie Woodie Airport

2 Feb

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-old-woodie-airport-outback-style

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.

the-lucky-people-back-to-the-real-world

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)!

woodies-flash-new-terminal

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”.

marshalling-in-the-jet

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

toot-toot-the-baggage-train

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).

chilling-out

Jacko guarding the “stairway to heaven – civilisation”

jack-hanging-out-by-the-stairway-to-heaven

Post Christmas swing at work.

14 Jan

The first swing back at work after the Christmas break has been a good one.  Apart from the fact that the daily temperatures has been hitting 47 degree celsius with a splash of humidity to wash it down during the day. But luckily it’s been dropping to a chilly 28 degrees celsius overnight! I’m currently in our “air conditioned” office, its 5.30pm, all 4 air conditioners are reading the INSIDE temperature as 30 degrees! Even the air conditioners can’t handle the heat!

Yep, summer has definitely hit the Pilbara region, and the flies have come to the party.  Its the time of the year when there’s no such thing as a cold shower, why? Because when you turn on the cold water tap you nearly burn yourself with the water that’s been sitting in the black pipes sun bathing. Check out my previous blog post on Pilbara weather and flies.

OK, enough of the weather and flies, so what have I been up to this swing. Exploring will be the best word to describe it, and well since I’m an Exploration Field Assistant, that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Its currently cyclone season in the Northwest of Australia, so all our drill rigs are currently on break until the wet season is over, which will be around April. The reason being as we don’t want them stranded by flood waters in the remote Outback.  And flood it does, flash floods to be exact, as when it rains, it rains. Take a look at the photo below, its a photo of me in a dry river bed, but check out whats 5 metres above me in the tree, yep sticks and debris from previous floods.

So now while its the Exploration quiet period we are preparing for kick off in April.  This requires going out to our tenements, and scouting out our proposed drilling areas.  As there are no roads this involves four-wheel driving all day to try and figure out the best tracks for the bulldozers to make roads in for the drill rigs. It takes a long time usually to get to the co-ordinates of the sites, and sometimes we are unsuccessful and have to come back the following day to try an alternative route to get there as we try to dodge boulders, canyons, rivers, ditches, cliffs, wildlife and those tyre popping stakes.  And bumpy, lets just say my backs been taking a hammering, but I can’t think of a better way to get a sore back.

Sorry for those of you in your office hating the report that’s due, I can’t help it, I’m just doing my job. Check out the photos, if you click on the thumbnails (photos) they will go to a bigger size, and I have saved them as a bigger size from past photos, so its worth a click.

Christmas Party – Running Waters

16 Dec

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.

Marble Bar – The hottest recorded town in the world.

1 Dec

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. 

Hap with a Marble Bar

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

The Largest Shire in the World

Boody modeling the new sign.

Boody at the warmest recodered town in Australia.

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.

hap-reading-headstone

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

Dr Ed Vines headstone

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”.

killed-by-blacks

Getting a job in the mining industry.

24 Nov

Of late I’ve had a few people emailing me about getting jobs in the mining industry.  My response has always been that its pretty bloody hard to enter the mining industry if you don’t have any mining experience, sought after qualification, transferable skills or a contact already in the industry.  If you have none of the above then it will be very challenging, but if there’s a will there’s a way.

Read my article below that I had published in ‘The Press’ (New Zealand Newspaper). It outlines my point of view based on my experience entering the mining industry and working in the industry and seeing how it works.

The Press – The great Australian mining myth – by Mark “Hap” Cameron

Now add to the above challenges the “global economic crisis”.  This has hit the mining industry hard, as the halt on development has meant that the raw minerals are not required, eg at Woodie
Woodie (my mine) we are mining Manganese which is used in the production of steel -as a hardener- , and with our main Market being China whose smelters  have shut down, it means that no one is buying Manganese.  So its not a very good situation when you have no cash inflows, especially in mining when the costs of running a mine are so high.  The company I work for has closed (put on care and maintenance) one of our other 3 mines and the other one has been downsized by half, leaving only Woodie still running as usual, with the hope that the forecasts are correct and the market picks up come the New Year.

So now in an industry that only a couple of months ago was booming and couldn’t supply enough qualified workers to meet the demand, the tides have turned.  Now the mining industry is plagued with words such as; redundancy, downsizing, shutting down, cost cutting, employment freeze etc.

So with all this going on, the mining labour market will be swamped with experienced mine workers applying for a limited number of jobs, thus making it even harder to break into the industry.

Anyway, thats my thoughts, don’t let me put you off (haha), good luck.

Hard day at work!

24 Oct

At work currently they have been doing mapping work of the regional sites out of the mine area, so the helicopter has been on site for the last couple of weeks.  I went up today, quite funny, the pilot, the Geologist and myself all kiwis – flying kiwi’s.

Getting hot up here, I got put off work yesterday due to dehydration.  It is not much fun being severely dehydrated. I had drunk 7 litres of water by midday but I had woken up quite dehydrated and couldn’t process the water in time. You just get clumsy (more so), head aches, feel like vomiting etc. I just came right this afternoon. For example one of the photos below was taken just after 7am and it was already up to 34 degrees Celsius, and it just keeps getting warmer, a lot warmer from there!

Off tomorrow with the mine Emergency Response Team to train with a neighbouring mine on fire-fighting training, so really looking forward to that, I may put some photos up if I get a chance to snap any.

Anyway heres some photos as me posing as usual.

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