Tour Down Under: Working in T'Outback!

Working up t'North!

So you have had Naomi's Geeky Doctor Post! Now its my time to bore you with Engineering stuff!

So I started work at the End of August for a company called Ertech based in the Northern Suburbs of Perth. After a few weeks in the Perth office it was time to head to site to get a job started.

The job is around 30km of new roads... the catch... its a 1300km commute!! Its what is known in Australia as a FIFO (Fly In - Fly Out) job. The roads are being constructed as part of a new Iron Ore Mine Development (Roy Hill Mine) near Newman, WA.

So the flight was a fairly painless 2hours up to site, and luckily the site airport had just been opened so we were saved the 120km drive up from Newman, instead having the luxury of landing just 10km from the accommodation camp.

Now my expectation of the accommodation camp was pretty low, I had visions of tents, or snake infested portacabins, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a nice brand new en-suite room with FoxTel, internet and an actual bed!!!

The camp facilities weren't too bad either, small gym, fairly decent food (all free and as much as you can eat) and a decent little bar. Again I was pleasantly surprised to find out these were the temporary facilities and the new ones open next month include a swimming pool, cinema and indoor driving range!!!

So after settling into the camp, it was time for work the next day. We were setting up a temporary office at the old exploration camp, an old abandoned set of buildings used by the geologists when locating the iron ore areas within the mine lease. First impressions...not a bad view from the office!

Second impressions........ S*%t Snakes!!!

So after setting up the offices it was time to have a look at the job. The main bulk of the works was to divert the Marble Bar Road around the mine area. So before I show you the photo, time for some context.

The mine is located in the Shire of East Pilbara, the largest Shire in the world! It has an area over 3x that of England with a population of just 10000!!! Heading North from Newman (the shire capital) are the two main roads serving this vast area, one is the Marble Bar Road. The other road to heading further west is the equivalent to the M1 so I guess this is the A1.........

This is actually a good patch..... imagine following a road train kicking up dust, dodging graders that casually dig up the road in front of you to repair the road, with the odd stray cattle, horses, emus and kangaroos jumping in front of your car, and not a single little chef in site!

So luckily for the locals, we are actually replacing this with a sealed road, so should make the journey a little more comfortable!!

The hours on site are long, start at 6am... (and we are one of the latest starters), the bonus is having a site meeting every morning at Sunrise, often joined by roos and emus! Not really a bad way to start the day.

We then get to play with massive big toys all day, although mine is a bit smaller (a Hilux UTE)

The swings are long, 3 weeks on at a time, however we have one day off mid way through. We were quite excited about having a day to escape the camp and visit some of the local national parks including swimming watering holes and bbq spots, however unfortunately the night before a pickup following a road train managed to crash into 3 cows on the main road. Although the road train took the brunt of the impact, this put restrictions on our driving meaning we all had to travel in one bus.

So the one day we had off resulted in a trip to Newman, a thriving metropolis of around 5000ppl 120km south of site. I would put up loads of photos of the sights of Newman, however the only one really was a musical public toilet!!! It was nice to get away from the camp through and have a nice pub lunch, which was actually a really nice steak! On the way back the beer had kicked in and we all needed to stop at the service station for a wee stop

The day off gave us the opportunity to explore a bit around the camp when we got back and I managed to find a really nice running route up the hill overlooking camp. It was a nice change to the gym and running laps of the camp, not a bad view for sunset either!