The second week of
work was much better than the first because I was getting used to the long days
on my feet. I finally know sort of what
I'm doing, so now I can listen to music and podcasts while I'm working which
makes the time go by much faster. I
don't have a lot more to say about the job, but I thought I would post some
pictures.
First, this is what
my room is like. The bed is pretty comfy
and I have my own bathroom, so all in all it's pretty good!
Another part of the
job is going on "core runs", which means that we drive out to a drill
rig to pick up more trays of core to work on.
I think right now we have 5 rigs drilling within a 4 hour radius and core
needs to be picked up from each of them every day. Going on these runs is highly coveted since
you basically get some time off work and you get to go on a nice drive. Anyways, that's how I came across the dog
fence! Do you remember back when Ryan
explained about the
dingo fence that runs across the entire country to keep the
dingoes out of the south? Well I got to
see it!
It's not that
impressive, but I hear it's the longest fence in the world and is owned and
maintained by the government. Also in
that picture you get to see my beautiful work outfit!
This is one of the
drill rigs, and you can see the core lined up right in front waiting for us to
pick up.
Some scenery out in
the middle of nowhere:
Here are the cool
lizards called goannas that hang out at the worksite. They can get pretty big, and when they're
scared they run up the tallest thing they can find. That would be okay anywhere else, but in the
Outback humans are the tallest things!
And finally, some
sunrise pictures. The sun comes up
around 5:45am now, which is just when our bus is getting to the worksite. Usually I'm inside and miss the sunrise, but
luckily I saw a few. The sun rises
directly over the mine which makes for kind of a cool view.
The
most eventful thing that happened my entire stint was actually the day I came
back home. We knew we were in for a
rainstorm, but at lunchtime we got a "code red" alert because of a
lightning storm. That just means that
lightning has been within 15(?)km of the work site so no one is allowed to go
outside or drive, and we were not allowed to continue working. There actually was lightning, and since there
are no trees to get hit it makes sense that people needed to stay out of harms
way. To add to the chaos, the mine was
in shutdown which means that half of the mine closes for repairs and the number
of people at camp doubles. Consequently
there was an increased number of planes coming and going from the site that
day. During the 4 hours of code red I
think 4 or 5 planes needed to land, but because no one was allowed to go out to
check that the runway was clear the pilots had to circle overhead to check for
themselves. Also, once they landed, no
one was allowed out of the planes.
Finally, an hour after my flight was set to depart, we got the code
yellow alert and everyone made a mad dash for the village to pack their things
and get to the plane. Unfortunately
almost immediately it turned back to code red so we still had to wait another
hour for it to be safe again. All in all
it was pretty chaotic, but I only got home 2 hours late. All in a day's work!
