My First Few Days as a Fieldy

**Written November 20, 2011.  Post delay due to lack of internet.

It has been a few days now since I arrived at Prominent Hill, so I though I would give everyone a brief overview of my life at the mine. 

I arrived Wednesday afternoon after a 2:40h flight which stopped in Port Augusta.  It's a bit strange to have a whole flight of people who are all going to the same job site as you, since usually you're quite anonymous on an airplane.  Unfortunately my pictures from the plane didn't really turn out, but this was just as we were landing in Port Augusta and you can see where the ocean meets the Outback.

When I arrived I met someone from my team and got my room assignment, but then had the afternoon to myself.  Since my room hadn't been cleaned from the previous person yet I decided to go for a swim in the amazing pool they have here.  It's about 4 lanes and I'm guessing almost 25m long, and it is the perfect temperature; it's just cold enough to cool you off after a hot day. 

Overall the facilities here are quite impressive.  The food is surprisingly good for buffet food and they have a lot of healthy options (and not so healthy ones) to choose from, as well as a huge variety of both hot and cold food.  During breakfast you also pack your lunch for that day, and that has also been pretty good.  They have tons of salad options usually, as well as leftover hot food, meat pies, and all the typical sandwich fixings.  My room is pretty good (bed, tv, desk, bathroom) and the neighbours are quiet. 

The job itself is repetitive but completely learnable and manageable.  I think I'm doing a really good job, and hopefully I'll learn some more things soon.  Here's a picture of the core shed I've been working in for the past few days. 

Basically I take the drill core from those black trays, lay them out on the bench and make sure they all fit together.  Then I mark them, measure them, and put them back in the black trays.  Easy.  It's also a bit more of a social job since there are always other people working on the other rows around you.  There are other jobs in other sheds that I haven't learned yet, but this one is pretty good so far.  The hardest part is physically standing for 12 hours.  My legs are doing alright, but my feet are absolutely killing me.  We get two 15 minute breaks and a 40 minute lunch break, but that's the only sitting for the whole day.  Going from being unemployed to this has been extremely hard for me, but I'm doing my best to be optimistic.  I keep telling myself it's great to break in my feet for hiking in New Zealand!

Where we work is in between the Village (where everyone eats/sleeps/exercises) and the Pit (the massive mine), so this is the view we have every day from work.  Again, not a good picture since it was from my phone.

There is also a large area outside where we lay out all of the trays for the geologists to look at (hence why Ryan is getting a tan and I'm not!)

Today we were moving some of these trays and found a ton of wolf spiders.  From what I understand they can get quite big (the ones we saw were smaller than a bottle cap) and you'll have to go to the hospital if they bite you, but they won't kill you.  I've also seen a few hawks and wedge tailed eagles, which makes sense since there are mice everywhere!  One ran up my leg while I was reading at a desk in the core shed.  Gross.  Unfortunately that probably means there are snakes around, but it also means there are cool lizards like the goannas that hang out around camp.  I don't have a picture of them yet, but hopefully I will soon.

Anyways, I think that's all of the excitement for now.  I'm exhausted and pretty much go to bed as soon as I get off the phone with Ryan around 9pm.  I've been getting up at 4:40am, which has actually been the easiest part of the job.  I have cell reception so I can check email and stuff, but unfortunately no computer internet.

I'm working in the Outback!

I have been waiting a very long time to finally be able to say this:  I officially have a real job!  Today I finally got a start date (Wednesday November 16) for my new job as a Field Technician.  It's been in a bit of limbo for awhile, so it's quite a relief that I actually have a start date and a plan of action.

As I think I've mentioned before, I've been trying to get this job as a fieldy for awhile but it was sort of dependant on Ryan's current job.  Ryan recently switched job sites so we were waiting for him to make a name for himself there before Euro attempted to call in a favour to get me a job as well.  Of course since Ryan is amazing they absolutely love him, so it wasn't too hard to get me signed up.  Temporarily I will be working at the Prominent Hill site for Oz Minerals (not Carrapateena where Ryan currently works) with the eventual intention of me moving over to the Carrapateena site once I have proven myself as a competent employee.  That plan is of course just a hopeful plan at the moment, so we'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, Prominent Hill is supposedly a really awesome mine site.  They have hundreds of people there at any given time so the facilities are top notch.  There is an outdoor swimming pool, an indoor cricket pitch, full gym, bar, and I get my own room with an ensuite bathroom and cable TV.  I've also been told that they're fantastic employers, so I really shouldn't have any trouble with the job or my coworkers.  It's a far better site than Ryan's at now, so I'm sure it will be fun to tease him a little when he's eating a self-cooked meal and I have a full spread to choose from!  Also I get to fly directly to the mine, where as Ryan has to fly and then drive 2 hours to his.

The job itself is apparently unskilled and quite repetitive.  I'll be sorting, bagging, measuring and cutting rock samples and documenting results from what I understand.  Luckily it will be outdoors but in the shade, so I won't be under direct sun all day.  Unfortunately I'm going up there just when the weather is getting hot, so in addition to learning how to work 12 hour shifts I'll also be learning how to deal with the Outback. 

So that's about all I know for now.  I will have cell phone reception but limited internet at the site, so hopefully I will be able to post at least once while I'm at work.  I'm very excited to finally be going to the Outback after almost 6 months of living here, so I'll definitely have some things to share.

In other news, we have officially booked our trip to New Zealand!  We're leaving Christmas Day for 2 weeks and touring only the south half of the South Island.  We will be camping and hopefully doing some hiking as well.  Also our friend Kevin is coming to visit in a few weeks, so we have lots to look forward to!  Sorry I haven't had much to post about recently, but it looks like I'll have lots to tell you in the upcoming weeks.  

Even More Birds

I've decided to take a new approach to the bird pictures.  Instead of stealing pictures from people off the internet, I'm only going to post a picture if we've actually been able to take a picture.  Consequently, some pictures won't be very good, and the ones that are good are probably Ryan's!  I've also gone back to my other bird posts and updated them with our own pictures and removed any others.  It also means that if I identify any of them wrong you'll be able to call me on it (if you care).  The birds in this post are mostly from our trip to Kangaroo Island and Perth, with a few from my hike up Mount Lofty and through the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.  I haven't done a bird post in awhile, so this will be a long one!

'Adelaide Rosella'

This bird has slight variations that make it unique just to this area.  I've been watching out for it carefully and finally saw one!  It's the bird on the right.

Australian Raven

Australian Ringneck ('Twenty-eight' Parrot Variety)

Spotted on our trip to Western Australia.

Black Swan

Blue-breasted Fairy-wren

We saw both the male and female.

Female

Male

Cape Barren Goose

Caspian Tern

Common Blackbird

Common Starling

Crested Tern

Eastern Rosella

Eurasian Coot

European Goldfinch

Golden Whistler

Grey Teal Duck

Little Raven

Magpie-lark

We've been seeing these since the beginning, but it just took me awhile to realize they weren't the same as the Australian Magpie. 

Musk Lorikeet

Pacific Gull (two markings)

These guys are massive!

Pied Butcherbird

Pied Oystercatcher

Red Wattlebird

It might be hard to see, but they have weird red "wattles" sticking out the side of their face!

Scarlet Robin

Short-billed Black-Cockatoo

This was an exciting sighting.  We were watching for whales in Albany but saw this guy instead!

Splendid Fairy-wren

Swamp Harrier

Varied Sittella ('Black-capped Sittella' variety)

It took us FOREVER to identify this one because there are so many different varieties.

Welcome Swallow

Western Corella

White-breasted Robin

White-browed Babbler

White-naped Honeyeater

Creepy Crawlies

In honour of Halloween this week, I thought I would do a post on the bugs and spiders we've seen so far.  Beware of creepy pictures!

You know that we've already seen the Redback Spider and Ryan has seen the Golden Orb Spider, and we also saw a Tiger Snake.  Ryan thinks he saw a Mouse Spider at work, but there are no pictures to prove it so we're watching out for another one.

I'm going to do my best to identify the following pictures based on what I find on the internet!

Black House Spider

This spider is poisonous but not deadly.  Good thing, since one was in my shower while I was in there.  This particular one we found outside on a spider-finding mission.

Huntsman Spider

This one was on our back gate at night, maybe a bit bigger than a Toonie.  They're non-aggressive spiders and are actually good at keeping other bug populations down, but you should still avoid getting bitten since it is painful.

Daddy Long Legs

We have tons of these, but I actually don't have any pictures.  They look like they do in Canada and I think they're responsible for most of the webs in the house.  They vary in size from about a centimetre (including legs) to about three centimetres.

Unidentified Spider

For those of you who read my blog as a procrastination technique, maybe you can help me out with this one.  I've spent a good while trying to figure out what this one is but can't find anything similar online.  We found it on our wall near the ceiling and it was about 2cm long.  The colour is accurate, but I'm sorry the picture is blurry.

Black Portuguese Millipede

Spiders are pretty creepy, but this was the most disgusting bug in our house.  It was on our bathroom floor and scared the crap out of me when I first saw it.

Hairy Mary Caterpillar

Or at least that's the closest thing I can find.  It doesn't seem like anyone on the internet actually knows its name.  We saw this guy in Kings Park, Perth.

Shingleback Lizard

I don't have a picture of this either, since when I saw one I thought it was a snake and got really freaked out.  They have stubby legs, so it was really hard to tell at first.  It was scurrying around in the shrubs near our beach, and I'm pretty sure I saw a bunch of babies while I was climbing Mt. Lofty.  This website has a good picture though.
**Update** Turns out I actually did take a picture!

That's all for now!  I'll try and be more diligent about taking pictures, but to be honest my main priority is to get them out of the house or as far away from them as possible.

These days there isn't much to blog about, so I'll try to gather another list of new birds we've seen.  It just takes a really long time to ID them all (this post took over 2 hours, and it was short!) so don't expect it tomorrow.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Adelaide CheeseFest

Last Saturday, for lack of anything else to do, I decided to venture over to CheeseFest in downtown Adelaide.  It wasn't particularly exciting, but still worth a mention as part of my adventures here. 

The main attractions for me were the cooking demonstrations happening all afternoon.  I know this makes me sound like I'm some chef now, but actually it seems like Australia is really obsessed with cooking shows so chefs are a main part of the country's celebrities.  I watched 3 demonstrations while I was there.  The first was Adam Swanson who is regularly on the TV show "Ready, Steady, Cook" but who is also the spokesperson for a pasta company here called San Remo.  I'm sure he is a good cook, but his crew was super annoying and they had a camera man standing RIGHT in front of him the entire time so you couldn't really see what he was doing.

Adam Swanson

Next was Simon Bryant who also does tons of TV appearances.  He had a motorcycle vibe to him and he was absolutely hilarious.  His demonstration was partly about cheese-making, so it was pretty interesting.  That demonstration had a huge turnout unlike the other ones.  Also none of the other chefs had huge obnoxious crews which made the whole thing much better.

Simon Bryant

And finally I saw Callum Hann, who was the runner up on the second season of MasterChef (last year's season, but I'm working my way through watching it now).  His demonstration was the best because he actually made food I would eat, and he was also pretty funny.  I got to try his no-bake "cheesecake" that he made and it was delicious.  They said they would post the recipes online so I didn't write it down, but I haven't been able to find them yet unfortunately.

Callum Hann

After the cooking demonstrations I just walked around and sampled a bunch of free cheese and wine, so it was a nice end to the whole affair.  They gave me a commemorative wine tasting glass which reminded me a lot of WineFest in Germany.  I guess I'm starting a collection!  Overall, it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

SWAA: Hyden and Perth

And now finally, the last instalment from our South Western Australia Adventure.  Brace yourselves, it's a big one!

After our long drive from Denmark, we arrived in Hyden around 3:30pm and went straight to the main attraction of the area and the purpose of our massive detour: Wave Rock.  I was a bit sceptical that the rock would be impressive enough to merit the extra hundreds of kilometers, but in the end it was pretty cool.

Someone had to do the surfing stance!

Next we headed just a few seconds down the road to the far less impressive "Hippos Yawn".  I'm not really sure what made this so special other than the name, but it led us to take some silly pictures.

The obvious - us yawning

Ryan getting eaten by the hippo

For some reason because I was wearing a red shirt Ryan really wanted me to be a uvula.  Didn't really work, but it was funny to try!

And that was it!  All of the attractions in Hyden in less than an hour.  That night we stayed in the hilariously out-dated Hyden Hotel/Motel.  For dinner the hotel offered the "exotic" option of selecting your meat for dinner and then grilling and seasoning it yourself on a massive grill in the dining room.  For some reason this made me really grumpy, which was compounded by the buffet "salad bar" they had (comprised of pasta salad, potato salad, and coleslaw) along with some weird cooked sides.  Even though dinner wasn't great, they had a really nice lounge room with a massive fireplace.  It was really cold that day so instead of hanging out in our room we brought our board game and a bottle of wine and enjoyed a few hours by the fire.  It was a great way to end a disappointing evening.  To be fair to the restaurant, I think if you go to many country towns in Canada you would end up with the same country style cooking, but I think I was just spoiled by our fine dining in wine country.

The next day, September 28th, we got an early start for our drive to Perth.  The drive wasn't very exciting, but we did pass some random tourist attractions (most notably the dog cemetery) and some really beautiful orchards in bloom.  The day before we had called many hotels in Perth to try and find a room, but we were very unlucky.  We ended up with one above our budget, so we were expecting it to be really nice.  It was called the Somerset, located right downtown Perth, and it was a huge letdown. 

Since this was to be our last day of the trip, and our only time in Perth, we got right out on the town to do some exploring.  For me, Kings Park was the only thing in Perth that I had any interest in seeing.  It is one of the largest inner city parks in the world, and it had fantastic views of the city.  It's also where their botanic gardens are located, so we got to see a great show of the wildflowers in bloom.

During our walk through the park we also found this "tree top walk" which was nice.  It wasn't nearly as high as the real one we did in Walpole though!

The downtown was more modern than Adelaide, but about the same size.  Surprisingly it had a lot of designer stores, which Adelaide doesn't have.  That evening we did a short walk around downtown Perth and decided to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant.  That was the best decision all day, since the food was awesome!  We started with delicious cocktails (the winner was Ryan's "Japanese Slipper" made with equal parts Midori melon liqueur, Cointreau, and lemon juice), entrée of scallops, and our mains were an Asian shrimp salad and a pizza (brie, bacon, chicken, cranberry sauce, mozzarella, and spinach - great combo!).

The next day, September 29th, our flight didn't leave until 5:30 pm so we spent the morning shopping at some outlet stores and lounging/napping in King's Park.  We THOUGHT it was the perfect end to our trip, but then things went horribly wrong.

When we tried to do the auto check-in at the airport, the machine abruptly said "please see attendant", which has never happened to me before.  When the guy at the counter looked confused, I jokingly said "haha we probably missed our flight or something stupid" and he unfortunately said yes.  Turns out we missed it by an entire day! 

I know, I know, this doesn't seem like something I would do.  To be honest, there were so many signs pointing us to our real flight but somehow we brushed them all off.  First, and most obvious, was when Virgin emailed me a flight confirmation on the 27th.  I looked at it and said "huh, that's weird, they usually send it 24 hours ahead, I wonder why I got it 2 days ahead"!  Next, when we picked up our car rental the woman tried to confirm our return on the 28th.  I immediately corrected her and extended it to the 29th.  And finally, the trip just felt like we had loads of extra time on our hands.  Now, Ryan isn't completely blameless.  He emailed his boss saying we would be back on the 29th, but of course he meant he could start work again on the 29th.  For some reason I guess that date was stuck in my head, and he never corrected me and neither one of us looked it up.

Anyways, having seen enough episodes of The Amazing Race I knew that there were ways of getting flights at the airport.  First we decided to wait and see if the 5:30 flight back to Adelaide on Virgin (our airline) was full.  There were still 6 people who hadn't checked in at 4:55pm, but unfortunately by the 5:00pm deadline 5 had showed up.  After checking other airlines we found it was impossible to get any flights out since Qantas baggage handlers were on strike already causing flight cancellations, and the Grand Final in footy was the next day in Melbourne and people I think were being diverted through Adelaide.  Luckily the guy at Virgin got us on the morning flight out, and took pity on us so he didn't charge us a cent! 

Without going through all of the details, suffice it to say we decided not to sleep in the airport and instead got the closest, cheapest hotel we could find.  Ironically, that night was far better than the first one we had in Perth for half the price!  We stayed at the All Seasons Hotel and ended up in an "upgraded" room due to limited availability.  We asked what the difference was for the $20 more, and they told us that our room would have a window.  I kid you not, this is what it looked like:

In case you can't see, the window has glass, but then that's a wall with a picture of SYDNEY Harbour!  Seriously, that made our day.  There was actually a tiny skylight in the window so it made a difference in the morning to have some natural light, but hilarious beyond belief.

Yet again, we had a delightful night of board games, wine, and room service potato wedges, and that really was the perfect way to end a fantastic vacation.