Second Week at Prominent Hill

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!