January update

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I have successfully returned from my first hitch on the mine site!

I am based out of a town called Middlemount in central Queensland working at a coal mine called Oaky Creek owned by Xstratacoal. It produces 10% of the world's coking coal alone!

There has been a drill rig assigned to me and I am in charge of the paperwork and the drill crews on the rig. The crews just do their own thing most of the time but I am in charge of telling them when and where to start coring, where to move for their next site, and we communicate a fair bit when there is core coming out of the ground. We are in charge of checking over our paper work, getting necessary checks/tests done to ensure we do not drill into underground operations, and inputting the relevant data that we collect and ship off samples.

It is exciting driving around the mine site especially in the 4wd off road areas. There are plenty of kangaroo's and emu's in those areas to chase off the roads. It is the stupid cows that do not move because they have terrible eyesight and can't see you until you are rather close. They usually respond better to a car horn 😉.

My job basically consists of driving to the drill site, logging the crushed rock that comes up from the base of the drill where the bit is called 'chips', directing the drillers when to start coring, writing down the lithology (rock types) and defects (fractures/splittings) within the core, gas testing of coal and classifying coal quality, then entering all relevant data into a program and issuing sheets to the Geophysical loggers and to cement forms all the while making sure my next hole or two are in good shape to get drilled.

We are put up in a house with a few other people from the same company. We get a buffet meal cooked by chefs every night so I get to eat rather well while at site. Definitely better then if I were cooking for myself! I have been going on runs later in the evening with my room mates in Middlemount and working out most nights to keep active to help ward off the effects of all that good food.. Sometimes it is actually too hot to even think about going out and doing anything around 5pm so we just sit in the aircon until the sun goes down then we go out.

Some of the days are ridiculously hot and difficult to work. Usually over 5L of water is consumed on some of those days. I have spent 8 hours out of my 10+ hour shifts in the sun and I was absolutely drenched in sweat. 36ºC with 40% humidity is a very vicious day, we usually get around 32ºC with 20-50% humidity. Of course when I leave the mine site a cyclone comes and everyone gets days off while the rain is falling.

It has been an interesting start to the year has it not? Flooding and now a massive F5 cyclone that was about 1000km wide. I am fearful of anymore excitement coming my way. I have made sure to donate some change here and there to flood and cyclone relief, it seems anyone not affected is also having a flood tax applied to their income tax. From the sounds of it some food items are going to be getting pretty pricey. 85% of Australia's 400 million dollar banana crop has been destroyed by the cyclone and much farmland was ruined by the floods.

I also just bought a van yesterday! I will include some pictures for your viewing pleasure! I took it down to Byron Bay to surf and to test out the van. It runs rather well and I can see myself having lots of good memories with it.

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