I think I'm in more danger of industrial deafness in Matt's car than I am on the work site! Matt is a roughneck fitter who is staying at one of the pubs in town and who gives myself and another tradesman assistant, Mark, a ride out each day. Loud rock n roll does wonders first thing in the morning before hitting the site. 'Here's a little Sammy Hagar for ya mate', Matt yells over the din. 'Was he the dick head guy?' I ask. 'No mate, that was David Lee Roth. I f*cken love Van Halen'.
My workmates are great. There are some very rough men among them. All of them are larger than me and clearly used to the environment of working on the industrial site. Nudie magazines littler the crib shed and expletives are heard at constant intervals around the site. I'm taken back to my days working part-time in a butchery to fund my way through university. These guys are just as charming.
The crew is spooked early in the day when the alarm is raised about an accident on the site. A young boilermaker was using a powertool on one of the large components on the side of the machine when a bolt struck him in the head at super high speed, knocking him to the ground and stunning him. His helmet saved him. A few inches down and he have been dead in an instant. I imagined his hard-hard with an indent like a war-time solider with a bullet puncture in his head-gear. I chat to the guy in the crib shed later in the day before his wife comes to pick him up. He seems badly shaken up and I don't imagine he'll be back for a few days yet.
The incident makes me realise I've realy got to watch myself as i'm very new at this and prone to being a little unaware of my enironment.
Later in the day I learn some more about my new friend and guardian-angel of the work site, Rick. He's only 33 years old and already a father of five. It's a Saturday and he's missing out on seeing his oldest son play a soccer game. I dwelled on how we come from such different backgrounds. I often wonder what direction I may have take if I hadn't move to Canberra with my parents at age 13. I grew in Gladstone, an industrial town in Central Queensland. I may well have ended up doing this sort of work if I had stayed there. Rick even told me there's a job coming up back in Gladstone he said I could put me name down for...
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Day two
I've been adopted by Rick, a more experienced tradesman assistant. We paired up yesterday under the supervision of Dale and have continued today, working together on top of scaffolding to scrape thick black grease from the enormous 'round bits' where the machine's boom attaches (I'll attempt in due course to describe what exactly the machine looks like and how it functions).
It's tedious work but I have a new friend to talk to and this time I'm applying de-greaser less extravagently and staying dry in the process. Rick is stimulating company - cheerful and good natured. We seem to have an unspoke agreement that he'll take me under his wing as he can tell i'm a little unsure of how to manouver around the worksite. 'You're an environmentalist aren't you' he said to me. 'You can tell', he added. I picked Rick's background as Philippino straight away which surprised him as his stocky frame lends most to guess a differently. Rick is only a few years old then me but he's had about 15 year experience in industrial labour so I'm in safe hands.
Before lunch we fumble around with a seemly impossible task of elevating all of the electical cables that are spewing out from around the machine. I'm confused about what is going on but follow Rick's lead as we locate platforms and awkwardly raise the coursing veins of power above the worksite. I tell Rick straight up that I had no idea what we were doing but he seemed pretty relaxed about it. It's going to be a long job for me.
In the early afternoon we vacate the site temporarily as a big explosion is set up in the mines for 12:30pm. We all sign out, hop in cars and drive a few kilometres up the road to eat our lunch. I munched on my tuna sandwich while listening to Mark's explanation of how easy it is, even with his two years of commerce study under his belt, to incorporate as a company and present shareholders with a prospectus detailing how the company is prospecting for minerals. It turns out that in the fied of mineral exploration there's not need for the company to have any infrastracture before it can incorporate.
I sit cross-legged in the middle of the road when I can fell in my buttocks the exlosion underground, a second before the loudness of the blast is heard. It was nince little diversion from work for brief moment.
It's tedious work but I have a new friend to talk to and this time I'm applying de-greaser less extravagently and staying dry in the process. Rick is stimulating company - cheerful and good natured. We seem to have an unspoke agreement that he'll take me under his wing as he can tell i'm a little unsure of how to manouver around the worksite. 'You're an environmentalist aren't you' he said to me. 'You can tell', he added. I picked Rick's background as Philippino straight away which surprised him as his stocky frame lends most to guess a differently. Rick is only a few years old then me but he's had about 15 year experience in industrial labour so I'm in safe hands.
Before lunch we fumble around with a seemly impossible task of elevating all of the electical cables that are spewing out from around the machine. I'm confused about what is going on but follow Rick's lead as we locate platforms and awkwardly raise the coursing veins of power above the worksite. I tell Rick straight up that I had no idea what we were doing but he seemed pretty relaxed about it. It's going to be a long job for me.
In the early afternoon we vacate the site temporarily as a big explosion is set up in the mines for 12:30pm. We all sign out, hop in cars and drive a few kilometres up the road to eat our lunch. I munched on my tuna sandwich while listening to Mark's explanation of how easy it is, even with his two years of commerce study under his belt, to incorporate as a company and present shareholders with a prospectus detailing how the company is prospecting for minerals. It turns out that in the fied of mineral exploration there's not need for the company to have any infrastracture before it can incorporate.
I sit cross-legged in the middle of the road when I can fell in my buttocks the exlosion underground, a second before the loudness of the blast is heard. It was nince little diversion from work for brief moment.
Day one
A 7:00am start requires a 5:30am rise to get to the mines in time each day. Mike and I arrive in his pickup in time to sign on, scoff down a bowl of museli and front up for the pep talk at the start of the day by our boss Terry. I listened as I awkwardly perched on a hard plastic chair and fumbled with my bulky jacket, hard hat and eye wear. I scanned the group of burly tradesmen and labourers who will be my (hopefully) gracious colleagues for the coming month. Mike circulates through the mess of men, breathalyzing a randam sample. Yesterday saw a positive for THC with one of the workers so Terry is forcing down hard.
There's no mucking around here. There is a phenomenal amount of work to get done servicing a monster of a machine that is used on the open-cut mine. Immediately I'm paired up with Dale my supervisor who is made aware that I'm a green-horn (although I don't imagine it's hard to notice that I'm not in a familer environment). I'm presented with a folder containing page upon page of tasks that need to be done on the project and I'm instructed to fill out a risk assessment for any task I undertake. It looks like a frustrating task but vitally important as I'm to learn in a couple of days when a co-workers task doesn't go according to plan...
'You're gonna be cleaning mate' Dale said as he tossed a white 'sperm suit' at me. 'You're too pretty to get dirty' he chuckled. The sperm suits are white, head to toe protective suits for doing the real dirty work and when topped by a white work hat makes one resemble the little swimmers. And I was straight into it. Scraping grease off large machine components using my own gumption and excessive amounts of de-greaser. So execessive that by mid-afternoon I seemed to be soaking in the smelly liquid. I've fallen into the same pattern as per usual when I start a new job - work too hard too fast and not smart enough. Mike sees me and demands I take off my dripping suit.
Day one and I already feel a bit of a fool.
There's no mucking around here. There is a phenomenal amount of work to get done servicing a monster of a machine that is used on the open-cut mine. Immediately I'm paired up with Dale my supervisor who is made aware that I'm a green-horn (although I don't imagine it's hard to notice that I'm not in a familer environment). I'm presented with a folder containing page upon page of tasks that need to be done on the project and I'm instructed to fill out a risk assessment for any task I undertake. It looks like a frustrating task but vitally important as I'm to learn in a couple of days when a co-workers task doesn't go according to plan...
'You're gonna be cleaning mate' Dale said as he tossed a white 'sperm suit' at me. 'You're too pretty to get dirty' he chuckled. The sperm suits are white, head to toe protective suits for doing the real dirty work and when topped by a white work hat makes one resemble the little swimmers. And I was straight into it. Scraping grease off large machine components using my own gumption and excessive amounts of de-greaser. So execessive that by mid-afternoon I seemed to be soaking in the smelly liquid. I've fallen into the same pattern as per usual when I start a new job - work too hard too fast and not smart enough. Mike sees me and demands I take off my dripping suit.
Day one and I already feel a bit of a fool.
Turned on for the shut-down.
Meditation is not the answer. At least not for me. The moments of steady silence and deep breathing do wonders for me of course, like many people. However when I'm truly down, angry, facing emotional roadblocks, stunned or paralyzed, I've found the best cure is plain old fashioned hard labour. Pick shit up at point A and put it down at point B, 'cause it's just gotta go there. You're moving house? Pick up the phone and get me excitied. It gets me out of my head and into the bag of bones I call a body, and let's face it, we are well aware now that humanity is being run into the ground by people living in their minds far too much.
This is my blog about my experiences working on a coal mine shut-down in a small town in south-western Australia. I'm an unlikely candidate for such a project - a month long of 12 hour days, 6 days a week of hard labour as a 'tradesmans' assistant. I'm a bookish guy, university educated and I've been told i'm somewhat of a hippy (just a year ago I was campaining for the environment in Canada). I ended up back in Australia suddenly early in the year when my Mum fell ill and I had to make the snap decision to drop the life I'd built in Alberta and fly home.
If found myself in need of paid work after time spent with Mum at home and a brief stinting working on my uncle's pig farm in North Queensland. Not wanting to return to my previous life as a Canberra public servant just yet, I signed up as part of the 30 man crew as a labourer helping to service a massive open-cut mining machine. I'm being put up in town at the house of the safety supervisor, a friendly middle-aged guy who's also curious about the results of the social experiment of hurling a skinny young environmentalist into the punishing routine of long hours of labour on a mine-shut down in the southern heart of white Australia. I need the money and I'm a curious SOB.
This is my blog about my experiences working on a coal mine shut-down in a small town in south-western Australia. I'm an unlikely candidate for such a project - a month long of 12 hour days, 6 days a week of hard labour as a 'tradesmans' assistant. I'm a bookish guy, university educated and I've been told i'm somewhat of a hippy (just a year ago I was campaining for the environment in Canada). I ended up back in Australia suddenly early in the year when my Mum fell ill and I had to make the snap decision to drop the life I'd built in Alberta and fly home.
If found myself in need of paid work after time spent with Mum at home and a brief stinting working on my uncle's pig farm in North Queensland. Not wanting to return to my previous life as a Canberra public servant just yet, I signed up as part of the 30 man crew as a labourer helping to service a massive open-cut mining machine. I'm being put up in town at the house of the safety supervisor, a friendly middle-aged guy who's also curious about the results of the social experiment of hurling a skinny young environmentalist into the punishing routine of long hours of labour on a mine-shut down in the southern heart of white Australia. I need the money and I'm a curious SOB.
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