I thought I would take a minute to let you know that I am still on the planet and surviving, just. I am now about 400kms east of Perth at a place called “Marvel Loch”, I have been here just a week now. There have been a few changes of plan. Originally the next place I was to visit was further north to Jundee 800kms north east of Perth, then it was changed to a place called Thunder Box, then it was changed back to Jundee. The last and final plan was to go nowhere and stay here! That is what has happened and I am staying here until Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
I have been working very hard. I usually start at 5am writing programs in my room and work though to breakfast time. Because this is a miner’s camp breakfast is from 5:30am until 7:15am. I just sneak in at 7am before they close. I then work in the office until about noon when we have lunch. It is a bit torturous working in the office as it is right next to the kitchen so we have the smells of all the meals wafting through to us. The meals are very high quality as the miner’s work hard and demand to eat well. So, we work through to about 7pm and have dinner and then I work in my room until about 9pm!<\/p>\n
The software I have written is now working very well and does a good job for the mine. It schedules the accommodation for the miner’s who work on rosters and almost all live in the camp. They typically work 14 days and have 7 days off.<\/p>\n
The nearest town of any note is called Southern Cross which is 32kms away to the north. It was named by some early prospectors that used the Southern Cross stars to guide them to the town. In its hey day it had 16 pubs now it has only two. Whilst on that subject, Marvel Loch was named after the horse that won the Melbourne Cup in 1905.<\/p>\n
The Adventure described<\/p>\n
On Wednesday I will catch a train called \u201cThe Prospector\u201d from Southern Cross to Kalgoorlie which takes about 4 hours. It will get me in to Kal (that is what anybody in the know calls it) at 2pm. I will have a look around Kalgoorlie for the afternoon and then catch a train to Sydney \u2013 this is \u201cThe Indian Pacific\u201d. It leaves at 1:20am Thursday morning. It travels across the Nullarbor and stops at a small place called Cook where one can take a walk into the town. Adelaide is next where we arrive at 7:20am on Friday. There is an organised tour around Adelaide . Next is Broken Hill at 4:30pm on Friday also with another tour around that town. Finally I arrive in Sydney at 10:15am on Saturday morning. What a trip! I am really looking forward to it.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately the cost of a sleeper is too expensive. A first class sleeper is $1640 one-way and 2 nd class $1200 also one-way. I get a reclining seat, a towel and a bar of soap. There are showers and a lounge with a bar and a buffet style restaurant.<\/p>\n
In the Bucket<\/p>\n
I thought you might like a couple of pictures, the first is one of me stood in the bucket of a front end loader or Bogger as it is known by us miners. The next photograph is of the mine at Marvel Loch. This part of the workings is exhausted; all the ore containing gold in commercial quantities has been removed. The seam was just below the V shape near the surface. The work has now gone underground in tunnels 5 kms long. The mine I was to go to at Jundee has tunnels of 33kms.<\/p>\n
I left Marvel Loch on the site bus the Tuesday after Easter; it was really cold so I was glad when the sun came up. The trip to the airstrip at Southern Cross was about half an hour and the plane from Perth came in on time. Two planes arrived as there were a lot of workers coming back after the Easter Break. As there were only about 8 of us going back to Perth we were split up in two groups of 4. This was better for weight distribution on the planes. I know it is not logical but do you get concerned when you see something out of place. For example, a doctor who can’t work because he is sick or the fortune teller’s booth closed due to unforeseen circumstances. Well, in the same vein I was a bit worried when the first officer of our plane walked with a limp and had trouble getting into the plane. This was a crew member we will have to rely on in an emergency. Anyway, that decided me; I was sitting up the front of the plane to offer assistance when things went wrong. You know the type of thing, both the Captain and First Officer both suffer acute food poisoning and can’t fly the plane and Barry has to land it with instructions from the control tower. I then have to go to Buckingham Palace to get a bravery award from the Queen. Well, in the event, I worried unnecessarily. The first officer landed the plane well enough, a bit bumpy but safe.
\nYou may remember that I mentioned my marked aversion to mobile phones. Well, this is an example of why I hate them. I was in the taxi on the way to work. We were near the office and I was directing the driver to the office, he did not know the streets and as we had come different way with which I was unfamiliar, I was struggling to find some landmarks. The town phone rang so I answered it and stated to talk and, at the same time, giving directions to the driver. I was somewhat flustered but coping. What tipped me over the edge was that the country phone rang. Like a daft person, I told the caller on the town phone to wait, gave some more directions to the driver and answered the country phone. At this point we arrived at the office and I had to pay. I was totally flustered at this point so I told everyone to phone me back (apart from the taxi driver)
\nAct of silliness \u2013 Number 2
\nI was staying at Scarborough Beach in the Observation resort hotel. It is right on the beach with a beautiful view. I do my daily walk along the beach each day. I am up to consecutive walking day number 830+. I had noticed that there was a lot of activity of late, scrubbing the pavements and erecting fences etc. A sign announced that there was the Australian Surf Carnival starting on April 1st. Now, I thought that Judy would be very interested in this being a keen surfer. When I told her I happened to mention that it would not be as good for the competitors as there was no surf. I have seen more waves when I put my big toe in the bath. Well, when Judy stopped her hysterical laughter she pointed out that a Surf carnival doesn’t need surf as it a lifesaving event and not a surf board event. Judy said one of her much used sayings “You’re daft”. I made the mistake of telling Christine, the lady I have been working with, Judy’s favourite saying and so I hear it constantly at work now as well.
\nIron Ore country
\nI then moved up to the Pilbara region which is an Iron ore mining area. The scenery is green and hilly but punctuated with enormous holes (open cut mines) and piles of crushed red rock (left after the iron has been extracted). I had to get my software running at two sites, Yandi and West Angelas plus support Christine at a site 4 hours away at Brockman.
\nIt was all a bit stressful but I was coping (sort of). The crunch came when I had a problem at Yandi and Christine phoned with a corrupted database she could not fix. I thought I should take 5 minutes, relax and talk to Judy, not such a good idea as the main computer at home would not start. I fixed that problem first by talking her through setting up email on the second computer so the main computer could wait until I got home. One down and two to go, with a few waves of my technical wand I had Christine’s fixed and a day later the Yandi problem was no more. Why do I do this job?
\nMining companies take safety very seriously, over the last month I have been through 4 site inductions that cover safety, mine rules etc. They talk at length about the wildlife and aboriginal heritage and what bits of the bush life has the ability to kick, hurt and bite etc. They name and show pictures of snakes built especially to try and leave poisonous venom in one’s limbs. I think Coffs harbour has one snake catcher that serves our area (population 60,000). I was really cheered up when I arrived at West Angelas and spotted the list of 45 registered snake catchers!
\nNow, with this background you can imagine there is no way I am going to leave my steel capped work boots outside at night. One morning I slept in until 6:05am and bleary eyed went to put my boots on. Just as I picked up the left one out jumped a frog! It leapt about a foot in the air \u2013 landed on his feet and looked menacingly at me. I think that incident shortened my life by about a year and a half! As if this was all in a day’s leaping he ker-plopped his way into the bathroom. He was still ker-plopping a week later after I had been away at Yandi and come back again.
\nThe photos are of me standing next to one of the mine dump trucks. Sorry about the quality, it was taken with a telephone.
\nA few facts:
\nA new tyre cost $1,000,00
\nWith no load the truck weighs 250,000 tons
\nLoaded it weighs 500,000 tons.
\nFuel consumption is 30,000 litres of diesel per day
\nIn a safety film I saw one of these trucks with no load flatten a utility truck.
\nThe general safety advice given is don’t stand in the way of one.<\/p>\n
The trip started on Wednesday morning at 11am when I left Marvel Loch. Ian drove me the 32 kms to Southern Cross. We had a brief stop en route to look at the wild flowers which come out in the spring time. They provide a carpet of mauve and white over the bush. Southern Cross is on the edge of the wheat growing area so the scenery is a mixture of growing corn and bushland.<\/p>\n
The Prospector is a very modern 3 car train that runs from Perth to Kalgoorlie and takes 8 hours to do the whole trip. It was on time, 11:44am at Southern Cross landing. The latter is a concrete platform 4m by 2m. The train only stops if someone has booked to join the train. Inside each carriage there are numerous TV screens that, during the journey, show 2 movies, the view from the front of the train and a graphical display detailing the train’s speed and current location, much like the displays in aircraft. Oh! Yes! The train does not show the height of the train above the ground as it is generally assumed to be about 5cm, the height of the rail.<\/p>\n
As an aside I hope the programmers of this display did not get the contract for the signalling control. The display showed 12:59 in the afternoon as am and not pm! We did arrive safely so I need not have worried. As soon as I reached Kal (as those in the know refer to it), I checked into the Gold Dust backpacker hostel, for the afternoon to leave my luggage. How about this for a deal, $10 for a room including free transfer to and from the station (2pm and 10pm). The one way taxi fare is was $8! I walked straight into the minibus (past the queue waiting for the taxis!) Lovely Jubbly.<\/p>\n
Kal explored<\/p>\n
After leaving my luggage, I immediately went to an underground mine for a tour. We went down to the 1 st level in a miner’s cage which is at about 100 ft, there were 13 levels below us. The gold seam had been exhausted so it was open as a tourist attraction.<\/p>\n
Kal was established after an Irishman named Paddy Hannan rested under a tree when his horse went lame. He spotted gold laying on the surface and so started the gold rush. The tree still stands at the top of Hannan St in Kal. I boarded the IP (Indian Pacific) at about 11pm. It left at 1:40am. Now it is certain as a certain thing that one will always go on a journey be it an airplane or a train and one will forget to take a number of things. I think my corker was a pillow. Last night I tried to sleep in every position imaginable except perhaps on my head with my feet up the wall. It would appear that the interior designers of the IP carriage had one overriding objective. \u201cLet us make all surfaces hard and all corners sharp\u201d. I must say to the lad in the design office that they achieved they goal in spades. Dawn was a welcome relief as I have an excuse not to try and sleep anymore.<\/p>\n
The Nullarbor Plain<\/p>\n
It is now 10am Thursday (Kal + 9hrs). We have just left Forrest (1302kms from Perth and 2659kms from Sydney ). It has the distinction of having the longest regional runway in Australia (an emergency landing strip fro commercial and military aircraft) and the most remote public toilet in Australia . Half there population turned out to collect the post from the train. They drove up in a Ute, (did I mention that the total population was 2?) By the way, Forrest did not get its name for the abundance of trees (there aren’t any) it was named after a former Australian Prime Minister. I must say, it appears that Prime Ministers and Horses have provided many town names in Australia .<\/p>\n
The Nullarbor Plain has small salt bushes on it and not much else. You can see a line of rocks in the foreground of this photo. This is to mark the laying of a fibre optic cable for telephone calls between Perth and Sydney . We are now travelling on the longest straight stretch of railway in the world \u2013 478 kms. The Nullarbor (which means treeless) plain is twice the size of England and four times the size of Belgium . The books say that it largely uninhabited, well it is, to a point. I have counted 8 wild horses and 4 wild camels. I am not surprised they are wild \u2013I would be pretty annoyed if I had to live in the middle of nowhere. Oh! Yes and zero wedge tailed Eagles \u2013 Australia ‘s largest and motif of the Indian Pacific. I guess with an area the size of England X 2 there are plenty of places to hide. We are currently running 50 minutes late but I am assured that they will catch up that by the time we arrive in Adelaide tomorrow morning at 7:20am. I think that the driver might do a bit of speeding when everyone is asleep and no one to report him. The next big issue is to work out the lunch menu. I think some Mediterranean meat balls, a Pork pia and cheese and biscuits to follow (all courtesy of Coles in Kal before I got on). I have to admit I had to buy an extra suitcase to hold the food. I got it at Red Spot in Kal, a $2 shop (well $20 in this case but you know what I mean). I have just had a bit of a break at Cook on the Nullarbor. I raced off the train to get to the only phone box in the town (Population 4 \u2013 2 in the shop and 2 on the railway). I narrowly missed a lady on crutches. I had a $2 call to Judy \u2013 when I came out of the box there was a queue of about 10 people. Cook is a refuelling and watering stop for the train. I took a few photos of the town and the engine (132 tons). By the time I got back to my coach at the other end of the train (over half a kilometre from the engine) it had started to rain which is something unheard of on the Nullarbor.<\/p>\n
To Adelaide<\/p>\n
We are now heading into Adelaide on Friday morning (on time). I slept a bit last night unlike the night before. I must be either learning the art of sleeping with my legs under my chin of exhaustion is setting in. I am going to get a shuttle bus into town and have a coffee, stand on a surface that is standing solidly still. I am back on the train now heading for Broken Hill. I have just realised that this has been a time of firsts. When I sat down in my seat, the train manager came around to check the tickets as we drew out of Adelaide . I realised that I had been on the train 32 hours without a ticket. You see, I bought the ticket over the phone using a credit card. When I got on in Kal the night manager had my name on his list (hand-written on the back of an envelope \u2013 the truth – honest).<\/p>\n
This time I was safe without my ticket because I had graduated to a computer list. The second first, if you know what I mean, was that I stripped naked on a train \u2013 to have a shower. I have never been naked on a train before. The last first was walking down the platform in my carpet slippers. I had changed ready for the journey out of Adelaide and I phoned Judy so I went back out of the carriage for better reception. I was then the last one to get on \u2013 they shut the doors behind me. It ran though my mind how I would explain to the authorities if the train left while I was still on the platform, that I had come from Kalgoorlie with no luggage (all on the train) and me in carpet slippers. Ho! Hum! I did the coach trip during the stop in Broken Hill. We saw the flying doctor base and an art gallery plus a view of the mines (silver) from the coach.<\/p>\n
The End<\/p>\n
So now the trip has ended, on time pulling into Sydney , some 60 hours after we left Kalgoorlie . It was an interesting trip, seeing so much different landscape across the continent. I naturally made a point of going up to the driver and thanking him for his bit of the trip ( Adelaide to Sydney ). That is what my Mum taught me to do; we always thanked the driver of the (steam) train when we arrived in London for a day trip.<\/p>\n
I hope you have enjoyed reading about my WA visit \u2013 it was fun putting it together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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