Wet Miners

So… Yeah… Um… It’s really hard to tell a story about your work day often. Well, for me it is. So… Yeah.. breakfast and trip to work were pretty uneventful…and umm… Ah fuck it… Here’s a joke instead…

A horse walked into a bar and the bartender asks “why the long face?”

The horse looked up and “cause walking into bar fucking hurts.”

Badum Tshh…

No?

Hrmm… Well I could type about that thing I did when…. No, a little too inappropriate. Oh! I could blog about that time when my mate jumped from…. No that is just him showing off… Not good material, one of those ‘had to be there’ things…

Nah, I’ll try work again.

The are moments in life where I question why we even show up for work… No, that’s a lie, it is always because of the money. But there are moments that I wonder why they don’t just send me home with a full days pay.

We started off slow, getting lost in an area we hadn’t been in for 2 months, stuff changes heaps in our days off let alone months. So we arrived half hour late to our trucks, do our pre starts and get to the digger to find it doesn’t have fuel.

Two hours later after the service cart came to fill the digger, we were on our way to moving dirt and we pumping it out like demons at the high speeds of 40 kilometres per hour. We decided to catch up on work by hotseating the middle stint, it was working great.

All the while we kept our eyes peeled on an isolated shower, it was growing and growing fast. As the next four hours approached towards the last stint it started to drizzle around us. We drove towards the trucks to swap out the drivers that were kind enough to hotseat us and the drops increased in size. So I grabbed the radio and called the pit leading hand.

“Copy one twenty-nine, we gonna have to pull the circuit up mate, the rain is about to hit hard and it looks to have a.shit load in it.”

“Copy that, keep the trucks going, the road has been gravelled. The trucks ain’t gonna slip.”

“I’m thinking you’re underestimating the potential boss, this is heavy shit.”

“Keep the bloody trucks going”

“I’m going to have to pull out the safety card mate, I suggest you come here first and have a look.”

After an aggravated mumble of reply he headed on over to have his brand new work ute to be pelted with hail stones the size of marbles.

“Copy John. Sorry mate. Truckees pull the trucks up immediately isolate and get the fuck out of the now.”

Two truckees made the dash for the crib hut, instead of the park up V-drain. The first being one of the pride of our fleet kept on going, detouring to the work shop and managed to keep ahead of the weather. The second being the second in line of our fleet of trucks doesn’t handle well in the wet. That is unless you’re an experienced driver who can crab walk a truck up and down the inclines of the circuit. I wish I had gotten footage as the truck slipped and slides pushing the gravel into the mucked road. It was an amazing sight to see that monster struggle against the forces of nature and its fury.

We got to the crib hut after the last of the truckees arrived soaked to the brim, at full speed. The hail thickened, the wind brewed it full breath, the lightning boomed and echoed its power and the rain turned into a sheets of water.

Oh right I got video of that. Hang on, I’ll find it… Ah, here it is, have a gander.

So the day was now over in the regards to work. I swept and mopped our crib as others wiped benches, tidied cupboards, emptied fridges and stopped fodder from flying away outside.

I was quite impressed with the mini storm and a few of us even gave a woop as the wind and lightning increased hard enough to blow the rain under the foot high crib hut and out the other side where we stood, watching in awe of the event we had no control over.

We were later dropped off at the overpass where we park our cars to hitch a ride into the mine or to be kicked off to drive back into camp. We were early and waiting for approval to leave sight when the oncoming OCE unlocked the gate for us and gave a wave as he drove by. We got the approval we needed when it rained the 10 kilometres down the road from where the mini storm was. My passenger who’d agreed to carpool got out to open the gates to find the dickhead of an OCE had unlocked the wrong padlock. My dripping wet passenger, Col, was not happy.

We called the supervisor to tell him of the situation and the OCE come out once again, not happy he had to get wet, and realized he left the key behind. So we were told that we had to cross the haul road (against sight rules at any other time) and said a little prayer to the god of vehicles to not allow us to get bogged…

We made it.

Hope you enjoyed my day.

~ by John the Aussie on February 12, 2012.