Crikey!
Originally uploaded by Heather and Rob.I just wanted to fill everyone in on what I’m up to right now. While Heather has been off in Argentina, I’ve been working for a company named Vital Metals in northern Queensland at an exploration camp. Vital Metals is interested in tungsten and holds two mining leases in Western Australia and one in Queensland. The deposit was discovered 30 years ago by analyzing the geochemistry of stream sediments in the area. After a few years of drilling a previous company decided that it was uneconomical to mine, so they closed shop after five years. Tungsten has gone the way of a lot of metals and demand form India and China has made its price soar recently. The higher price has made mining the deposit more economical, so Vital Metals acquired the mining rights to the land with expectations of mining it in the near future. Right now we’re in a pre-feasibility stage at the camp. The company has been hiring consultants to do environmental and cultural impact studies, metallurgical studies to determine how easily the ore can be extracted, and drilling to determine the size and characteristics of the deposit.
I’ve been primarily involved in the drilling end of the program here at the camp. I spend most of my time logging the rock core that is drilled and extracted from the ground by one of the two drill rigs that operates continuously at the site. There is a large covered area with racks where the trays of core are laid out meter by meter to be examined. To log the core, I describe the lithology (original rock type and characteristics), measure the structure of the rock (e.g. faults or quartz-filled joints), note the presence of sulphides (such as pyrite), and describe the alteration that occurred to the original rock. In addition to this, I use a UV light and shine it on the core in the evenings in order to find traces of scheelite or calcium tungstate, which fluoresces in UV light. An entire hole is logged this way on the centimeter scale. We’ve drilled over 40 holes and over 11,000 meters of rock. Holes can range from 150 to 400 meters in depth, depending on where we expect or hope to find the scheelite. When there is scheelite present the core is cut with a rock saw and sent in meter intervals to a laboratory for geochemical analysis.
The camp has about twenty people on site at all times. We have a mess and a kitchen, several trailers with individual rooms for people to sleep, showers and working toilets, and an office. All our water for drilling, showers, and laundry comes from a dammed pond that fills during the wet season. Drinking water is from several rainwater collection tanks fed from the roofs of our trailers. Our electricity is from a diesel generator on site and telephone and internet are via satellite. We have a large screen television in the mess area and we hire DVDs weekly or whenever anyone makes the two hour drive to Mareeba, the nearest town.
Working in Australia is an interesting experience. Working with Australian drillers is downright colorful. I’ve never heard as many cuss words strung together in the same sentence until I came here. They’re a good bunch of blokes. A lot of them are cowboys with plenty of stories to tell and of course they do their share of drinking. This isn’t a dry camp. There’s a social club that you can purchase beer or sodas through. This gives the management some control on the amount of booze (a.k.a. piss) that people drink. In addition to the drillers, there are a large number of international backpackers that work for us for several weeks. Most of the backpackers are from Germany, but we’ve had some from Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, and Canada. We also have a cook on site most of the time. We’ve had a bad record of retention with our cooks. Food is an important issue out here and when a driller doesn’t like the cooking he’ll likely tell the cook directly and in no subtle terms. Most cooks I’ve met here take great pride in their work and are easily offended by even the slightest hint of criticism. We’ve had several leave in the middle of their two week shift, forcing us to put on a chef’s hat for a meal or two and beg the local employment agency to find us a new cook as soon as possible.
The wildlife out here continues to amaze me. We have two of the deadliest snakes in the world in our area. I haven’t seen any live snakes, but people have seen taipans and brown snakes near the camp. There are spiders of every size and color, termites building two meter-high mounds, and foot-long walking stick insects. The pond attracts numerous birds like cormorants, egrets, pheasants, green and red lorikeets, black cockatoos, and kookaburras. Our garbage attracts resident possums and there’s a wild pig that likes to visit our dump every so often. Our pond gets daily visits by cattle, hiding out in this rugged country and safe from any attempt at helicopter mustering by the local ranch owner. We have a green tree frog that lives in the water tank of the urinal in the men’s room and of course, we have cane toads. Introduced from South America decades ago to eat the moths and their larvae that were destroying the region’s sugar cane crop, cane toads have spread over much of northeastern Australia. The moth infestation came and went no thanks to the toads, which were unable to eat the larvae since they lived high up the cane and out of reach from the toads. The sugar cane crop recovered and the toads multiplied out of control. The increasing toad population has come at the expense of some native predators that quickly die after ingesting the toads and the toxins that they store in a small sack at the back of their head. A few birds have adapted and learned to flip the toads on their back, happily eviscerating their prey. A favorite pastime for many northern Queenslanders is cane toad golf. I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds entertaining if a wee bit messy.
Times haven’t been all fun at the camp. A month ago we had a fatal accident up on the hill where the deposit is located. A front end loader operator was crushed by his rig while moving a bucket full of rock that we were going to have analyzed for a metallurgical and ore extraction study. No one saw the accident, so we can only guess how it happened. The operator was the owner of the earth moving company we contracted and his funeral was attended by a large number of the community. The Queensland Department of Mines and Energy has been investigating the accident and it looks as though they may prosecute the company and the site manager. I’m not sure what the charges will be yet, but this accident has certainly slowed our productivity here. Some people here knew the operator, Noel, very well, so a grief counselor was sent to the site and everyone had an opportunity to talk with her. The more senior geologists are now spending their time assisting with the investigating mostly by providing paperwork documenting anything the company has done concerning safety and hazards at the site. I was even interviewed by the Mines Department because of my involvement in distributing a job safety plan for the drilling and blasting activity that Noel was hired for. Things are slowly getting back to the way they once were. I’m looking forward to Christmas break and some much needed R&R.
So here I am. Heather has been in Argentina lately, so going home hasn’t been a big issue since no one is there. Now that she’s back I’d like to have a more flexible schedule and be home as much as possible. The company flies me the three hours from Melbourne to Cairns for each shift, so they’d like to fly me as little as possible. Geologists are in big demand in Australia right now, so I hope to have some leverage when I renegotiate my contract at the end of January. I enjoy working for the company and would like to continue working with them for a while longer. But before all that happens, Heather and I are traveling to Vanuatu for our honeymoon over the Christmas holiday. We’ll be in touch soon!
Rob
