Puppies at work

So at work we have a sizeable dingo population. They are attracted to the garbage we produce and also the water in our sumps. Generally they leave you alone, although the will steal anything left unattended(like my backpack a few weeks back while I was playing touch). Anyway one of the females on site had puppies a few months back. I ran into one of the little guys a few days back and snapped the below picture. Don't let his adorable looks fool you, dingoes are bastards.

Public art in the middle of nowhere

Kangaroo sculpture

So the other day I got the chance to go for a drive in the bush around Telfer with a coworker. He spends a lot of his time off camping and such in the area so he has a good rig for the job and knew the lay of the land. Anyway as we drove around for a couple of hours and stopped by an abandon mine site and a swimming hole for a quick dip. Driving around for the 4-5 hours saw a lot of country that looked like the area around Telfer and lots of cool mesas. The coolest thing by far though was the public art. There were like 4-5 sculptures just on the side of the road in middle of nowhere Western Australia. My favorite one was the kangaroo that I took a photo of that was on top of a big mesa. There was also a dragon, a person, and a few more that were either abstract or I couldn't figure out what they were. It was really cool to see that people had just built artwork out in the bush simply because. Most of the people driving by would probably be road train drivers going between Port Hedland and the mines out there. I wonder how many people actually see the sculptures and how much effort the artists went to to construct them?

Below are some pics of the abandon mine and swimming hole we stopped at as well. All in all a day well spent. Oh and it is the promised picture of a kangaroo!

Abandon lead mine

Swimming hole we took a dip in

Job description

So at work this week we realized my position lacks a job description. Most of my readers could probably also benefit from a quick run down of what I do. I am a drill and blast engineer at my mine. That means I design all of the blasts that happen(about 4-5 times a week) and help oversee the entire drill and blast process.

Some blast are very routine and take all of 20 min to design. Others, like the one I was looking at today, get much more complicated. A blast that is 50 m from a buried diesel line and even closer to power poles, not to mention will leave two permanent walls is a bit of a head job. I also take on projects like fragmentation studies and trialing new products and techniques. We also do vibration studies since there is a lot of infrastructure right around the pit edge that we have to protect.

One aspect of my job I'm not crazy about it how much time I spend in the office. In Wyo I was in the pits daily, and would sometimes spend all day outside. At Telfer I unfortunately spend 80-90% of my time in the office.

All in all I like my job well enough. And hey it certainly pays well enough for now.

This thing still exists?

So I've been busy this September since there was a trip to Munich in there to drink beer and eat pork with friends. Anyway Australia is just getting into spring now and the days are getting longer and much hotter especially at Telfer. My brain isn't handling the reversed seasons things great, and I keep forgetting that it is October. Anyway just a quick post, more to help myself remember this thing is around and to cross posting off my to do list. I will endeavor to update this every off swing, but hey we will see.

But where the hell does the v come from?

I have had Australians tell me that they are a lazy people when it comes to speaking. They regularly shorten words and add an o or ie on the end. For example truck drivers are truckies. Breakfast is brekkie. A smoke break is a smoko. These terms aren't slang either, but are used in everyday and formal conversation. The most interesting and madding I have found in arvo though. It means afternoon. It is pronounced ah-vo with the r dropping out almost entirely. I hear it all the time from radio and tv to people at work or in public. The maddening thing is where the hell did that stupid v come from? No one can tell me where it come from. I can kinda see if you heavily slur afternoon into something like avernoon, but you have to be really drunk to to slur your words that bad. Or at least I do.

The car post

So about a month or so after buying my car and promising to make this post multiple times to several people here it is. If you are not into cars just go ahead and skip this as it will be just about my car.

So in moving over to Oz I decided to get my first big boy car. Not a hand me down or an old semi clunker, but a real honest to god car I could be proud of. Since Australia is the last bastion of the full sized RWD sedan I was even more excited that I could grab up one of these beasts which is all but extinct in America. So which one did I got with? A red 2010 Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo.

She has a 4.0L I6 and pumps out 362hp and 395 ft-lb of torque. 0-60 is right at 5.0s. Big ole breaks and limited slip dif round out the package. Oh and I nearly forgot when you have it at WOT an overboost feature(awful name but it's fun) will engage that pushes the torque up to 430 ft-lb. I get around 20mpg, and to be honest since I'm not commuting in it that isn't a big deal anyway. All that said it is an amazing car and so much fun to drive. Let's hope it ends better then the last red Ford I owned. And now onto more pictures!

What the hell is a fortnight anyway?

So since my last post was me waxing philosophical about the NCAA, I suppose this one should be something  actually about Australia. One of the things I noticed here is that the word fortnight is used quite a lot. People use it in everyday conversation. Something happening in two weeks? They'll say it's in a fortnight. However it is also used in banking and rent and stuff. I pay my car and rent payments fortnightly, not monthly. This could easily get confusing, but since everything is done automatically with online banking it isn't a big deal. It also works well for me since one full on and off swing for me is two weeks. For a term that is considered antiquated in the US to be a cornerstone of banking is a bit of a change.

College Sports

With the release of the Freeh Report on the PSU rape scandal I have been thinking today about college sports. College football is my drug of choice, and I have invested countless hours and a not insignificant amount of money into watching, reading about, and generally enjoying the sport. I have long had a bit of cognitive dissonance between how much I enjoy Saturdays and Thursday nights in the fall and the value I place on academic quality and integrity. Usually I just ignore it and enjoy another beer while watching Utah State nearly beat the reigning national champs in week one. However moving to Oz and the Freeh Report today both make me take a step back.

I have tried to explain college sports to my coworkers and friends and they just don't quite "get" it. The NCAA is a uniquely American thing. Nowhere else in the world are schools as tied to athletic training as they are in the US. Generally the conversation ends with me admitting that big time college sports damages the quality of education at US universities. A joke is made by someone, beer is drunk, and then we move on with out lives without delving too much into that topic. The Aussies move on, but I usually end up pondering my statement for a while.

So after all of this thought brought on by the disgusting cover up of systematic pedophilia at Penn State and explaining the arcane system of collegiate athletics that leads to academic fraud and under funding what conclusions have I come to? I don't know to be honest. I know I will still watch my Hokies this fall. I will probably watch as much other college football as possible. Come bowl season if I am stateside I will probably attend the Military Bowl, and maybe the bowl the Hokies get to. I will likely continue to vote with my dollars(the only votes that matter!) to keep a corrupt system in place. I will be a hypocrite. I may at some point walk away from college sports, football in particular, because my educational concerns win out. For the time being though nothing will change. I will sit back, open a few beers, and from half a world away watch Logan Thomas fall down like a giant sequoia for a first down.

Happy 4th

So a happy America day to y'all. Spent mine on site working away, but at least I got to enjoy cigars and beers afterwards. All while reminding Aussies they never fought for their independence. So enjoy your day off and bbq guys. And maybe even some pbr while you're at it. For me.

Wait you live where?

Sorry for the long break from posting and honestly I have no excuse so let's not talk about it ok? Ok moving on.

One of the interesting things about working FIFO is how my coworkers live all over the country. And remember that Australia is the same size as the lower 48. A fair number live in Perth like me, but I know people who live in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Orange, and Newcastle. Hell we even have a guy who lives in the UK or at least goes back there all the time or something. It is just a bit weird to work closely with someone and then realize that when they are off they are several thousand miles and two timezones away. It would be like people from LA, NYC, Atalnta, Miami, and Dallas all going to work together in the middle of Montana.

And to my car focused readers fear not I will take pics of the beast this week and get that up. Man I love that thing.

I live here all of the time 50% of the time

So i apologise for the formatting. This is posted from my phone. But anyway the picture in this post is my room on site. There is a mini fridge and small TV at the end of the bed you can't see, and my locker is also out of frame but is identical to the one you can see. It is maybe 5'x10' with an attached bathroom that is slightly smaller then that. It is tiny and about a 1k walk from the center of camp, but for 50% of the year it's home.

Let’s partner up baby

Partner is a funny word. It can mean so many different things. You describe someone as your partner and what are you saying? Are they a business partner? Dance partner? Work partner? Heterosexual life partner? (God I miss Carlton Scott) Alone and free of context it is an ambiguous word. The Aussies have added another use to it just to keep you on your toes. They use it how Americans use significant other. It denotes someone in a gender, legal and living situation neutral manner who you are in a serious romantic relationship with. And in a nation where it is not uncommon for people to not get married, but instead opt for what I would call a common-law marriage, it is certainly a useful descriptor to have around.

The thing though is that it is used all the time. About the only time I have ever run into the term significant other in The States is in formal situations, like an invitation to a party, or when people are hesitant to put traditional labels on their relationships. Even for very serious marriage like relationship I more often hear people using the terms living together, cohabitating or live in boy/ girlfriend to describe the relationship. Significant other is only used when people don’t really want or need to know the nature of someone’s relationship. Partner however is used as a day to day descriptor in any number of situations.

I first ran into it when my boss was talking about his misses (another term thrown around a lot). They are not married, but have been in a very long term stable relationship, have lived together for years, and have two kids. What I would call a common-law marriage. He describes her as his partner. Other co-workers in the same situation use the exact same term. It isn't isolated to that however. On a radio interview I heard the interviewee asked what the worst thing he had ever done to a partner was. Based on the context and his answer I am sure in the US they would have said girlfriend. I also overheard a guy at a bar use it when getting his girlfriend’s purse back after leaving it there the night before. The oddest was when a co-worker was telling me a college story and he said “my ex-partner, or well I guess girlfriend to you. We weren't living together or anything.” Clearly he recognized that I wouldn't fully understand the term partner as he was using it and wanted to clarify.

Personally I kinda like it. It allows someone to describe their relationship without giving any details that may affect how people react to them. Things such as sexual orientation and cohabitation are kept private, as I think they should be. I will say it is still odd to hear and throws me for a bit of a loop since my American mind interprets it to mean a marriage like homosexual relationship. Just another word I am going to have to get used to having an alternate definition. Don’t even get me started on fanny or thong.

Orange shirts, the metric system, and my first impressions of Perth

not burnt orange but oh well

So 12 days into this thing and it is still an adventure. It'll be nice when it settles down and simply becomes my life, but for now I plan on enjoying the ride. I have spent a week in Telfer and I think I will like working there. It is a good group of people in the technical team, and there is a ton, or tonne I guess, of opportunity. One of the interesting thing about working there is that everyone wears the same high vis shirt. Even secretaries and IT guys who are never in the pit. They all wear the same thing. They look like the one to the left, although the striping pattern is a little different at Telfer.

There are obviously other differences at Telfer. Everything is in metric(shocker there), which is and isn't proving difficult for me to adjust to. Sometimes my brain understands it right off the bat, other times I have to take a really long time to think through what something means. The other engineers were surprised to hear that in physics I did problems in both unit systems and figured that would make it harder. I guess so, but honestly the only thing that changes are constants. I guess I have to keep track of twice as many constants which is harder? Who knows.

Went on a "city tour" today with the reality agent who I will be working with. Looked at some different neighborhoods and generally confused the crap out of me as to where we were in the city. It is a very clean city from what I have seen, and I should be able to get a nice place right on the river just outside of downtown for not too much. Lots of cool little neighborhoods from the look of it and tons of beaches to the west of the city. Outside of downtown, which is very small, a lot of neighborhoods have a small town feel to them. By that I mean there are little "main street" type of places that are the center of shopping and resturants in various suburbs and neighborhoods. Very cool.

I have figured out mostly how to get my American sports fix between various apps on my phone, first row sports, and the Slingbox I set up in RVA(thanks CJ!). Now that we are entering the sports dead zone that is summer(baseball sucks!) it will be a perfect time to pick up a local team to follow. Winter here(remember the seasons are reverse down here) is when the AFL and the two rugby leagues play. Perth is represented by two AFL teams, one Super Rugby team(rugby union), and are working on getting an NRL team(rugby league). I am leaning towards following rugby union since I already understand and like it, but the Western Force are terrible apparently. The sit at 2-9 with 5 games left. Not sure I need another Redskins preforming type of team in my life. Although knowing you will have an awful season is easier on my mental health then Caps or Hokies type of seasons.

Moving forward I will aim to update this weekly. Some posts will probably be quick little posts about one thing, and other might be like this rambling mess. I will work on taking more pictures to share with everyone. As promised there will be pics of kangaroos coming soon, although I still have yet to see one. Seen lots of dingoes though. If anyone has anything they want to hear about specifically please let me know. I am more then happy to take requests, although until I am settled in I probably can't give very informed opinions on a lot of things.

So far in BFE the internet tubes don't reach

So this is gonna be way shorter then intended since I am doing it from my phone. As my fb and g+ friends know the Telfer village wireless doesn't reach my room in the back of the camp, and I don't have a cat5 to plug in with. My phone is my only source of internet at the moment.

Anyway just a few thoughts on Telfer. The mine is massive. The technical team for the surface operation alone has more people then the entire pro staff at Kemmerer. It is also very diverse. While mostly Aussies, there are guys from the UK, Zambia, New Zealand, Paula New Guinea, Ghana, and Canada to name just a few. It is a good group though and my boss rules. Hopefully 12 hour days don't get too old.

So anyway life moves on down under. A longer and more complete post will follow shortly when internets are more readily available.

So nearly 36 hours after leaving my parent's place in Springfield I am in Perth. The flights weren't bad, and not having a clock to look at made time fly by honestly. I am exhausted and am going to take a nap, so I am simply going to list a few observations I have made in my 2 hours so far in country.

-The light switches are upside down. As in you hit them down to turn them on. Also they are really small compared to ours.
-Toilets have 2 flush options. Half flush and full flush. I think this is brilliant.
-At some of the bigger intersections I have noticed that the walk signal is entirely it's own phase in the traffic light cycle. This means you can jaywalk diagonally through the intersection legally.

More to come once I have napped and had time to collect myself a little bit.

So hi from down under y'all!

And now for some background

So let's go ahead and cover all the details. First off the company I will be working for is called Newcrest. They are a gold mining company with operations mainly in Australia, but also some in Papua New Guniea, Cote d'Ivoire, and Indonesia. Newcrest is a major player on the world gold stage. The specific mine I will be working at is Telfer. Is is located in Western Australia in the middle of nowhere. Even by Australia standards.

To get people to work at a mine in BFE, Telfer is a FIFO mine. FIFO stands for fly in/fly out. What that means is that you live somewhere away from the mine and the company flies you to the site where you live and work for some amount of time then back home for your days off. Schedules are usually a few days/weeks on then a few off. Mine will be 8 days on, 6 days off. Not a bad set up if you ask me.

I will be living in Perth the capital of Western Australia. It is about 1,000 miles away from Telfer. It will be like living in LA and working in Bozeman, MT. Don't believe me? Look at this map that overlays the US and Australia.

Yeph. Really far away.

So those are the basics. Any questions?

(and sorry that this post was awful just trying to give people a basic understanding of my work situation since it is unusual for the US)

First Post

So I figured I would set up a blog to keep in touch with all my friends and family in the states while I head off to Australia. With my Visa going through last week, I should be heading out soonish so why not start it now. I will have a real post up in the next few days, but for the time being this will serve as a place holder. This process will also go through some growing pains, so please just be patient.