This year was supposed to be more static but already I find that every month to June seems to have at least one flight booked somewhere. The first one was trip out to a gold mine in the Tanami desert. The first time I had been out there and really good site. They are developing an underground resource and we went down about 1500 m to the bottom of the ore body. We had to drive in a tunnel as the shafts have not yet been completed. For the ore trucks at the moment it a couple of hours roundtrip - the final mine design will speed things up a lot.
I was part of a 4 person inspection team and we gave the operation a pretty good once over. The guest rooms were fine and the food good - but that is usually the case on these remote sites. 2 of us flew from Darwin and 2 from Alice Springs. We had a Metro on the outward trip and an Embraer Brasilia on the way back, both turboprops but the Metro is pretty cramped in terms of cabin height, a lot of times they are called "flying pencils".
So that was January's flight.
February saw me make another trip to Alice Springs for work. This time it was for 4 days including 3 field trips.
The usual Sunday lunchtime departure from Darwin on the Boeing 717 of Qantaslink.
I stayed at the Crowne Plaza which is OK , especially as it has a good Indian-Thai restaurant.
Monday was spent in the office with my local team of 3 professionals and a bit of local admin and preparation before heading off to Barrow Creek for the main site visit. My colleague and I were off on 3+ hours of driving north up the Stuart Highway. Apart from a brief fuel halt at the Ti-Tree roadhouse (we know they take credit cards) we pushed on to the site. It took bit of finding as it had been abandoned some years ago as a mine but then recently used again as an exploration operation.
We arrived late afternoon but it was still 40+ degrees and to add to our joy (as you can see above) a bushfire was going through the area including our target site.
We found a safe spot to park the FWD and then we walked carefully into the site staying on the bare ground and watching the fire go away from us over a ridge. After a quick look around we set up camp on an old concrete slab that was a remnant from the old mine.
We sat in the shade of the car and watched the sunset before starting to coook dinner. The steak and veg tasted good and the wine went down well, but it was still hot. The fire looked like it was coming back so we cleared our area of dry grass and stuff just in case. Eventually at midnight we turned into our mosquito domes ( not that we had a problem with bugs, maybe the smoke kept them away) and then it started to rain so it was up again to put up flysheets! Then, of course, the rain stopped!!
After a hot night with not a lot of sleep and the smell of smoke in my nose and the crackle of the fire in my ears it was rising to a very smoky and misty dawn.
Soon we had the kettle boiling and breakfast cooking. Then it was back to the site to finish the inspection and collect some samples before heading off to another area to check on the clean up of an exploration campaign. It took a bit of finding again as we were deep on a cattle station and the cattle paths had wiped out the track at a couple of places. Still with the help of the GPS we found our target area and did the inspection. Again, not well cleaned up and we will be asking the operator to come back before we refund the security deposit.
After all that it was back to Alice and the hotel for a couple of nights.
The next day was an early start to head off with another colleague to the east of Alice to look at another old operation and check up on the clean up. On the way, of course, we crossed the tropic of Capricorn again, but this timewe stopped for a picture of me at the Tropic - to match the picture from last year's trip to North Cape.
There had been heavy rain overnight so the gravel highway heading east was pretty wet and muddy but not enough to cause us problems - apart from having to steer around the 'roos.
The site had been well remediated and we found no problems that were serious. We talked with the station people and saw them mustering and tagging cattle, then had to get of the road for a road train that was on the way to collect their cattle.
Then back to Alice for a last night at the hotel, and a last curry supper. Thursday was spent in the office and a brief visit to one sand and gravel operator before a bit of a training session on what we had been doing and what the changes to our Act will mean from 1 July 2012. Then it was time to head off to the Alice airport and another B717 flight back to Darwin.
Another trip to the "Red Centre" had come to an end - and a another look at desert country which is so different tothe open wet/dry tropical forest here in the "Top End".
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