The Trek

Hi there,

Wow, another entry, aren't you lucky!

These photos were taken by myself and Tanya on our drive from Adelaide to Brisbane to get my car and a small amount of my belongings up here. We started our journey on 30th January.

The route we took is as follows: Adelaide – Gawler – Burra - Yunta - Broken Hill - Wilcannia - Cobar - Nyngan – Warren – Gilgandra - Coonabarabran – Narrabri - Moree - Goondawindi – Inglewood - Warwick - Ipswich - Brisbane. The trip took 2 days, around 2100km and about $240 worth of fuel.

We stopped for lunch at Broken Hill. The mining area there is smack bang in the middle of the town! Very strange to build the township quite literally around the mine. We finally stopped in Cobar for dinner, taking the advice of many people to NOT stop in Wilcannia.

We stayed overnight at Nyngan in quite a nice motel. It even had pay TV. Actually the had no free-to-air reception there, so it was pay TV or nothing. Nonetheless, this didn't really worry Tanya or myself as we were very tired from the day's travel (racking up nearly 1100km).

After a light brekkie we were on our way again, but not before we took a couple of photos of the oddly named river at Nyngan. We stopped for lunch at Moree, and found out about the natural artesian hot spas there. The water from the bore reaches the surface at 41°C!

We finally arrived in Brisbane around 8pm, 31st January.

The pictures are only a tiny depiction of what we saw. I can't believe how vast and differing the countryside was that we drove through. It truly was a great experience, although I am not keen to repeat it too soon. Give me a few months!

Stay tuned for my next entry.

Cheers for now,
Damo

Route map of our journey

Heading for the border and Broken Hill

The SA/NSW border. The small "township" here is Cockburn. What a busy place that was!

Are you hungry Tanya? We had lunch in the town square at Broken Hill. Behind the square is the back of the mining lease in the town centre.

Heading for Wilcannia from Broken Hill. Looks strangely familiar to me.

Look at those wide open spaces. Somewhere on the 265km stretch between Wilcannia and Cobar.

Our nice motel room at Nyngan. This place was pretty nice, I was impressed at the level of quality out in the middle of nowhere.

What the....????? I thought this was the new millenium!

Well in Nyngan they have this strangely named river...

Hopefully only by name and not by nature!

The view to our left of the Great Dividing Range. Tanya took this photo about half way between Coonabarabran and Narrabri.

Foothills of the Great Dividing Range

Just out of Narrabri we looked to the east to see another part of the Great Dividing Range

The birdlife at Moree

Goondiwindi is the border town between NSW and QLD. The McIntyre River forms part of the border.

The bridge into Queensland

Texas?!?!?! Well I knew we were a long way from home, but this is ridiculous!

Here's the eerie clouded mountain just out of Warwick.

Mmmm.......this looks familiar. Another picture of the mountains Brisbane side of Warwick

Field service work in Central Queensland and South East Brisbane

Hi there,

Here are some pics of me working at a gold mine in central Queensland and some snaps of a local coal mine. Unfortunately, I can't say exactly where they are due to customer confidentiality.

In the second lot of pictures I am working on an IDEA type belt weigher scale. I was performing a realignment to correct the erroneous reading the customer was getting on the control unit.

The first lot show how we set up a conveyor belt for a full alignment. You'll notice the car jacks we use to lift the belt. I also took a picture of the wash plant at this coal mine.

After completing a calibration of a metal detector, I had to collect some sample pieces of metal that had accidentally made their way into the washer/crusher. When we do this type of retrieval, we need to lock the area out, so that nothing can accidentally be started up. However, we forgot to lock out the sprayer system. Consequently I got completely soaked in bore water! Luckily it was a very warm and sunny day, thus I didn't take long to dry out.

Stay tuned for my next entry.

Cheers for now,
Damo

The conveyor jacked up in preparation for a full alignment.

The coal mine wash plant. The conveyor on the top left was the one with the metal detector.

Here's what's considered to be a small dump truck. Sorry I forgot to include a scale.

Water reclaimation tanks for the coal mine wash plant.

This was my accomodation for the night at the gold miners camp. There are 4 of these per hut. The miners call the huts "dongas".

Here's the outside of the dongas at the miners camp

This is a close up of an IDEA style belt weighh scale that needs an alignment and calibration.

Here's my Brisbane boss, Matt, pretending to look busy.

Hard at work doing an alignment on an IDEA type belt weigh scale. The control box in the foreground is one of things I used to repair in Adelaide.

Not so hard at work! Gotta love that fashionable safety clothing.

Mmmm....me read gooder english!

This is a 10-20 style belt weigh scale. It is installed on a belt in a tunnel.

Down-town Cracow (say Crack-oh). What a thriving metropolis!

The Brisbane Office

Hi there,

Well finally another entry!

Here are a couple of photos of the office/my accommodation. Hopefully you can get a bit of an idea what its like up here.

Stay tuned for my next entry.

Cheers for now,
Damo

Here's the office (in the lounge). My desk is the one on the right.

This is the lounge room and office stationery storage

The dining area, fridge and microwave

And here's the bedroom

This is the company ute I use to get the the field service sites.