Gregory again

I went to Gregory Downs last weekend again. My mate Tristan from Newcastle was passing through as part of the Postie Bike Challenge, which is a charity thing that rides little posties from Brisbane to Darwin.

As he had come all the way from Newcastle, I thought it would be rude not to go up and see him! So I left on Friday after work and got up there just after dark.

I realised half way up there that I had left the memory card for my camera at home! I realised because I stopped to take a photo of some bushfires that were burning and surprisingly my camera wasn't working.

It was great to catch up with Tristan though. There was a fair bit of alcohol consumed and then someone decided to bring a postie bike into the bar...

The riders headed off pretty early on Saturday, and I stayed around and had a swim in the river, which was beautiful. It was only a short trip but man it was good!

I did a story on the postie bikes for The Star, you can read it here.

Century mine

I got to go up to Century Mine a few weeks ago. Century produces the second most amount of zinc in the world, and used to be the second biggest open cut pit in the world. Nowadays it has to settle for the biggest in Australia. It's about 240 kilometres north west of Mount Isa, but it's a fly-in fly-out operation, which I did for the day!

It all came together because of the trip I took to Lawn Hill. The minister's plane I was on landed at Century Mine and I met the PR person who I exchanged cards with. She asked if I wanted to go up there and who can say no to that!

I flew out of Isa at 6am, which meant I had to be at the airport at 5.30am. I seem to be flying around in Beechcraft planes a lot, it was a King Air and took about 40 minutes.

I had a tour of the village where the workers live. It's a pretty good set-up, and feels a little like a school camp. There's a big dining room, a pub, a gym, a pool, tennis, volley ball and basketball courts, barbecues... whatever really.

From the village it was to the Mine Administration Centre a few kilometres down the road. I spent the rest of the morning holding a lot of interviews with trainees and trainers. I also talked to the General Manager and a few other people.

But in the afternoon I got to have a tour of the pit. Here's a composite panorama I made from the lookout at the top. From here, the trucks on the road look like toys!

We were driving down the pit in a Toyota Landcruiser, which ordinarily one would say is a pretty solid vehicle. It felt, very, very tiny going down. It became very apparent the trucks were far from toys.

The bottom was very interesting. You can kind of see it here, but a scoop is putting rock in a truck while another one waits. It's not ore at this point, it's overburden rock. They have been getting ore out, but eventually they will hit very rich ore with no overburden and make a motza.

We went up and over to another part of the pit where nothing was happening at that point. They stagger the pit because it's stronger to have walls like that and it's also safer because if there's a slippage hopefully some of it is stopped on one of the levels.

They also drill holes into the walls to let out water. They have dug into a natural water table and it's safer to let the water out in a controlled way than let it build up. You can see in this photo the stains on the wall from water coming out.

After coming out of the pit I had a tour of the rest of the side. This is a pile of crushed ore that has come up the conveyor belt from the crusher. From the pit the ore is dumped, then scooped into a smaller truck, tipped into the crusher and then it ends up in this pile.

From this pile, it goes through a little hole which is below this pile onto another conveyor belt. It does this to give a consistent feed of ore, and goes into the concentrator, which is probably 100 metres away.

In the concentrator the ore is turned to slurry and then pumped 304 kilometres in a pipeline to Karumba. It's put on a special flat-bottomed transport ship and then taken out into the Gulf of Carpentraia to be put on an export ship.

I think the pipeline is a really interesting way to move it. Although, last year the pipeline broke, which caused more than a little bit of trouble for the mine!

After the pit tour it was time to fly home. It was a pretty long day but I learnt a lot. I wrote up a fair bit of content for the paper so hopefully it was worth it for my editor. Oh yeh, and the food was great!

Birdsville

One of the things I had long wanted to do since moving to Mount Isa was go to the Birdsville Races.

It seemed to fall into place - I had a three day weekend and my friend Luke was going. But I would have had to drive down by myself, and it's almost 600 kilometres. There was also rain about and talk about getting flooded in. When I woke up on Friday I was tired and grumpy and decided to pike.

I felt like I had wasted an opportunity but it meant I would get to catch up with my friend Luke who would be in the Isa on Friday night. So over a few beers, he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. As you may remember, Luke is a pilot, and he was flying a charter plane down the next day. There was a spare seat.

Luke used to do the mail run from Port Augusta, which included Birdsville. Hence he knew the baker in Birdsville, and for the last couple of years has helped out at the bakery. Dusty the baker was going to let him sleep out the back of his bakery, and said he could bring someone too. And he could provide a swag.

Yes, it really was this convenient.

So at 8am on Saturday we flew out of Mount Isa in a Beechcraft Baron. It was cloudy for the first half, but suddenly we came out and saw the beautiful landscape.

The Baron is not pressurised, and at 9000 feet it was about two degrees the whole flight... for two hours.

There was a lot of water about and the land was very green. These three lakes were on the station that Luke used to work on - his first professional flying gig was mustering cattle.
This photo is us on final approach to Birdsville. I was quite surprised the runway is right in town. Apparently before September 11, Birdsville was famous for the fact that you could taxi your plane right up to the pub. Simpler days. I guess they don't have too many noise concerns - for most of the year the airport would be pretty quiet I would think.
From the airport we headed to the bakery, where Luke arranged some curried camel pies and coffee. Yes, that's right - curried camel. I was a bit hesitant at first, but they were really delicious. The camel was fibrous but not stringy, and had a gamey but not overwhelming flavour.

Luke got to work and I went to explore the town. He recommended visiting the museum, which is a collection of quirky items collected over decades. I took this photo for the Jamieson side of my family. This water cart was built in Shepparton, but it must be a typo because everyone I know just calls the town in Victoria 'Shep'. If you don't know where it is, it's just down the road from Toc.
This is a photo of the Traegar pedal wireless - the radio system that made the Royal Flying Doctor Service possible. You can see above it a morse code tapper-thingy, which is how the first radios worked.
I took this photo for Dad. He always pointed out Golden Fleece signs whenever we saw them as kids and made a big deal out of it.
Birdsville is almost right on the Diamantina River. There was a packed camp site on the river banks which was very muddy due to the rain.

I should point out at this point that the races were actually cancelled because the track was underwater. I'm not sure if the river is in flood in this shot, but I know the roads out of Birdsville were cut for three days - after everyone had driven in. Just another reason why I was very lucky to fly.
This is an old pub that was converted into the first hospital of the Australian Inland Mission - the precursor of the RFDS. Birdsville was never a bustling town, but at its height had three pubs. It now has one.

This pub was built out of local stone held together by dehydrated gypsum mixed with sand and water to create a bonding agent. Clever. This is where the first every pedal wireless transmission from Birdsville took place.

The second AIM hospital is basically a tin shed, and is now a museum. It's also where the Uniting Church holds services, in a tiny little room.

You can try to run from God, but you can't run from the Uniting Church. Even in this tiny little town in the middle of the Outback, I saw this classic scene - little communion shot glasses on a piano next to the Australian Hymn Book.
After my wander, I went back to the bakery and decided to help out. The races were off so I didn't have much to do, and it seemed fun. I cleared tables, emptied bins, and put beer in the fridge. All very important.

I don't know why, but it fascinated me to watch the baker Heiner making sausage rolls. Yes, that is a bit weird.
After consultation with Luke, I decided to take my guitar to Birdsville. I did try my hand at busking in the afternoon. I made the grand total of $7.25. But I would like to point out that it was definitely the quiet part of the day, and that's almost two beers!

After the bakery shut, it was time to have a few beers with Dusty and Luke and cook dinner. There were about six or so people working in the bakery, and we all helped out and had a few drinks while we cooked tea. It was a lot of fun.

After dinner Luke and I headed to the pub and to Fred Brophy's Boxing Tent. This harps back to a bygone era of sideshow alleys. The basic idea is you get people up to take on boxers in the ring, and then charge people $25 a pop to go in and watch.

It's incredibly popular. They start with a bit of a show out the front which actually includes drum beating. Brophy brings out his boxers one by one, and then gets members of the crowd up. He matches them up appropriately, with a lot of drum beating in between, and then everyone heads inside the tent.
It's pretty crazy to watch, but no one really gets hurt. They give them pretty big gloves and Brophy breaks it up if it's going too bad.

And I don't really remember too much about the rest of Saturday night...

On Sunday I can say I didn't get up as early as the baker. But I had breakfast and helped out a bit clearing tables.

Out the front of the bakery was this garden bed of Sturt's Deser Pea. Beautiful.
We had to fly out at 11.30, but it was a great trip, and I owe Luke many beers now for taking me.

It's a shame I didn't see the races, but it was such a great weekend. Working in the bakery was actually really fun and a great way to start conversations with people. Not a typical weekend, but a brilliant one.

Finally, this is the historic Birdsville Hotel. The runway is literally across the street on the left hand side.

Boulia camel races

Oh yeh! Camel races! The Boulia came races were on the weekend, and I covered it for the Star.

The highlight was getting to ride in a race! Oh yeh! It was a 400 metre local race, and I was on a fine beast called Kick Along Tom.

This is us walking up to the gate. I don't know why the silks were pink with sequins. I swear I didn't pick it.

Kick Along Tom came out of the gate a little bit slowly, at a trot in fact. But I was confident we could claw the distance back... until he went down to a walk. I don't think he quite got the urgency of it. But on the upside I did get the chance to have a chat to the people sitting leaning on the rail. Luckily the ambulance and bus were there to heard Kick Along Tom on a bit...
Yes, I think the judges had to call for the photo finish.
Tom and I eventually had to part ways, of course.
I came in for a sportsman's fifth, in a six camel race, where one broke to early and was disqualified. But I think it was a moral victory.
So yes, it was a great weekend. A bunch of footy blokes were there and it was a pretty big weekend. I think the lack of sleep may catch up with me, but hey, I can't complain!

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Lawn Hill

I got go go on an amazing trip with a state government minister and our local MP two weeks ago. The minister looks after national parks and was going up to Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park and I got a seat on the plane.

The plane was a King Air, which is what the Flying Doctors and my friend Luke fly. But this was a ministerial King Air! Leather seats, wood panelling, funky little half size soft drink cans... the works!

The original plan was to go to Camooweal for a graduation ceremony for an indigenous training college. Unfortunately they picked the two days where the north west was completely blanketed with clouds. We kept making circles around the runway but couldn't see anything. We were pretty low and couldn't see the ground and could hear one of the computers in the cockpit saying "pull up, pull up." The pilots assured me we were 600 feet off the ground, but it was a little bit interesting!

And this is Lawn Hill. Yes, I got paid to go canoeing up this river. Tough assignment...

Once you get through the gorge there is this lovely little waterfall. Amazing.

We stayed overnight at Adel's Grove, which is this kinda weird but lovely spot further down the road. It's kinda like school camp - you sit at a table for dinner and you go up and get stuff served out but have to be invited to go up! But yes, sat on the deck next to the river and had a beer! Lovely.

Normanton trip

Okay, so this happened a few weekends ago, but I went up to Normanton a few weekends ago.

My former colleague Nicola has left the Star for greener pastures in Port Augusta. Her partner Luke is based in Normanton in the short term flying planes around. So I decided to go up and hang out with him.

It's about 500 kilometres, so a fair old drive. Luckily I got to take a work car in exchange for a few stories. It's actually not a bad drive. It's good to get a feel for just how far everything is up here - because apparently driving three days up here didn't quite get that across...

I saw the sun trying the break through the clouds and thought I'd stop to take this photo.
And this is what the road was like for a large part of the drive!
As I said, Luke's a pilot. He had to do a little bit of work on Saturday, but we just hung out in the King Air he flies around. I had a lot of questions.

One of Normanton's tourist draw cards is its old train station with this train that runs once a week. The track is actually this special design that requires no ballast under the tracks. Basically it was designed like that because it's underwater for half the year and it wouldn't work. The sleepers are hollow metal but packed with earth apparently. I'm not sure of the exact physics, but it clearly still works.

Normanton is the place where the world's largest recorded crocodile was killed. It's 8.6 metres long and there's actually a replica of it in the main street, which I can't believe I forgot to take a photo of!

On Saturday night we went down to the town's wharf in the river to try to spot croc eyes with a torch. I was certain we'd see something, but alas, nothing! Still, this photo was funny when I was eight, funny now.

It was great to go and hang out with Luke. At this point I hadn't been out of Mount Isa for a while, so it was much needed. And plus, Luke makes a mean gourmet bacon and eggs.

Gregory

I meant to post this ages ago, but ho hum.

At the beginning of May I went to a tiny little locality called Gregory Downs.

It's on, unsurprisingly, the Gregory River. There's this big canoe race every year on the Labour Day weekend (solidarity) and there are horse races too. It's a basically an excuse to hit the piss and have a good time.

I camped with my friends Caitlyn and Scott from the ABC. The great thing was that because I got a few yarns for the paper, I got to take the General Manager's 4wD and his petrol card!

I didn't get away till about five in the afternoon. It was a really nice drive, a fair bit of dirt road. But just driving through the outback at sunset by myself was a pretty special experience. Hitting a kangaroo not withstanding...
The moon was amazing! I don't think this photo really does it justice, but you get the idea.
I stopped for a toilet break (by the side of the road) and the stars were fantastic. Absolutely beautiful. If I didn't have another hour or so to drive I could have stayed there for hours and just gazed up.

This pretty much sums up the first night (and the second for that matter). That's Scotty, reaching, nay, lunging for alcohol with a big grin on his face. Good times. I kind of leeched onto their group, Scotty and Caitlyn were camping with some friends from Doomadgee, but I brought a case of beer so I was pretty welcome.
This is actually a photo by Caitlyn, I just like it because it makes me feel masculine... The swag did me proud once again.
This is how we spent a large part of Saturday. This was perhaps 50 metres away from where we were camped. It was a pretty hot day, and the water was beautiful! The current was pretty swift and you had to hold on to something, but it was amazing. Yes, there are definitely fresh water crocs in the Gregory, and yes, a four-metre salt water croc had been spotted at about this spot just a few weeks ago. But I figured there were enough other people in the river to have a statistically decent chance of not getting eaten... I took this photo of Scotty and Caitlyn as I got out to grab another beer from the esky... There was this log right there that Caitlyn is sitting on that we were leaning up against, we called it our special river bar!
That afternoon we went to the races, where Brad's tips failed to do anything. Saturday was another night of, well, drinking. But I had to drive back the next day so it wasn't too big a night.

It's a beautiful spot, and there's this great, true outback pub in Gregory. I did this really great profile on her, she's a real character.

Alas, Sunday arvo I had to drive back for work the next day. But this photo might give you an idea of the sort of country it is up here.
An absolutely great weekend. I'm hopefully going to be traveling a bit more, so will have more photos to put up!

Stuff...

Blimey. It's been ages since I've posted anything.

I guess part of that is I am now in that 'grown up' pattern of getting up, going to work, coming home, going to bed - repeat. Also there's just general slackness...

Things are going pretty well up here. My mate and colleague Nicola has left Mount Isa for greener pastures with the ABC in Port Augusta. It's a great opportunity for her, one she'd be silly not to take, but very sad for me! But I guess that's how it roles sometimes.

Work is going pretty well, but I'm starting to get pretty tired. The sports journo and my flatmate Brad went away for a few weeks and I put my hand up to cover sport for him. It resulted in me working 12 days straight with one day off afterward. Not much fun. It resulted in me getting pretty crook and having to take a sick day where I slept for most of the day! It's my day off today and it's great to just sit around and watch DVDs. Working straight for so long means I've kind of let some of those basic things one needs to do like washing clothes, going grocery shopping slip. So I'm now trying to get back into living a good, clean life... sort of.

One of the good things about working at such a small paper is the opportunities that come up. For instance, Tony Abbott was in Cloncurry recently and I was sent to go interview him. If I was working as a cadet at any other paper there's no way I would be able to do that. There's also a lot of stuff to do with the new mining tax up here, one of the projects that has been suspended is near Cloncurry. So there's a fair bit to write about at the moment, which is nice.

Other than that, I'm going to try to start traveling around the region a bit more. I've been saying that for ages, I've just got to get off my bum and actually do it. I've been making some contacts on cattle stations and am going to try to get around and visit people. So hopefully there will be some exciting blog posts in the near future!

Word cloud

I found this cool thing that is a visual representation of the words I use on this blog. I'm a bit disappointed that 'got' is up there, it's a devil word for a newspaperman like myself. I might try to put a new word cloud, as it's known, up every now and then. I think it's really interesting!
You can do it with anything with an RSS feed by going to wordle.net.

More of Mum and Dad

I just realised that I had more photos of Mum and Dad's trip I wanted to put up!

We went for a drive to Cloncurry, which involved a great steak sandwich at one of the pubs.

One of the things that we did for some reason was go out to the airport. But it was really interesting, and we saw this old hangar. You might not be able to see the sign, but it says Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service, also known as QANTAS.
Cloncurry was one of the original destinations serviced by Qantas, and this is one of their original hangars. I dunno why, but I found that pretty interesting.

Also, Cloncurry was the place of the very first flight of the Royal Flying Doctor Service flight. There was a base in the Curry for a long time. The first plane was chartered from Qantas, and so there's a pretty good chance it left from this hangar! Now, that's a historic hangar, as far as hangers go.

On the drive we took a lot of side trips. One of the things I found fascinating driving up here were all the ant hills. There are literally thousands of these things. I don't know what it is about certain areas, but they go nuts for it.
And I wanted to put up this photo because I think it's a good one of Mum, even if she does have her eyes closed!

Normanton and Karumba

I've just gotten back from a two-night trip to Normanton and Karumba, which are up in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

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There was a forum up there for the whole region, discussing various issues different industries are facing. That was followed by a North Queensland Local Government Association conference the next day.

I got to go because the local federal member, Bob Katter, was going up on a charter flight from Mount Isa and there was a spare seat. The plane was a Beechcraft Baron, which is a four seater plane, but I got to sit up the front next to the pilot!
We didn't get away as early as we had hoped, so most of the trip was in the dark, but I got this sunset photo as we took off from Mount Isa.
It was pretty fun sitting up the front and chatting to the pilot about all the controls. I also got to watch us coming in to land, which was very interesting!
We got a cab from the airport to our hotel, and there was a meet and greet session in the pub next door. I had to do some work, but there was also the chance to have a beer and a prawn!

I couldn't believe how many cane toads there were just hopping around...
The next day was a very early start involving a bus trip to Normanton. Most of the people at the conference were rural mayors who are graziers, and the start time was clearly set for graziers, not journalists. It was a forum about difficulties facing several industries in the north west - a great source for stories and an opportunity to get my head around some bigger issues up here.

So I wrote up a few stories and sent them off and caught the bus back to Karumba. I went for a walk down near the beach, keeping an eye out for crocs, and found out that it wasn't the sandy beach I had grown accustomed to in New South Wales. But I wanted to put my feat in the waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Now, the pub we were at was called the Sunset Tavern. I've never seen the sun set over the water in Australia. It was a pretty darn good sunset, and a beer really made the moment.
The pub had great seafood - I had oysters and barramundi that night and it was divine. Just the ticket after a hard day's work. Karumba has a reasonably large fishing industry, so all the seafood was so delicious and so fresh.

This morning it was an even earlier start back to Normanton. I had taken the work laptop and Telstra internet thingy. Today, however, all of the Telstra mobile network in Queensland was down, which meant I couldn't file my stories that way. So I had to write my stuff up, put all my stories and photos on a flash drive (which I had to borrow from someone because I didn't take one - why would I? I had nifty wireless interent...) and go down to the council chambers to email it back to my editor. But it got there on time.

After that Local Government Conference wound up it was out to Normanton Airport and another flight back. I again got to sit up the front, and it was light for much of the trip, so I got to see a fair bit of the landscape.
It was a great trip, and something I'm really glad I got to do. Karumba is beautiful, and it was just great to see more of north Queensland.