Michael Batson

I once worked in a gold mine in the middle of an Australian desert. To get there I flew to Adelaide from overseas with the intention of hitchhiking to Kalgoorlie, a mining town in Western Australia and base for many of the operators working in the mines that drive much of that state’s economy. I had done lots of hitchhiking before all around the world. I had hitchhiked around New Zealand, up and down the east coast of Australia and parts inland, in the Middle East, in the UK and in Ireland, around Europe, and in South America. I knew what I was doing and what to expect but to be fair the adventure of it had begun to wear off.

To travel by road from Adelaide to Kalgoorlie is no mean feat. For a start it’s 2159kms across some of the flattest most monotonous landscape you’ll ever see, and aside from some very small towns (a generous term) but usually called roadhouses, there’s nothing out there. The road from Adelaide goes north for a while, then heads west along the Eyre Highway almost in a straight line and includes the longest straight in Australia, 145.6kms - before turning north again to the twin town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. North of Adelaide you pass through Port Pirie home to one of the world’s largest lead smelters, which earns its Singaporean owners a fortune while local children are gifted high lead blood levels. Further north is Port Augusta, once a seaport but now a road and rail transport hub and named for the wife of the former state governor, and daughter of a West Indies slaveowner. The road goes west from Port Augusta to Ceduna, a small town known as the gateway to the Nullarbor Plain – a nothingness as far as the eye can see. Nullarbor means “no trees” in Latin and covers 200,000 square kilometres, is 1100kms east to west, entirely flat, and bigger than most European countries. Out there even on the main road you are on your own. If a car breaks down, no one is coming to get you, and it could be hours before you see another vehicle.

On the plane to Adelaide I sat next to a middle-aged guy from Nuie, a tiny speck in the Pacific Ocean. Nuie is one of the world’s biggest atolls, a self-governing state in ‘free association’ with New Zealand. My seat buddy told me it had been ruled as a personal fiefdom for 18 years from its independence in 1974 by a man opposed to political parties, which didn’t prevent the Queen of England giving him a knighthood. Nuie has no rivers, lakes, or ATMs much like mining camps in Australia. It does however, boast a bowling green, one frequented by the current premier, who even dons the national colours for international competition. Nuie is in the centre of a triangle of Polynesian islands made up of Tonga, Samoa and the Cook Islands and is about as geographically isolated by water as where I was going is by land.

There is not much to Adelaide airport or any airport in Australia to be honest. For people who get excited about such transport hubs you best go somewhere else, like Singapore. The driver of the airport bus taking me into the city thought I was mad to hitchhike to Western Australia and quickly tried dissuading me from even attempting such a journey. “Whatever it costs mate, get the bus,” was his advice and I’m glad that I listened and chose to sit in sheer boredom and listlessness on a cross-country inter-state bus. Later I meet a guy who did hitchhike across the Nullarbor and he reported being assaulted by the occupants of one vehicle.  

Adelaide was designed by William Light, a British-Malayan naval and army officer. whose father, also a military man, designed George Town the capital of Penang, the Jewel of Kedah. Light junior also designed Christchurch in New Zealand, both laid out in the same grid pattern marked by four main roads. In Christchurch these are called avenues and in Adelaide they are terraces. European colonisation began with the South Australia Company, led by rich white men, whereby the guiding principle behind settlement was that of systematic colonisation. Like neighbouring Victoria, South Australia wasn’t founded as a gulag for British convicts, something that seemingly places them on a pedestal above other jurisdictions, at least in their own eyes.

There are so many churches in Adelaide the city is known as the “Holy Land”. South Australia is home to about 1.8 million people, 77 percent of whom live in Adelaide. South Australia has the second highest centralisation of population in a country dominated by urban islands, each state has one main city with the other centres much smaller than that. The next biggest centre is Mount Gambier with about 30,000. The state produces wine, plays cricket-probably Australia’s national sport-plays Aussie Rules, a game invented by the English to keep cricketer’s fit in winter hence its played on an oval; has a football team, and once had a Grand Prix until Melbourne stole it away. The largest state employer is health care and social assistance.

In the end I’m glad I got the bus despite landing in Kalgoorlie some 29 hours later much the worse for wear. There were two drivers. One slept while the other drove. The front of the bus had big “bull bars” welded on to counter collision by wandering stock. One of the drivers explained that the bars could take the impact of a full-grown kangaroo, but that cattle and camels would require a refit. On the way over I sat next to a Kiwi bloke also headed for mine work. He had been a truck driver in New Zealand, driving horses around the country to race meetings and sale yards. He said he’d not left yet, and his replacement crashed the vehicle, so his boss was keen for him to stay. At the border with Western Australia there was a biosecurity check, like you get at an airport. The odd large truck rumbles by. I can only imagine transporting freight by road here must be prohibitively expensive, especially when it can go by sea or by rail, but then there’s the little roadhouse stops along the way, though none of the big trucks were supplying them that I saw.

Arriving in Kalgoorlie I was reminded of the words of one writer that ‘when you have been nourishing your soul on expectation, reality is apt to be disappointing.’ It was hot, dusty, and you were perpetually bombarded by that creature of the dry, the fly. In dry countries flies seek any moisture so on people invade anywhere they can find this; your eyes, mouth and nose. No sooner have you claimed some relief they are just as quickly back again. There is no respite.  Exhausted after the ride, I spent the first night in a dingy room in the Palace Hotel on the corner of Hannan Street and Boulder Road; the former being the town’s main drag and the latter the route to the nearby twin town of Boulder.

Gold was discovered in Kalgoorlie by prospector Paddy Hannan and his mates in 1893. Mining of gold and other metals has been done there ever since. The concentrated area of large gold mines surrounding the original Hannan's find is often referred to as the Golden Mile and was sometimes referred to as the world's richest square mile of earth. A rail line was completed from Perth in 1896. A water pipeline from Perth, the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, a prodigious feat of engineering was commissioned in 1896 and completed in 1903. The engineer responsible, Charles O’Connor, had previously built Fremantle Harbour and was once in charge of the railways, but was much criticised after the pipeline was completed, and committed suicide.

During the 1890s, the Goldfields area boomed as a whole, with an area population exceeding 200,000, composed mainly of prospectors. The area gained a reputation for being a "wild west", notorious for its bandits and prostitutes. Like many boomtowns Kalgoorlie enjoyed investment in infrastructure before other towns could benefit. There were tramways, suburban railways, street lighting, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool before other towns in Western Australia had any of these.

Like many I had come to Kalgoorlie for work. Kalgoorlie, like other mining towns, was vulnerable to the boom-bust cycle tied to the price of the minerals it produced. In the 1980s, the town was thought to be near bankruptcy, but the boom in the price of gold and other precious metals being fed by economic development, particularly of Asia, and the demand of Australia’s export-driven economy had seen fortunes rise again. The work to extract these minerals and the servicing of the machines and the people to do the work is undertaken by contractors. Some of these contractors and their myriad of sub-contractors (“subbies”) are based in Kalgoorlie and in Boulder, and others in Perth.

I had wanted to drive the giant dump trucks used in open-cut mines. These mechanical leviathans had the advantage of being air-conditioned, you got to sit down, and did not seem to involve some of the gut-busting physical labour (or “hard yakka”) sometimes associated with mining. Unfortunately, the contractors for these jobs were all based in Perth, 600kms away. So were the catering contractors to feed the mineworkers and the cleaners to ensure everyone in the mining camps was as comfortable as you can be in desert miles from the nearest amenities. So, I was forced to look for work with the locally-based firms. I was told these were mainly drilling contractors largely based down the road in Boulder.

To get work in Boulder you needed to go cold-calling putting yourself about and filling in application forms. Kalgoorlie is home to migrants usually doing someone else’s job. It’s said that most of the roofing is done by plumbers, carpentry by gardeners, and bricklaying by glaziers, or. in other words, someone not actually qualified but who is on the spot and says they can do the job. I met one guy who got a job as a bobcat driver on a pipeline installation just out of town because the foreman asked who had experience. Having none he said “me” and then learned as he went. Everyone else who had stayed silent got a shovel.

For accommodation I wound up at the Windsor, a kind of rundown backpackers come halfway house and short stay crash pad located down an alley off Hannan Street, near the intersection with Boulder Road. The intersection is a local landmark with the Exchange Hotel on one corner and the Palace Hotel on the other. The Windsor had a core of people working locally or looking for work, and a revolving door of backpackers passing through. Downstairs was a kitchen and dining room with a television. There were communal bathrooms, and out the back adjacent the back alley was a garden. It wasn’t perfect but there wasn’t much else for those on a budget and those working looking to save money. There were no single rooms, so you had to share with another.

The guy I shared with was a quiet bloke working just outside town. Every morning he was out in the back alley by 6am waiting for his ride. In the evenings he came back, showered, ate, and read for an hour. He kept a diary. He was in bed by about 8pm. He was nice enough, though we hardly spoke, and kept to himself. Across the hall was a huge Kiwi named Justin, the bobcat driver. He and I got into a cooking routine and would make roast dinners, drink beer, watch football and swap stories. Justin had worked on oil rigs and had designs on becoming a policeman in Perth. Some of the backpackers passing through were good value. They’d stay a while some looking for work, some finding it and others not so, and moved on. After doing the rounds in Boulder and elsewhere, we’d often head to the Olympic pool in Kalgoorlie. In keeping with Kalgoorlie’s eclectic workforce, the lifeguards were an international bunch. Only one guy, an Englishman, was formally qualified as a lifeguard while some of the others just said they could swim.

Sometimes we’d go to a café on Hannan Street for breakfast or a coffee. Evenings would sometimes involve heading to the pub. The Exchange was a favourite. Down Hannan Street was the Federal. There was also the Foundry. At various times we’d be in them all. Lots of the people living and working in Kalgoorlie were from elsewhere in the state, other parts of Australia, and some from overseas. It was said about one-third of Kalgoorlie residents were Kiwis. I remember being in the Exchange Hotel one day and standing along the entire bar opposite the door was a line of mostly Māori guys, wearing beer brand singlets and t-shirts from the Shaky Isles.

The key to door-knocking for jobs is to be persistent and keep going back, even though it might seem a lost cause and can be frustrating. Usually, something will turn up if you stick at it long enough for if nothing else, they at least see you’re keen. So it proved to be for one day I was sitting at the swimming pool when one of the staff from the Windsor came down with a message that a drilling company was looking for an offsider, was I keen? Having done some research I vaguely knew what one of these was, so I said yes. I then headed over to Boulder to get the lowdown from my prospective employer. I was hired on the spot. There were forms to fill in and clothing to get. I needed everything so they sent me off to the outfitters where I was kitted out with work clothes, boots, work socks, and that wonder of the Australian outback, the swag – a thin mattress covered in heavy canvas able to be rolled up and transported, by hand if necessary. The cost of all of these they said would be deducted from my first pay packet.

Bright and early the next morning I jumped aboard a supply truck headed to the goldmines. There was the driver and another guy, who was also an offsider who would be part of my team. Our destination I was told, was north of Meekatharra and west off the Great Northern Highway, the main inland road north from Perth to Wyndham, the longest highway in Australia.  To get there from Kalgoorlie we headed directly north on the Goldfields Highway through central Western Australia. The land is flat with no distinguishable features. The vegetation I would describe as scrub, short trees and squat bushes; the soil red. Australians refer to this as “the bush” wild uninhabitable country (to some) with little rainfall and blistering summers. As well as sunstroke and death by thirst, the wildlife can kill; lizards, spiders, scorpions and some of the most venomous snakes on Earth. In the wet season, there can be flash floods, and coastal areas are prone to cyclones.

In parts the road is unsealed. Dotted along the way are small towns that owe their origins to gold mining; but that are more bust that boom. There was Menzies 130kms from Kalgoorlie. There the gold boom lasted 10 years and was over by the turn of the 20th century the population shrinking from 10,000 at the height of the boom to 1000 and today is just 100. Then there is Leonora, home to the Sons of Gwalia mine once managed by Herbert Hoover, later a US president. Later the Australian government dumped asylum seekers there from Christmas Island, housed in a former mine worker’s hostel. Further north is Leinster, a town only established in 1976 as a dormitory town for mineworkers but has some modern amenities; a swimming pool and a supermarket. Further on situated at the edge of the Western Desert, is Wiluna.

Wiluna is another mining town. The population is overwhelmingly Aboriginal. The mines are staffed by FIFOs (fly-in, fly-out) from Perth. No one actually stays in town. FIFOs are sometimes referred to as "shadow populations" as they are not part of any community. There are only dirt roads save for the intersection in the middle of town which is sealed but then only for about 100m in each direction. Wiluna then had one pub called the Last Resort, and it would have to be to drink there. Aborigines were not allowed to drink inside, rather they were served on the footpath outside through a hole-in-the wall. Years later the pub was renamed the Club Hotel but closed in 2017 due to financial difficulties with the result that reportedly alcohol related violence in the town increased.

From Wiluna to Meekatharra is 180kms. By the time we got to Meekatharra, along an unsealed section of the highway, it was dark. The road was so rough with corrugation it shook the suspension to the point the brakes needed to be disconnected least they locked up the back axle. Work to finally seal this stretch of the highway only commenced in 2020 some 60 years after it was promised. This is unlikely to please the local diesel mechanic. When we pulled into his workshop the next morning he said about sixty percent of his business came from repairing vehicles shaken to pieces on that stretch of dirt road.

We got the truck fixed and went to the local petrol station (“servo”) and refuelled. On the other side of the pump was a road train – a truck or tractor unit with three trailers. He was filling up one of his diesel tanks when we pulled up and was still refuelling the other tank when we left - about 700 litres. To get to the mine we drove north towards Newman, a town named for a mining company, along the Great Northern Highway for about 140kms. We crossed the Gasgoyne River, a riverine feature distinguished by having no water whatsoever. The mine itself was down a road about 50kms off the main highway. What I learned later working in the mine was that while this part of the world has no visible water anywhere, you can be soaked to the skin all day once you hit the water table below ground, which is what happened to me, but more of that later.

The mine itself was a collection of portacabins for accommodation, washing, and eating. There were laundries, kitchens, a gym, and a television room. There was a wet mess, meaning it had alcohol, and dry mess which meant it had none. Food was plentiful morning, noon, and night. My room was air-conditioned. It had a closest, a bed, and a desk with a chair. Every day it was cleaned and my bed made by people I never saw. Me and the other offsider met the driller the first night. He was sleeping in a caravan because he said when he arrived, he didn’t know if accommodation was provided or not, so had brought his own. Sometimes in the mines, facilities varied and could be limited, so you had to bring your own swag and a ton of food. The driller remined me of what the police refer to as SMS (short man syndrome) or shitty guys who go picking fights with bigger guys to prove themselves with an attitude to amtch. I had been warned he wasn’t good to work with on account of having a temper. This meant that invariably people only did one stint in the bush with him, and then requested a transfer. As a result, he only got new starters, the novices or “greenies”. This of course just made him worse tempered as he wound up having to show them everything every time.

I ate a cooked breakfast the first morning and went off with the other offsider for a short induction. We were given the run down in under an hour on working in an open cut mine. An open cut mine is a big hole in the ground made bigger each day by big machinery. Medical help we were told, aside from band aids and over-the-counter painkillers available onsite, was at least a two-hour flight away. And then off we went. I can say working as an offsider in 40 degrees-plus heat 12 hours a day seven days a week is the hardest physical work I have ever done. On top of that heat, the dust, the dirt, the noise, the snakes, and the flies, there was thirst and the driller yelling at you all day.

They were right, the driller was a prick. He did quieten down when, on day three, the other offsider threatened to brain him with a shovel. The driller thrashed the machinery. If it broke, nearly everything on drilling rigs breaks eventually, he got pissed off and thrashed in more, which in turn brought on more tantrums. After work in the mess he was quite a nice bloke, but I can’t say I felt like spending much time with someone who yells all day. I was also broke. I had gone to the desert before having a chance to get any money out of the bank. He offered to lend me some, but I said not to worry. One night I found a $20 note in the washing machine that had fallen out of someone’s pocket, so I bought some stuff at the shop.

Aside from not getting any money before I left, I also should have got my hair cut. Shampoo and hot water struggles to remove a day’s worth of desert dust from your scalp. I also struggled to keep enough clothes clean. Each morning I put on my boots still caked in mud from the day before. My boots were slip-on with elasticated pieces at the sides, but the best have laces or even better still, both. Laces allow you to tighten your footwear so they don’t get sucked off in the mud which can lead to comedic scenes. I learned to relish the time in the evening after work and dinner, and before midnight, a time that seemed wholly my own and not someone else’s.

The day started early. The kitchen staff kept us well fed but given the work regime I was unlikely to gain weight. Another thing I forgot to do before I left was weigh myself. The other offsider said we’d lose weight for sure, so we wound up looking like a couple of 800m runners. After breakfast with the sun coming up and the heat of the day yet to arrive, we’d sit and wait for the driller to arrive in the small truck to take us to the site. Sitting along the verandas of the portacabins were the dump truck drivers also waiting for their transport. Their day comprised of sitting in the air-conditioned cabs of their gargantuan vehicles which weighed up to 200 tonnes when fully loaded. I heard women were often preferred as they “didn’t thrash the machinery as much as blokes and didn’t seem to get as bored”. About half the drivers I saw at the mine were women.

Our first task was to fill up the water containers. Doing hard ‘yakka’ all day in 40-degree heat meant drinking up to 15 litres of water each. So, we’d fill as much of the polystyrene insulated drinking containers with ice as possible and then poured water over the top. These were refilled again at lunchtime. Then we drove out to the rig in the small Mitsubishi (a “Mitzi” in Aussie parlance) truck we used for transport and supply on site. The drilling rig was mounted on the back of triple-axel flatbed truck. A large six-cylinder diesel engine mounted on the flat deck powered the drilling rig. At the back of the truck was the drilling tower, about 10m high. To run the drilling rig this engine was run at ear shattering volume all day. Aside from being bloody noisy it was also hot and spewed diesel fumes everywhere.

The first thing I noticed arriving at the rig was last night’s snake trails through the sand, everywhere, which seemingly was part of some reptilian highway. The first job was to check the oil and water levels in the diesel engine mounted on the flat deck. Then the driller fired up the rig and the day began. It was long, loud, hot, hard work, and became very boring, which I have to say was the worst part. I don’t mind the rest but if you’re bored on top then it just adds insult to injury and that was never far away – injury, I mean. Broken bones in mine work are common. Deaths were now less so given all the safety work put in over years with the industry and unions, but it always paid to be careful. That was easier said than done in the conditions. In my spell, I almost lost the end of my finger on one occasion, and found grit in my eye on another than turned the iris blood red. I spent the rest of the day blinking furiously and looking out the other to see what I was doing. The rig stopped for no one. I heard from another mine site one offsider was sent home having broken his arm.

We spent our time lifting heavy drilling rods 3m long. These were stacked down one side of the truck ready for use. There was an art to lifting these using the truck deck to pivot the weight to get them vertical and then holding these balanced upright to slot into the drill head, like something akin to a circus act. When we reached a certain depth the drill head would have to be replaced depending on the rock or type of sediment. So, out all the drill rods came, a reverse of the process done before to put them in. The drill rods were held in place by the breakout spanner. If this was removed the whole line of rods could be lost forever down the hole. This is a cardinal sin in drilling but has been known to happen through a momentary lack of concentration, probably brought on by fatigue.

For work we wore hard hats covered with an attachable brim and neck cover for the sun. Our glasses were safety sunglasses, and everyday meant liberal coverings of sunscreen, which contained insect repellent mainly to keep the flies away and when applied was thick like paint. Attached to the drill mast was a monsoon bucket through which the material extracted through the drill rods would pass and from there into a large metal bucket. The bucket was what we collected the samples in for the geologist, whose work went towards assessing the next best site to dig for gold. We took samples every metre. Sometimes this was solid basically mud, and others more liquid. Either way, we carried this via the handles welded to the side of the bucket to the holes we dug for the samples at each drill site.

Digging holes was easy if it was sandy. But other times we would get to a rocky spot and it was nigh on impossible, so the samples would often just run off or dry out in the desert heat. The geologist would observe this from nearby usually sitting in his Toyota 4-wheel-drive. Toyotas in Australia are named “Tojo” and seated next to the geologist was his offsider nicknamed the “jaffa”. This acronym stood for “just another fucking field assistant” and was probably the cruisiest job in mining. He carried the “geo’s” tools about and in rare instances of exertion would change a flat tire but for all his effort, or lack thereof, he got paid more than we did running about like blue-arsed flies.

Doubtless as bored with his job as I was, and probably preferring lying by the pool at the house he was renovating back in Perth, the driller got frustrated with changing the rods, and probably as greenies, we didn’t operate fast enough for him. One day he broke the heavy breakout spanner sometimes called a bull tong. To get this vital piece of equipment fixed quickly, he bought the mechanics in the workshops a slab of beer at inflated prices. A slab in Australian is usually 24 cans or bottles or “stubbies” packed in a cardboard box, sometimes called a “brick”, and all so we could get back up and running. As a driller and as offsiders, the main pay was by metres drilled backed by a very low minimum hourly rate. No drilling meant next-to-no pay, so needs must. Another day he blew a seal on a hydraulic hose. The force of this seal blowing sent the metal bracket about 30m into the air and it landed embedded in the sand just in front of my foot narrowly missing my head.

Despite all our gut-busting efforts, the “geo” reckoned much of what we did was of little use from a geological point of view, as the material gathered revealed very little. So aside from being sore, exhausted and yelled at, this left me feeling rather deflated as on top of everything else our task seemingly had little fundamental value. I did get one pearl of wisdom out of this. One night in the wet mess, the bar, Brad the geologist, referred to the reason most of us were in this predicament in the first place with this gem; “saving is less about earning as being about not spending”. This adage was well worth the trip and has guided much of my interaction with money ever since.

Despite the grim monotony of the work and ever-present dangers, one thing brought some comedic relief. The monsoon bucket on the drill mast had a hairline crack which slowly grew longer. From this was emitted a fine mist of spray at pressure, like from a split in a garden hose. Once every 2-3 minutes all day long, I would pass by this getting increasingly covered in mud. The heat baked this onto my skin and clothes leaving me looking like I’d been buried alive. Arrival at the mess for lunch saw me barred by the catering staff as the dry mud would invariably start dropping off leaving a trail across their nicely cleaned facility. To prevent starvation the driller took to hosing me down before we left to drive in from the drill site. Once I’d been soaked, I would take a paint scraper and scrape off all the dirt. Despite about 20 minutes of effort each time, the catering staff would give me an exasperated look every time I came in to eat. A heavy-duty wash cycle in the machine barely coped with the state of my clothes, which in any case were unlikely to last more than one stint “in the bush”.

Working seven days a week all the days blend into one another. One night I found a novel in the TV room, James Bond’s Dr. No which became my evening escapism. The television reception was so poor as to be unwatchable, which probably summed up most of the content shown on mainstream Australian television anyway. There was the gym, a motley collection of ancient weight machines and free weights but after 12 hours of hard labour who has energy for that? Mostly, I enjoyed the time between finishing the evening meal and midnight, time which seemed my own. After midnight it was a slow countdown to start time and the whole routine repeated itself.

Most people working this life seemed hard cases and could hold their own, but there are big problems outside the monotony and daily work dangers in mines. Alongside these already tough demands, women who have joined the gold rush have secretly faced a far more insidious problem: a culture of sexual harassment and abuse has for years been an unescapable part of the job. Our company sent up a kind of welfare officer to see us, a woman. After we’d been working for a few days she arrived and asked me and the other offsider to call round to her room after breakfast. She said she had been going around the various mining camps talking to the crews to see if there were any problems and asking how we were settling in. She asked how we’d been getting on with the driller, whose reputation she seemed all too aware of. We both said we wouldn’t work for him again and she nodded. After our meeting we met up with the driller. We said we’d been over to see her as requested and he made some disparaging remark about women in general and her appearance in particular, and walked off.

Working in the mines can be a lonely rather soul-destroying time away from family and friends. While this is true for all workers, women can face other problems too. A report by lawmakers in Western Australia into life in the mines published in 2022 revealed details of "horrific" sexual assaults and asked troubling questions of a seemingly complicit industry. For women ‘living in this crowded, male-dominated environment can prove not only exhausting but potentially dangerous.’ The report depicts a lawless culture that has thrived in many mining camps.

Women mineworkers said they faced being leered at by male colleagues on a daily basis, inappropriate comments about their bodies or sex lives, the theft of underwear from laundry machines (yup), unwanted advances and repeated sexual assaults. Some said blokes would turn up at their doors in camp “asking for a fuck”. A separate internal report by ming giant Rio Tinto found more than a quarter of its female workers have experienced sexual harassment and almost half of all staff had been victims of bullying. Larger rival BHP last year also said it had fired 48 workers at its sites in Western Australia since 2019 after verifying allegations of harassment. I knew a woman who was a cook doing a FIFO in a mine in Queensland years after I’d worked in Western Australia. I asked her about this and she said she had had no problems. I’m not sure if that was because she didn’t have an issue, or had brushed them off. She was very attractive and I'd say a tough cookie, so would probably tell anyone directing such advances to “fuck off”, which isn't to say there's less occurrence.

Given these conditions and the host of problems for both men and women, most mine workers aren’t encouraged by their employers to work longer than four weeks in the bush at a stretch, even if they wanted to. The reason, I was told back in Kalgoorlie, is that spending too long in this kind of environment can lead to reckless behaviour once shift workers return to civilisation cashed up. resulting in benders in bars and alcohol-fuelled violence. There are tales of blokes splashing large sums in the brothels of Kalgoorlie, champagne baths and other excesses leaving their earnings in mines, however large, wasted. Big Justin, the Kiwi, said he once went and rescued one bloke threatened by the bouncers in a bar for his behaviour; “He was being a right c*nt, I would’ve punched him myself but he'd been out too long”.

In the end I did just one stint in a mine. I didn’t even make that much money truth be told. looking back it was probably just as well for if I had I may have been tempted to stick around and have another go. Deep down though I knew the life wasn’t for me. I got back on the bus to Adelaide. We left mid-afternoon the windows open in the blistering heat as the air-conditioning seemingly on the blink. I spent time back in Adelaide on my second and so far, last visit. I have no regrets about my decision, it was the right one.