Hey everyone.So, my contact at HWE contacted me after the Christmas break and invited me back in to the office for a meeting, and I was told to bring some writing examples.
I dressed up and printed off about 20 reviews I had written of albums, for a music blog in America I used to write for, and headed down to the Osborne park office.
Once there, I met with the head of communications, a girl named Megan. Her, along with Sara, read over my writings work, deemed it good enough, and asked me if I'd like to go to the mines for 2 days and learn on a first hand basis what goes on up there.
Of course, I said yes, and was given a huge series of instructions. I needed clothes, plane tickets, taxi cab charges and my laptop.
The mine I would be visiting is a mine called Orebody, up in the areas near Port Headland and Newman. It would take days to get to by car, but only 2 hours via plane. Thankfully, the company could afford to fly me up! Within a week, the date was picked, and I was ready to roll. I got up at 4 AM, and took a taxi to the airport, where I took a 5 AM flight up. Arriving at 7, I was picked up from the airport by a friendly on-site PR manager named Tony.
He took me to get some lunch at the miners accomodation, which was essentially just a collection of caravan houses, and then we drove up to Orebody itself. The place is absolutely huge, which really struck me considering how it is the smallest of BHPs Iron Ore mines, and pales in comparison to Yandi and Area C, so they must be gigantic.
Once there, I went into the office and got comfortable at a desk. I wrote out a few pages of newsletter material for the company, and then once that was done, I went on a lunch break, and met some of the miners. One of them agreed to take me up into the mines after lunch so I could ride in his truck with him for 5 hours during his shift. I went up and got in the passenger seat of the truck, it was about the height of my house plus a half, and probably as wide too. It was made to carry Iron ore from the mountain side directly into the crusher. It could carry up to 100 tons of Iron Ore, and weighed 100 tons without anything on it at all, so this moving 200 ton mass was quite exhilirating to ride in.
We saw a fox, and a snake. The remoteness of the place really dawned on me. It's basically a hole in the ground in the middle of no where, and nature just pours into it from all angles.
After this was finished, the 12 hour working day was done. I took a bus back to the sleeping quarters where I had been given a trailer, demolished some dinner, and then passed out at about 6pm. I slept for almost 24 hours before getting on a bus the next morning at 7 (I had embarassingly slept through my alarm as my phone had switched off for some reason during the night, and was forced to take a later ride up to the site).
Once at the site, I wrote several more pages worth of material for the company, including re-writing an FAQ that addressed concerns of the miners on site, and tackled a lot of interesting internal relations issues.
After this, Tony dropped me back at the airport and flew back to Perth with me. Although I was only gone for 2 days, they were some of the longest days of my life. The people who work at the mines have brains of steel to be able to remain focused for so long.
I'll blog again soon, peace people, good luck with all your uni work
Rory
1 comment:
This sounds so amazing. What a great opportunity to experience what it's really like to work and live on the mines. It's good that they flew you up there just so you could gain some understanding of the organisation and its employees before you start working for them. Good luck with it!
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