Camped on the Gregory River.

GeoTagged, [S20.70776, W139.49473]

During visiting the Thortonia station we camped on the Gregory River. Lovely spot in the bush with no one about!

The river is spring fed from a few location and never runs dry. It was like an oasis in the desert. We had a ball!!

Camping on Thorntonia Station

GeoTagged, [S20.70776, W139.49473]

Trace and I went camping last weekend on a cattle property called Thorntonia a few hours north of the Isa on the way to Burketown. Our next door neighbors worked on the station for a few years and took us out to have a look. The picture above is one of a couple of dozen bores on the property that is 600,000 acres, a small back yard up here I am told. The station owners also lease part of Gregory Downs, another station up here, as well. The total is near 1.4 million acres.

We took the above photo in the arvo when the cattle make their way to the bore at the same time every day after grazing. There are plenty of jobs going up here for bore runners that take care of the bores on the property and carry out maintenance on the windmills. I will wouldn't mind doing that for a season next, I have some contacts now at least.:-)

Drive To Camooweal

Camooweal is 180k west of the Isa and sits in the border of Queensland and The Northern Territory. We took a drive out there last weekend and had a look at the place. There is an annual drivers festival each year there as it is in the heart of cattle station country.

It's s nice little place with a pub and a roadhouse, that's it!! 13 k from the township is the border so of course we went and got the obligatory photo on the border. We will be heading out this way when we leave the Isa.

Fishing Lake Moondarra

GeoTagged, [S20.70776, W139.49473]

Went fishing about a week ago to have a fish, caught heaps of sooty grunter and catfish (above). Had a ball as there were heaps to catch. Apparently there are barra in the lake, the elude me though. There is a fishing comp on in a week or so, we will go out to that to see how it's done!!

Working At Boral

I have been working at Boral for a couple of weeks now and have just finished all my inductions. They included generic inductions for the mine in town, the close by George Fisher Mine and an induction for driving vehicles on the lease. The lease is the term used around here for the mine site.

Working at the Boral plant is pretty cool as there is something different happening every day. We deliver concrete to the mine sites, civil engineering jobs and private mum and dad jobs. The mine site has so many contractors on it, it's unbelievable. Xstrata must spend some money!!

The mine site jobs include delivering what they call shotcrete. This is a mix of concrete they use underground to reinforce the tunnels and portal roads they establish. They dig the tunnel, reinforce it with mesh then spray concrete over it. We deliver the concrete for the underground shotcrete guys from the surface via what is called a slickline. There is a big tube that runs from the surface to underground that is 1klm long By the time it reaches their agitator it's doing 350klm/hr. So as you could imagine there us quite a bit of procedure wrapt around getting it down there. Communication is the key, as if I send the concrete down at the wrong time and there is someone under the hose they are dead!!

So the job is quite good, learning heaps about everything there is to know about concrete.