Working In The Kimberley

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am working at a diamond mine driving trucks in the Kimberley called Kimberley Diamond Company (KDC). The Mine is called Ellendale. Tracey is working for Aboriginal Legal service in Broome and at Target in Broome. She was bored while I was at work so she got the Target job to work the weekends and Thursday nights.

The mine site is on the Gibb River Road and about 200 K's from Derby. I fly in and fly out of the mine on a 16 days on and 12 days off roster. The 16 days are split between day and night shift. 12 hours a day.

Map of Ellendale (see arrow)

It's not too bad a job when I am driving the trucks, but that is rarely. When not driving I am driving loaders and bobcats around the plant cleaning up mess. It's not a place I'd make a career out of. One of my objectives this year was to drive dump trucks at a mine and I guess I've achieved that.

The Plant at KDC Ellendale

My job in the truck is to ferry ore from big piles on the ROM (Run Of Mine) into a crusher using Moxies, CAT 740 dump trucks. The term "Moxie" refers to a sort of dump truck that is articulated, mine is a 30 tone truck that can carry and additional 40 tone. I get loaded by large articulated loaders CAT 988's and reverse onto a bridge that the crusher is under and tip the load. Sounds pretty boring but I like it, when we get to do it. :-)

Picture of a Moxie

It's frustrating when the the trucks are not running as I work in the plant cleaning up. The plant is a large mud pile, not too nice to work in. Still, the money is good and will do for the next few months.

About Bloody Time For An Update

After spending a month and a bit at the transport company, won't name names, I decided to quit. There was not a good "feeling" at the place I liked and gave it up. Broome is turning out not to be so bad and I have scored myself a mine job driving dump trucks 16 days on and 12 days off. This still provides me with the most money I have ever earn't in my life on a weekly basis. Not bad for working for almost half the time I guess.

The mine is a diamond mine in the Kimberley, we drove by it on the way to Derby. There is a short flight to the mine from Broome which they call FIFO (fly in fly out), out in the bush. I like that !! :-)

Will update with some pics and details about the mine when I get back from my "swing" another mining term I guess.

Until then...........

Location:Murray Rd,Cable Beach,Australia

GRR Wrap-up and Broome.

Gibb River Road Wrap-Up

We had a fabulous time on the GRR and are very glad we did it. Some of the things we learnt on the road were that heaps of people go on that road terribly under prepared with their cars. There were cars on the road with normal road tyres on them and wondered why all their tyres were ripped up. Most people carry too much speed on the road, a combination of corrugations and speed is not a good recipe. We saw a rollover, probably due to speed. Lower tyre pressures and lower your speed, anyone that tours this country on the dirt road know that, not all apparently. We did one tyre and that was a chance shard of stone slicing the caravans rear LH tyre. All in all a great experience and some lovely landscapes and waterfalls to see.

Broome.

We are in Broome at the moment after hitting Derby for an overnight stay. Derby was not to exciting, all that is there is a big wharf and a small township. Still, good to get into a bit of civilization and catch up with all the news. After doing a shop in Derby we headed for Broome, about 200k away and to the west. Well.........what a fantastic place. It has the feel of a sunshine coast or Cairns. There are a lot of people in town at the moment but that will change within the month as all the old people leave due to the weather getting a bit hotter. We had to stay 30K out of town then go in early one morning to line up for a spot as the town is totally booked out.

We have decided to stay and I have a job driving freight trucks around the joint. Tracey will have a job in the next couple of days no doubt, a bit different this time as its always Tracey getting the jobs first. Our caravan park, Roebuck Bay Caravan Park, is right on the water edge. Apparently the site we are in is evacuated during the wet and we are moved to higher ground, we will see.

Picture of Cable Beach the other day.

Have a look at our YouTube Channel here.

GRR - Tunnel Creek

We left the van at Windjana and did a day trip to Tunnel Creek. As the name implies it is a creek that runs through a mountain. The bush walk takes you right through the mountain following the creek. Awesome spot and some great scenery.

The entrance of the walk.


In the cave.



We had a great walk with most of the water about chest height. A real adventure as you have to take a torch to do the walk. The photo above is half way through the walk.

The other end.


We will be off to Derby tomorrow as this is the last attraction we wanted to see along the Gibb, a bit sad really as we have been having a ball. On the other hand it will be good to get onto some bitumen as we are over the corrugations and dust. We have a massive job when we get to a caravan park to get all the dust out of the car and clean car and van.

GRR - Windjana Gorge.

We drove out on some of the most rocky and corrugated roads we have been on from Bell Gorge back onto the GRR. The GRR wasn't much better at this stage as we drove into the King Leopold Ranges, up and over them and the road got markedly better. A nice change from the last few days, in fact it was the best bit of dirt we have yet to drive on the GRR. A nice change.

The ranges are beautiful as the scenery changes with every kilometer you drive. There is a little gap you drive through where an outcrop of rock looks like Queen Elizabeths head, pretty cool. Fantastic drive, not because of the good road but easily the best scenery yet.

The head.



We once again we turned off the GRR, this time to the south and into Windjana National Park where there is two things we want to see and that is the gorge here and Tunnel Creek. We arrived at the camp ground to find a cracka of a spot and set up.

Our camp spot.


A few hours later a few Variety Club bash cars drove in the camp grounds as they are on a rally from Port Headlands to Kununurra. They partied on long into the night and sounded as though they had a good time as they always do.

In the morning we did the walk up the gorge, the scenery was great but the walk it's self was a bit "blah", if you know what I mean. The track was just all bull dust. Windjana Gorge is famous for all the fresh water crocs and we saw heaps. They weren't that big, perhaps up to 2 meters, but they were along the gorge everywhere. You could get up really close to them before they ran away, pretty cool.

Trying to get the freshie to move.

A little freshie.


We had a nice walk and spent the rest of the day relaxing as we have been doing a lot of driving in the last few days and its good just to sit for a while. While we were here census night happened and believe it or not there were a couple of women from the bureau of statistics to hand us a census form! Incredible, they miss no one.

The start of the gorge just a couple hundred meters from where we are camped.


Off to Tunnel Creek tomorrow, just a short drive down the road. We will leave the van here and spend another night.

GRR - Galvans And Bell Gorges

We got back on the GRR and headed west, just down the road was another gorge by the name of Galvans so we popped in there to have a look. The bush walk took us into a little waterfall with a plunge pool at the end of the track. At the top of the falls there is a boab tree growing in the middle of the falls, made for a great photo.



After Galvans we headed to Silent Grove for the night. Before that we stopped in at Imintji road house to get the tyre we damaged near Mt Barnett fixed, for $55 the guy installed an internal patch and all was good. Nice bloke. Some of the damaged tyres he had in the yard were fascinating to look at and made me wonder what some people are thinking driving the way they do out on these roads and causing that kind of damage to the tyres. We topped up with diesel and headed off down the rocky road.

Silent grove is a camp ground in the King Leopold Ranges Conservation Park and a great place to make a base camp for a look at Bells Gorge. The campsite was great and we made the 10k drive and short walk to the gorge the next morning. Another excellent gorge with fantastic views.

Bell Gorge Vid.






Off to Windjana Gorge.

GRR - Mount Barnett Station and Manning Gorge

Once we got back onto the GRR we headed for Mt Barnett Station camp area, from there you can walk to Manning Gorge. As we pulled into the station we discovered the van had a flat tyre, took the wheel off and discovered that a shard of rock had punctured the tread just near the sidewall of the tyre. We will have to get that fixed at the next road house at Iminji as Mt Barnett did not do tyre repairs. We topped up on food here as well, a couple of packets of chops, frozen veggies and some butter etc cost us $135!!

The falls were awesome!! We had a ball swimming in the gorge, it's such a pretty spot. The walk starts with you wading across the river with the water chest high and swimming the last bit. The camp area provides styrofoam containers to transfer your stuff across.
The view from the camp ground.


Once across the river it's a 3k walk to the gorge. When we got to the falls the scenery was spectacular. Video of the Waterfall.



I found a rock to jump off and we proceeded to spend the best part of the day there. Fantastic spot!!

The rock we were jumping off.

Video 1 Jumping.

Video 2 Jumping.

Next stop is Bell Gorge........