Story 4: A Change of Job.

A CHANGE.

Mr Warren Brown was the mine manager, I had never met him, he was just another name I had heard on site.
After work one day I was picked up by one of the mines shift bosses Damien O'Reilly and taken to the pit where I met Warren Brown who was standing on the side of the pit waiting for a blast to go off.
I hear you have a truck license and have driven trucks, he began.
My father owned trucks all his life I began wondering how he knew.
I'm looking for a truck driver in the pit, would you like to be considered for the job, it pays better than working in the mill, he informed me.
Not sure just how the employment system on site worked I hesitated.
I'll talk to Butch Harding in the morning and sort it out, Warren said, not waiting for my answer.

Two days later I found myself in a Caterpillar 769 dump truck with Mike Goodall ex British SAS who spent much of his service time in Norway playing about in snow, I began learning everything there is to know about 769 dump trucks, ore head grades and the really odd names used to designate areas in the pit like west 73 or east 40 as well as how to conduct war in 40deg below zero.

The mine crew seemed to be much friendlier than the mill and being the newbie on site I didn't seem to stand out all that much.

In the 70's the mine owner, CSR (Colonial Sugar Refinery) as part of a world wide oversupply of sugar, the company began a diversification program, they bought two or three mines in Australia as part of this expansion.

Unfortunately the CSR management system was still firmly entrenched in the 1920's. People on site were either employed directly by CSR and therefore considered to have a job for life and those who weren't employed by CSR directly and were never considered to be part of the real company.
Long term employees whose expertise on the job and should have easily qualified for a position through a progressive management system were never considered as all management positions could only be appointed to official CSR employees or appointed directly by CSR's head office 3000km away in Brisbane.

Site management suffered as a result as appointees often arrived with 20 or 30 years experience in CSR management in the sugar industry but had absolutely no experience in a mining environment not helped by the fact we worked an eleven day week, odd work hours and in an isolated location well away from the normal 8 hr five day week comforts of a large town or city.

Many of these appointees never last long, giving us the feeling CSR transfers were simply CSR's way of thinning out the dead wood in the system by giving them first a promotion in management then a transfer to a job they knew they couldn't handle knowing they would eventually find themselves out of their depth and comfort zone and simply quit.

Not every one is suited for a mining environment.
One CSR management appointee had spent some time on site with his wife and two very young children. As a privileged CSR employee they were very well paid, supplied a house and given other perks of the job. Unable to accept living in a remote environment even though Woomera was just 30km up the road and Port Augusta an hour and a half south his wife simply refused to live on site and was making life very difficult for all.
Packing the car one morning after an argument she and the kids drove off with the intention of returning to her east cost comfort zone.
Before she had driven far her husband poked the barrel of a 303 into his mouth and removed a good part of the back of his head.

Separation strain on marriage, drinking and marijuana were the main problems people faced on site.

A 50 site caravan park allowed a few couples to live together, the company also supplied a 20ft transportable room for extra space with each van

16mm current movies were shown twice a week.

The wife of one enterprising couple performed live strip shows.