Story 16. The Access Road.

From the national highway the turn off to the mine site is a reasonably well kept dirt road its about 8km to the Cattle Grid and the open cut mine the single-men's camp is a further 4 km further on.

Everything going in and out of site uses this road, during summer the road develops pot holes corrugations and the odd dusty holes. With summer temperatures in the low to mid forties (100 to 120f) keeping the road in good condition was an ongoing problem. Corrugations often became so extreme vehicles often had trouble just staying on the road, mainly because of excessive speed which was the original cause of the corrugations in the first place.

In the early eighties a two km section from the cattle grid toward the single-mens camp had to be moved further north in a large loop to maintain clearance from the western end of the mine as it moved further north west.
 
In an effort to maintain the main access road maintenance and grading was performed during the night, when traffic was low or nonexistent this helped retain water which helped as a binding agent as the road was maintained. A heavy road roller was used to help form a hard surface to help retain the moisture content within the road structure.

At 3am one morning the grader operator called up to say he had the grader blade stuck and needed help.
Curious as to how something with a highly mobile and infinitely adjustable grader blade could be stuck.
Investigation quickly revealed the grader blade had become stuck after a passing vehicle had become caught in the large windrow of material the grader was moving, the front wheel had dragged the steering out of the hands of the driver where it dragged the vehicle toward the grader the hard cutting edge of the blade opened up the side of the vehicle and part of the seating like a sardine tin from behind the front wheel all the way along to where it finally came to a stop where it had destroyed the rear tyre and rim.