Story 5: The Single Mens Quarters.

Accommodation.

During the first five years on site, life for eleven days or nights consisted of three 8 1/2hr shifts. Night shift started at 11pm and ended at 7am, and I think was the most dangerous shift possible.

Just trying to sleep while on night-shift was always a problem.

During the day the cleaners made no concessions as they talked and cleaned, heavy footsteps and chatter of anyone walking along the narrow wooden corridor between the fifteen or so 6 x 8 ft rooms that lined either side could be heard easily through the thin cheap plywood  walls.
During the evening the noise levels were worst for anyone trying to sleep, it was impossible to sleep as the day shift crew upon arriving back after work would play loud music, shout stomp up and down the corridor while enjoying a beer or two with little regard to the plight of the night shift crew trying to sleep before rising at 10pm to head off to work at 11.
I often found it difficult to sleep during the day or evenings as the work hours and odd meal times pushed my circadian rhythms completely out of whack, often I survived on just two or three hours sleep a day for the entire eleven days.

The camp was made up of four sections, each named appropriately,

Millionaires Row: contained many of the long term male and female employees.
Pussies Passage: The female section.
Tin Pan Alley: Contained most of the miners.
Skid Row: Seem to consist of the noisy drinkers and smokers.

All areas of-course had their exceptions.

I spent my first two and a half years on site living in Tin Pan Alley.
I had thick carpet on the floor, bookshelves full of books on Aviation, engineering, computer books and general Novels. Outside the small window I encouraged a native tree to grow which eventually managed to supply some shade to my outside wall protecting it from the hot afternoon sun.

One occupant rebuilt a Harley Davidson Motor cycle, complete with chrome accessories, then announced his final departure by revving it up and riding it down the entire length of the Tin Pan Alley corridor and out the door. Leaving behind a permanent deep and smelly oil stain on the rooms floor and a long black tire mark down the passage lino.

My next door neighbor was a fitter on permanent day shift and a staunch union man. His alarm clock would go off at five am every morning and buzz loudly for an entire hour, before he rose from bed and turned it off. Often his girlfriend would stay over night and I would be entertained for two or so hours most nights while the two fuck, moaned and thumped against the walls to the sound of protesting bed springs while they enjoying the advantages of cohabitation.

Further along a KIWI did shift work in the mill, his goal was to earn enough money so he and a small group could buy a large yacht and spend a few years sailing it around the world. After four years he returned to New Zealand the group bought the yacht and set off on their adventure of a life time, only to run into a rock two days after leaving port, where it sank out of sight.

The cleaners were all young females, someones girlfriend, on their days off they often climbed on the roof of the single men's quarters where there was a shallow depression and sun baked topless.

To say alcohol was a problem on site was a bit of an understatement, one worker would buy a half a carton of beer every night after work and only go to bed when it was finished.
Another gentleman got so pissed one night wandered down to Tin Pan Alley's toilet block and instead of turning right into the ablution block turned left instead, waking the startled occupant of the room as he opened his cupboard door and proceeded to piss over his clothes, ruining a very expensive camera.

In Skid Row, one occupant, a budding herpetologist was rumored to be keeping two very deadly full grown western brown snakes in his room and allowed them to wander freely about, this unsubstantiated story he said allowed him the option of never having to lock his door. When he moved out some years later I assisted him in emptying his room and took part in the search for the missing two deadly pets he reported as not having seen for a few months. One was located keeping its self warm wrapped about the coils of his small bar fridge. The second we eventually located inside an unused work boot under his bed.   

Night shift,  never a popular shift, in the late 1970's am/fm radios weren't a standard item in Cat machines neither were two way radios, the management feared we would spend time playing with the radios when we should be paying attention to operating, the thought of providing something to fight off fatigue or improve safety while locked away for 8+ hours in a dark box was still foreign to OH&S, despite managements uncaring attitude we each had a car radio we could fit along with an antenna with some sort of a clamp we could set up in a few minutes after taking off a 12v tap from one of the large batteries on the 24v machines, some operators had radios that could also play cassette tapes, that was considered the ultimate must have among operators.
Wayne, was a master of the loader despite having restricted movement in one arm, could load a 50 ton dump truck in well under a minute, in the space of a year Wayne wore out three cassette tapes of, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and could read an entire book during the night between loading trucks.
 
As a shift boss I quickly learned to pick up of subtle changes in people's attitude, it might be a change from their usual seating location in the crib-room at the start of shift, being talkative when they are usually quiet, or appearing to shy away from making direct eye contact when I  handed out the tasks at the beginning of the shift.
Having someone working night shift while being intoxicated was always a risk,
Not being a fully qualified medical practitioner I was deemed unqualified to pass judgement on a persons sobriety, understand the 1970/80's were twenty years before breath and drug testing in mining prior to commencing each shift became the norm.

In the 1980's It was up to the shift boss to make the call on how to handle the problem.

(1) we couldn't send them back to camp on suspicion of being unfit for work without proof, to obtain proof required sending the operator into Woomera 30km away at night for a blood test with a high possibility of having a collision with a Kangaroo along the way.
(2) we couldn't let them sit in the crib-room until such time they were deemed fit for work, shift bosses couldn't make the fit for work call.
(3) we couldn't let them go to work in fear of being a danger not only to themselves but to their fellow workers.
(4) we couldn't send them home with pay.     

My solution was to put them on the front end loader, here they had to pay attention, the job required them to remain alert all night as empty trucks arrived at minute intervals.
Usually after twenty minutes or so the problem child would call me up claiming to be too sick to work and suggest he may be better off having the night off, PROBLEM SOLVED.

Operators knowing I took no prisoners quickly learned to show up for shift claim they were feeling too sick to start work and would go back to camp.
This system worked, so long as they didn't attempt to push the friendship