After living in Tin Pan Alley (Single men's quarters) for a little over two and a half years I brought a 31 foot Caravan and with my wife moved into the small Caravan Park on site. As well as the caravan a 25ft transportable building was also supplied with each caravan site to provide additional accommodation space, the caravan park was located about 5km south of the Mill, near what was called the Town Center.
Two years later I was allocated a staff house along with a 14 hour work day,
The Town Center was a large community building where pictures were shown a few times a week, it housed a very basic store, for grocery items. a good size swimming pool, and a grassed sports oval that kept the kangaroos in the area well fed, their droppings becoming one of the dangers to avoid when being tackled to the ground during a football match.
Next to the swimming pool was single teacher, multi class primary school, children entering secondary school were transported by bus 30 km into Woomera each day.
As you approached the Town Center and the school, located on the side of the road was the usual road side signage warning of children crossing the road or playing in the area.The sign also had a speed restriction.
Below the sign someone had placed a second sign that read,
"ANY CHILD KILLED ON THIS ROAD WILL NEED TO BE INSTANTLY REPLACED BY THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE".
This sign could be read two separate ways, though most saw it as humorous, some never got the ironic message.
The Mount Gunson Football team played and trained on the Oval and were reasonably successful in the district. After winning a premiership one year a few of the members of the team went to the famous SPUD'S Road House in Pimba after it closed one night, Spud kept a pet camel near by, as a tourist attraction, the team members crept into the pen and painted the unsuspecting dromedary in the team football colours.
A road sign at the top of the hill as you headed back toward the mill from the Town Center indicted the road, "slippery when wet" this also carried the message, "BEWARE OF GRUESOME" referring to a nick name and the driving habits of one of the many characters on site who had a habit of falling off the road.
In mining operators egos often become inflated as they gain new skills or become proficient at operating a particular machine or performing a task. It's all part of being a macho man, and the natural competitiveness of people having, in their mind demonstrated their superior skills.
Any operator displaying or acting superior in mining is usually taken as a good indication that trouble is not far away as these operators will often push the boundaries of safety, in search of new conquests, or in an effort to display their superior skill.
In actual fact the best and usually the most productive equipment operators are always the "quiet achievers" those who have nothing to prove and simply get on with the task in hand.
When I first became involved in mining the top operators wore fancy scrollwork leather cowboy boots, RM. Williams peg tight jeans and a western style shirt along with a tired well worn dusty cowboy hat.
Cowboys, seldom shaved unless going to town, they could, out smoke, out drink and out talk anyone in the bar.
Some Cowboys because of their chain smoking and total lack of personal hygiene often out stank the local goat population as well, as they spent very little time or effort maintaining themselves, or keeping their working environment clean, preferring to spend the working day operating an expensive machine while waiting to knock off so they could top up their hangover.
As earth moving machinery became more and more expensive the management and company directors began to look in detail at the operating costs and began to require operators to be more intelligent and to show they care not only for the machine but for the health and welfare of the company as well.
Starting in the1990's and becoming compulsory by the 2000's mines began requiring operators to pass both a drug and alcohol test each day prior to commencing work, effectively ending the reign of the rooting tooting Cowboys.
Not that they had vanished completely, Cowboys were quickly replaced by a new superior operator the, Prima Donna, a new breed of ego powered Macho men, who liked to also push the boundaries. Working out in the gym and drinking powdered encrustation supplements in the misguided quest to burn off every ounce of fat in an endless and financially expensive pursuit of the elusive body beautiful.
Like kids, occasionally we would come across a worker who always had trouble getting up early most mornings, they would lay in bed till the last possible minute when someone would bang on their door when they finally rose they would rush about to get dressed, and ready for work, often holding up the rest of the crew who were much better organised and a little pissed off having to wait for him every morning.
One of the crew dropped in to see me and ask how he could change the workers attitude.
Early the next morning the crew watched as I knocked on the workers door who after acknowledging the wake up call simply did as usual rolled over and went back to sleep.
I returned a few minutes later with the garden hose and put it in his hand as he lay in bed then went out and turned the tap on.
From then on his early morning calls were always accompanied with a short length of garden hose being placed in his hand in bed, leaving him with the unknown question of whether the hose was the real or fake one.
One of the mine shift crew had three operators who worked and played together, they arrived on shiny trail bikes taking a shorter cross country environmental destroying route and gloatingly beating the others who used the conventional roads. After work their shortcut enabled them to be home and enjoying a beer five or ten minutes before the rest of the crew arrived. This ability somehow this gave them an air of smug superiority.
A little while later I notice I was regularly arriving home long before the three riders wing dinged their way noisily down the road and into camp via their well traveled cross country shortcut even though I left work a half an hour after their departure
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| The short cut bike trail and crop location. |
Curious, one day I decided to walk their bike trail where I easily discovering their marijuana crop, hidden close by among a grove of Northern Cypress (Mowantjie Willauwar) and thus answering the question of their delay.
Management decided to simply keep an eye on them along with one or two others we knew also into quiet horticulture, the idea being it kept them occupied and out of trouble.
The employment dept simply listing their job prospects as never to be re-employed or promoted.
As the crops aged and developed, a tiny amount of Glyphosate was often quietly added to the plants water supply.
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