Girl in love with rocks

Holy Moly!

It was a bit hard getting up this morning! The bones aching and the muscles complaining – not to mention the bladder with it’s private problems and the…..well……I hate getting old and being so unfit!

Plus it’s cold…..and I’m tired…..(*enter whiney voice!*)……

But once we got to the drilling site all the whininess evaporated and I remembered that I am HAVING THE BEST TIME! We drilled two holes and by the end I was able to identify serpentinite confidently. And thankfully there was no asbestos, although we did still wear masks just in case.

Today’s drill site was right next to the quarry, and as expected we found a lot of magnesite. If you look closely you can see clumps of magnesite just sitting on top of the ground. This paddock would make for some very healthy cows me thinks!

There was a sense of elation as we completed the last hole. You can see the Long-Suffering Delightful Alfy looking especially elated! Jason just looks hungover!

Again, the countryside is just amazing in Young. The paddocks are so lush and green despite not having much rainfall. I love the way the hills display a patchwork of fields with outcrops of granite tors! Just beautiful!

I think that Jason won’t be coming back as a fieldy! But the experience has been great. I’m unsure he fully understands why I love this job, but at least he will have a better idea of what I do for a living! I think the greatest lesson I have been able to teach my children is that is never too late to follow your dreams! I fell in love with rocks much later in life and decided to go back to uni and study, and despite my lack of fitness and experience, I am having an absolute ball!

I am so proud of my all female geo team! My Long-Suffering Mentor -the good Doctor, and the Long-Suffering Delightful Althea (Alfy) – we work so well together, helping each other and complimenting each others strengths. I can truly say I have found great friends as well as work colleagues, and I really do hope we get to work together again.

Tomorrow is a long drive home, but the prospect of not having to free-pee and experiencing stage-fright because of the cows watching while you squat – or getting nettle rash on your nethers……well…..let’s just say it will be nice to be home!

OH GOD I AM SO TIRED!…….

But I am having so much fun! Today upon arriving at the drill site after having to stop for Cranberry Juice and Ural (don’t ask – it happens to me in the field all the time!), I immediately located a potential free-pee tree…..but as I got closer it kind of lost points in the rating……you can see why!

Yeah…..I think that’s a dead cat – but it looks like it kinda just fell out of the tree and got stuck! It had me entranced for a while…..and then I had to choose another free-pee spot. Thank goodness for the delightful Alfy who recommended an excellent spot – which so far has been the best – I would give it 10 out of 10 as it had a particularly comfortable branch to squat on!

Anyways! Back to work! Today was a hard day’s drilling. We managed 3 holes and two of them involved potential asbestos. The call to don the “Sperm” suits was made by the delightful Alfy. Full protective gear was necessary which involved a wonderful onesie that pulled at the crotch like you wouldn’t believe, masks, glasses and gloves. The onesie has a hoodie which needs to go UNDER your hard hat. It involves an itemised and structured order of donning……onesie (footsie over boots), mask on, hoodie up, hard hat on, safety glasses over the mask – and then gloves……

The final result was the following…..

We looked like Teletubbies…..

So after making the effort to be WorkSafe (safety first!)…..the drill then blocked up on the bloody bedrock……and so we all proceeded to fall asleep…..in full protective gear! And then I started getting stiff…..so I started stretching…..

Honestly it looked like a nuclear holocaust site…….!

Anyways, we managed to get some drill logs recorded without contamination from potentially deadly substances, and after all the excitement, the weather began to roll in providing some beautiful colour changes to the sky.

Today was a good day…….! I’ll leave you with a photo of me being a real geologist! I get distracted by the samples, especially after I have washed them. I like to get up close and personal with the hand lens, and sometimes it appears as though I’m about to jump in the sieve! I’m having the BEST time!

The countryside is just stunning……

I think I’m falling in love with outback NSW. The colours change with the sunrise, the granites cast purple glows and the sky is always changing. But today we had rolling mists, fog in the valleys…..and it was cold! Crisp and cold!

Gawd….it’s just beautiful!

We set up the drilling rig as the sun rose over the mists. The cows once again graced us with their presence – I swear the pressure of having them watch us constantly, I feel the need to break into a song and dance repeatedly. If I was a paranoid person I would think they were plotting to kill me……

We named this one Wilson……because he has a big head and well……he looks like a Wilson.

I LOVE DRILLING!!!! Watching the dirt come out of the cyclone into the bag in all it’s different coloured horizons. How exciting is it to know that we are seeing what lies 20-30 metres below the ground! And to think of how it got there, the story it has to tell about floodplains, and droughts, and volcanic eruptions, and…..and…..!

….ok….so you may think I am overreacting and it’s just dirt……but look at the rich, beautiful colour of this……

That, my friends, is a laterite! And Australia is famous for it’s beautiful rich, red laterites. Laterites are weathered rocks, and are formed by intense wet and dry periods. They are rich in iron and are really fertile for growing crops. I just love watching the different colours of the horizons as they come out of the drill core……

The team is gaining momentum now and we are working like a well rehearsed play! I thought I would include a photo of the splitter – the piece of equipment we use to “split” the sample into two equal samples, one to bag and one to analyse. It’s a heavy bugger and we are thoroughly sick of hoisting it on and off the trailer……but I have an odd affection for the bloody thing, as it is simple and reliable….something that is very underrated in the field…..!

And of course…..today’s favourite free-pee spot! I give it an 8 out of 10! Privacy was good, it had a bit of a branch to sit on while squatting, there were no nettles, but it lost points because it stunk of cows! It must be their favourite free-pee spot too!

Today was…….frustrating……!

Finally we were all set to drill. 7am – bright eyed and bushy tailed, we started out to the first drilling site – hole 1 of 10 holes, 30 metre depth per hole. So overall, the program plans to drill 300 metres. I was so eager and looking forward to learning how to do drill logs and describe the geology of drill samples. It was freezing when we arrived at the first drill site – the wind chill factor was enough to make my nose feel as though it belonged to someone else!

The cows immediately began eating the safety cones and trying to mount the trailer! We really are the biggest source of entertainment these beasts have ever had!

Watching the rig set up was really interesting, my main thoughts – “Cor it’s big!” and “I wonder if the driller will let us shoot paddy melons out the top of it!”. The rig is an air core which means the drill shoots air at a massive pressure into the ground, virtually pulverising the dirt and causing it to loosen. It is then sucked up into a cyclone where the dirt is collected. Our trusty fieldies grab the bag and weigh it (measured for how much yield in a metre).

The bag is then put through a “splitter” which splits the dirt equally into two trays – one tray is sampled, and the other is stored. The sample is analysed by the geologist, a description is recorded and a sample is stored in a chip tray.

The sample is then washed to determine what other minerals are represented and are documented. My office was set up in the back of the car. It was SO MUCH FUN! (*note the rocks stuffed into the side pockets of the Long Suffering Mentor’s vehicle!*)

It all works like a well organised and choreographed ballet……until the drill blocks up! Then it gets really, really frustrating…..and cold…..just waiting…..

And then the weather rolled in! I must say, rural Australia is absolutely beautiful when the weather turns. From out of no where came lightening and thunder, and rain, and wind……the cows didn’t seem to mind but the rig did! The mast had to be taken down as sitting in the middle of no where with a metal mast stuck up 5 metres in the air with lightening is just plain scary! So it was tools down and stand by……

It got colder and colder until eventually we became human popsicles. Having only drilled 6 metres we made the frustrating decision to call it a day. The positives of today was I learned how to log drill samples, I realised that tomorrow I needed to wear a scarf, and I found my favourite toilet spot (just the right amount of privacy, a nice low lying log to sit on, although the scratchy nettles were not a welcome feeling on one’s soft buttocks!)

The trip home verified our decision to finish up for the day! It bucketed down which is apparently great for the cherries – Young being the cherry capital of Australia. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more productive than today.

I am enjoying spending time in the outdoors with my handsome son – he might not share my enjoyment though!

Today was…….frustrating……!

Finally we were all set to drill. 7am – bright eyed and bushy tailed, we started out to the first drilling site – hole 1 of 10 holes, 30 metre depth per hole. So overall, the program plans to drill 300 metres. I was so eager and looking forward to learning how to do drill logs and describe the geology of drill samples. It was freezing when we arrived at the first drill site – the wind chill factor was enough to make my nose feel as though it belonged to someone else!

The cows immediately began eating the safety cones and trying to mount the trailer! We really are the biggest source of entertainment these beasts have ever had!

Watching the rig set up was really interesting, my main thoughts – “Cor it’s big!” and “I wonder if the driller will let us shoot paddy melons out the top of it!”. The rig is an air core which means the drill shoots air at a massive pressure into the ground, virtually pulverising the dirt and causing it to loosen. It is then sucked up into a cyclone where the dirt is collected. Our trusty fieldies grab the bag and weigh it (measured for how much yield in a metre).

The bag is then put through a “splitter” which splits the dirt equally into two trays – one tray is sampled, and the other is stored. The sample is analysed by the geologist, a description is recorded and a sample is stored in a chip tray.

The sample is then washed to determine what other minerals are represented and are documented. My office was set up in the back of the car. It was SO MUCH FUN! (*note the rocks stuffed into the side pockets of the Long Suffering Mentor’s vehicle!*)

It all works like a well organised and choreographed ballet……until the drill blocks up! Then it gets really, really frustrating…..and cold…..just waiting…..

And then the weather rolled in! I must say, rural Australia is absolutely beautiful when the weather turns. From out of no where came lightening and thunder, and rain, and wind……the cows didn’t seem to mind but the rig did! The mast had to be taken down as sitting in the middle of no where with a metal mast stuck up 5 metres in the air with lightening is just plain scary! So it was tools down and stand by……

It got colder and colder until eventually we became human popsicles. Having only drilled 6 metres we made the frustrating decision to call it a day. The positives of today was I learned how to log drill samples, I realised that tomorrow I needed to wear a scarf, and I found my favourite toilet spot (just the right amount of privacy, a nice low lying log to sit on, although the scratchy nettles were not a welcome feeling on one’s soft buttocks!)

The trip home verified our decision to finish up for the day! It bucketed down which is apparently great for the cherries – Young being the cherry capital of Australia. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more productive than today.

I am enjoying spending time in the outdoors with my handsome son – he might not share my enjoyment though!

Oh My Giddy Aunt! I have had the BEST DAY EVER!!!!

This morning after packing the car, my Long Suffering Mentor surprised me with a visit to the Young Magnesite mine. It was so good to get out of the warehouse and see some landscape. Young, NSW is stunningly beautiful with it’s rolling hills, green pastures and beautiful gum trees. We saw a lot of kangaroos and wallabies, but no wild pigs, much to Jason’s relief!

Donning our hot pink hard hats, we met up with Kevin, who has been running the mine forever! The magnesite mine consists of rock estimated to be up to 30 million years old and produces magnesite which is the highest grade in the Southern Hemisphere and the second highest grade in the whole world! Magnesite is used for many medicinal purposes and also can be used as food additives for animals. I have NEVER seen anything like what I saw today. There are lots of photos so I’ll go through step by step….

Magnesite in it’s raw form looks like a bulbous piece of white poo. But when you split it open it contains a pure white chalky powder that gives us superpowers when we ingest it!

Kevin drove us around the mine site displaying piles and piles and piles of magnesite in it’s different grades – from 99.9% pure grade to 88% which is used for animal food additives. You could definitely tell the difference in the grades just by the colour of the piles.

Kevin then drove us down into the mine to see the magnesite in situ. I do believe I fell down Alice in Wonderland’s hole and found myself in a magical place…..much to Kevin’s amusement! I began running from one wall face to another digging out samples and identifying the different horizons. It was wonderfully quiet and every now and then you would just hear a trickle of dirt and rocks falling from spaces. Kind of disconcerting but exciting at the same time!

Holy Shit! Look at the fault line in that horizon! You can see the crack and fold and the slump! This picture is like a historic record. You can see where the pressure from the fault line has caused the magnesite to become compressed and therefore a higher grade of mineral. Mother Nature creates something useful from a natural occurrence.

Layers and layers of different horizons of magnesite, serpentinite (the green stuff), and periodic lumps of soapy stone. When the sun came out the wall changed colour and I stood mesmerised by the natural painting in front of me.

In the middle of the mine was a bright aqua lake (apparently it is that colour because of the cod poo – or so my Long Suffering Mentor says). I swear if I had a snorkel I would have gone for a dive…..

I was in paradise……

With much sadness I was forced to leave by my Long Suffering Mentor who insisted we had to actually go do some of the work that we were being paid to do (sigh!) so after saying goodbye to my new best friend, Kevin, and being kindly presented with a mica and pyrite rock and an overcooked magnesite (a clinker!), we set off to find the rest of our Geology team who were waiting for us at the first drill site…..

So….we got lost…..several times…..and had to call the ever-faithful Althea….several times…..for directions. In our last ditch effort, we came hurtling along another dirt road only to notice in the nearby field a truck with a flashing light surrounded by cows! I was having a giggle when we quickly realised that the truck was actually the rest of our Geo team, who were being accosted by a huge herd of very inquisitive cows. I fell over laughing at the looks of the fieldies faces – Jason was actually hiding in the trailer to escape the huge snotty noses and salty tongues. The cows stood and watched us make a cup of tea, almost as if waiting for us to entertain them.  Instead we were being entertained by a chorus of moos and squeaks, and periodic dry humping!

Jase was not amused……

So, with some occupational disturbances (i.e. the driller didn’t turn up!), we left the cows to their own devices and stored the trailer where it couldn’t be eaten (for some reason the indicator lights were a real delicacy!) and headed back to the apartment for a full day of drilling tomorrow. Hopefully the cows will allow us to do some work, having already eaten the pink bunting on the hole flags that we had pegged out yesterday.

Today I had the BEST day!

Today we had to get rid of the huge bulka bags – the ones that were chocka block full of dirt! The process of doing this involved raising the bulka bag onto a forklift and moving it over a tipper truck. We then cut the bottom of the bag and emptied it into the tipper truck……sounds easy huh?

It was dirty, nasty, dust up the nose, eyes streaming, dust in every crevice and orifice. It was also the most AWESOME job in the world. The colours of the different dirt was amazing – some vivid reds, some powder mustard yellows, some bright greens. Watching the stream of dirt falling from the bag was like a beautiful waterfall.

Then we got to pick through the dirt to find different interesting rocks. Even the rent-a-fieldy started finding me great samples. The job ended up taking a lot longer than it should have with us digging through the tipper truck finding bits of cobalt, manganese and serpentinite.

The dust cloud was awesome but it went EVERYWHERE! We had to wear dust masks and we all got incredibly dirty! But it was SO MUCH FUN! The end result was an extremely well ordered warehouse, complete with a thick layer of dust over absolutely everything, including my kettle. But we got there in the end! YAY!

Tomorrow we get to visit a Magnesite mine before we start drilling at our first site!

-7 degrees celsius….feels like -11.4 degrees celsius……

Are you KIDDING ME!!! It was so cold I couldn’t feel my face when I walked to the shed! There were frosticles everywhere! Even the locals looked slightly surprised! When I was moving rubbish around from outside the shed the front of my shirt was covered in ice – it looked like I was turning into a snowman!

Another day at the warehouse and today it finally felt like we were getting somewhere. The shelves are organised, and although things are not in numerical order they are at least all in the same location. Just one more day and it should be all finished. The final job will be a little bit like tetris, moving things around to find the right fit, and to make room to fit another 9-10 pellets of sample bags which will be collected during this drilling program.

To reward myself, I went off for lunch at the famous Wilder’s bakery in Young! I’m really missing my mum at the moment so I decided to have a creamed apple turnover as it is her very favourite thing. I can verify that the bakery is wonderful and the cakes are yummy!

Having stayed at the warehouse to work while my Long Suffering Mentor went out and pegged the drill site, I was a little disappointed I didn’t get an opportunity to scope the site and situate myself in readiness for a professional conduct in the participation of a drilling program – read : I missed out on looking for rock outcrops and smashing the hell out of them with my 15 inch sledgehammer appropriately named “Lucille”. So I was absolutely delighted when my Long Suffering Mentor arrived back at the warehouse with rock samples for my collection. They are Serpentinites, an alteration mineral originating from Dunnite, the mineral Olivine gives it the greenish colour, and it has an almost soapy look to it. Absolutely gorgeous specimens and I CANNOT WAIT to get out to the drill site and have a look!

So tomorrow will be cleaning up the last of the warehouse, and packing the equipment we need for the drilling program. My trusty field hands will be busy pre-labelling the chip trays and sample bags in readiness for the drilling. We also have a list of sample bags we have to find to take back to be assayed. Which means tomorrow may include an extremely undignified photo of me arse up in a bulka bag!

HOLY GUACAMOLE!!!

It’s cold – it is so fricking cold that even the frost flakes are cold! A start of -2.7 degrees Celcius (it would stick a dog to a tree or so my Dear Old Dad would say!) meant that I wore every single layer that I bought with me to the shed this morning, walking through Young looking like a Michelin Man with the locals looking at me with brief disdain! My brain must have frozen a bit because I couldn’t think straight until after my fourth cup of tea. There was frost on EVERYTHING! On the ground, the car, the clothesline, my bags of dirt!

So today was spent sorting big, big bulka bags of dirt, trying to make space, checking and rechecking codes against the magical list of dirt to keep and dirt to throw away, and creating more of a semblance of organisation from anarchy. We kinda feel like we are making a bit of progress – if I had more time I could make this warehouse really schmick, but time is getting away from us so my dream of having dirt bags in numerical order and code is not achievable in my time constraints as drilling starts on Tuesday. Instead I will have to settle for a nicely charted site map with approximate locations of where things are. I have a list of bags I have to find for sampling which means tomorrow I am going to be arse up in bulka bags sorting through 30-40 bags of dirt trying to find the right hole location to get dirt out of! Fun!

After a morning spent piffing bulka bags, we finally found the shelving section at the back of the warehouse containing chip trays, pulp bags and equipment we will need for the drilling program.  I will explain and post more photos tomorrow as to what these are, but the afternoon was spent moving everything, reorganising and cataloguing, and throwing out anything broken, unnecessary or stupid. Which reminds me I need to hire a big skip……

Tomorrow will be spent at the shed again doing a final sort. Monday will be spent packing and preparing for the drilling program. And then the fun begins…….

In the meantime, if I don’t die of the cold, and if my foot doesn’t explode from the cold, then I should make it home sometime next weekend…….!

Part of the trip to Young involves the cleaning out of the company storage shed. When you think storage shed you picture old filing cabinets and fax machines……but no! This storage shed is floor to ceiling dirt! Bags and bags and bags of bags of dirt inside bags! Dirt in all colours…..red, cream, green…..sparkly dirt, powdery dirt, clingy dirt! It was like dirt heaven!

…..until we had to start moving it. Then it wasn’t so nice to be around. Each bulka bag contained up to 30 plastic sample bags of dirt, each sample bag weighing up to 20kg. Which means the bulka bags weigh a HUGE amount! And there are hundreds of these bulka bags, all needing to be catalogued, moved and inventoried.

Now I am a highly organised person, who actually enjoys creating and maintaining a well organised and respectable existence! But even my anal retentive side began to shrivel somewhat at the magnitude of this inventory! Still, there’s no rest for the wicked, so today began a day of itemising and cataloguing. Having dragged along my handy field hands (aka. my son and his best friend) it came in mighty handy to have a fieldy with a fork lift ticket (thank you Lucas!) and with periodic expletives, me shouting directions and fieldy’s running here and there, chaos soon began to morph into a somewhat haphazard yet glimmer of hope in becoming a potentially organised shed full of dirt!

With several trips to the tip to dispose of bags of dirt that are no longer needed (don’t ask what they are needed for in the first place!), a significant dent was made in the content of the storage shed. Tomorrow will entail making a map of where each bulka bag is located, and then going through the chip drawers and pulp boxes to see what needs to be kept or piffed (don’t worry – it will all be explained!).

In the meantime……every time I blow my nose the tissue is representative of some Andy Warhol artwork with various colours and textures represented! Don’t worry – I won’t take a photo……!