MONDAY 27 NOVEMBER     RV1

Mid 40’s. Humid in the morning.

It was getting a bit quiet here on the work front – today only two company men, us and two electricians who did turn up.

It was discovered that the instant hot water service in the main office – which was not working and was the subject of regular complaints to me by Spotless manager, (who had tried to fix it himself) – was in fact, not wired up! That had been overlooked by the electrician at the time.

Because of the change of mind about that damned office shutter. I had to phone the shutter company and explain we no longer wanted it. But apparently there had been some change of mind about who was building it and I faxed the design diagram that A had done, to the Perth company that built our SPQ’s, to get them to make the wall up – on BB’s instructions. It might still take two or three weeks, but I ordered it to be delivered to RV1 then.

I had to phone the company that installed the air cons to see if they would agree to a local firm fixing some that had been found to be faulty, as rooms were occupied.

I chased up a copy of the letter that BB had written to FMG about the electrical spikes stuffing up some of the gear in the place – needed it for the Document Register!

I spent much of the day putting together the Building Registers. Without R here to guide me, I was rather flying blind on that. It seemed a hell of a lot of material, but I had decided to put in everything that could possibly be relevant. Times four!

Two men came in from the Perth building company to fix the weak shower bases. They did not seem real happy…..

The missing kitchen/mess curtains – which we had hunted for previously – and for which V had ordered replacements made in Alice Springs – were found in one of the containers, after all – at RV2! Who the hell put them there – and when? I had never even set eyes on them before. Had to have been K or S…..

So there would be a double lot of curtains, as the new ones were already in transit. Guess a use would be found for them somewhere……

John had to do an airport run in the morning to get the shower fixers. He had a tip run in the afternoon. He also had to buy portable gas BBQ’s for each village, gas bottles for those, fire hydrant hooks and fire signs for RV2, from the fire service company in Hedland.

The main camp generators failed twice today, so the camp water supply ran out.

At RV2, where K was back but BB still there too, one of the men went off sick and would not be fit again till next year – heat stress related, apparently. Someone on the ditch digger broke the pool pipes and that took all day to fix! That figured – K was back! There were bushfires within 2kms of the site, so the fire break was made much bigger. They were laying pipes from their bore field to the camp – still no water on there.

I had an email from boss lady. After conversation with BB at RV2, she instructed that Milestone 4 was to be signed off on today. Milestone 5 – full completion of RV1 – was to be signed when the sports court was complete, after the surfacing company was here on December 11 – N would co-ordinate that from RV2. Two extra men would come up from RV2 to work on the final punch list of defect fixing.

Her great news was that R was fit again. He was to fly to SA tomorrow, to relieve the Project Manager at the camp construction site there and get a handle on that project. Then, in about ten days, he would fly here for the final total sign off of RV1 and to get an overview of RV2 progress, before flying back to Darwin in time for Xmas. I was so pleased to hear he was OK.

She instructed that we were to work through this week and wind up the office in an orderly fashion by December 4, after which we would leave. She asked that we be on standby to fly back to RV2, in January, if needed. That needed to be decided by K and R before Xmas, depending on how far along RV2 was. Seemed like S had definitely had enough of mixing it with the workers!

December 20 was to be the travel day for all the remaining company workers, to go home for their Xmas break.

So – we were actually finishing up a bit earlier than I’d expected – the next few days could be quite a rush. But it was great that we would have time to drive home comfortably before Xmas. But we might become real FIFO workers, for a little while, next year! More money!

There had been a really nasty cloud build up through the humid day, then about 5pm a massive storm broke, with strong wind gusts, thunder, lightning and rain. A deluge, in fact. The lay down  area/carpark turned into a sea of red water and mud.

That lasted until about 9pm. Quite spectacular. This really was raw and elemental country……