MONDAY 25 SEPTEMBER     NORTH POINT CAMP

It had now been confirmed that P would be the Site Supervisor here, K at RV2, with R overseeing the whole lot as Project Manager. I had already figured out, just in his few days of work to date, that P was much more organized and efficient than K, so it was smart to have him running the site that was ahead of the other, and thus ironing out at least some issues and problems along the way.

John had managed to persuade head office to set up company accounts with the local businesses he already knew we would be using often, like Bridgestone, Repco, the Hedland Emporium.

BB, K and some of the engineering contractors were still at RV 2, doing site preparation there. They had asked R to arrange to send down some machines and things that were needed . John was asked to drive the old Acco tip truck down there with that load. He was pleased at the chance to go to RV2 for the first time, and have a change from trips to Hedland. Actually, he could have done with a full day on site as the paperwork associated with his Safety Officer role needed work on organizing and filing!

Unfortunately, John decided to be a bit adventurous and take what seemed to be the shorter route south – along the maintenance road for the BHP railway, that he heard talk about, and which was the later part of the way to access RV2. He thought he would do it from here, rather than take the highway south to the Marble Bar/Hillside turn off, which was the normal way. Always one for exploring, John!

Rough location of RV2 – just north of Redmont Camp

But he did not clear this with R – or anyone, first – and duly set off. Unfortunately, what he had assumed – God knows why – to be the rail access track, was not. The BHP rail access track, in fact, very logically, ran alongside the BHP railway, which we both knew was a few kms further east of our locations.

We had, in driving between the camp and the highway, crossed a somewhat roughly graded line. For some reason, John decided this was the access track, and headed off south on it, with the loaded Acco. It was, we discovered later, the marked line that the FMG railway would take. It would have been a challenge for a 4WD vehicle – the Acco had no hope and John was soon stuck. He had no option but to walk back to the site – a few kms – confess his folly to R and get him to take out one of the machines that could pull the Acco back to the road.

Then John continued on his trip to RV2 – via the sealed main highway and then the BHP access track, south of the Hillside road. This was, incidentally, the only part of that access track that FMG related vehicles had permission to be on! He was away for much of the day. He reported to me that the RV2 site was located in rougher terrain – among some low hills – and felt much more isolated.

RV2 access track

I just kept my rather embarrassed head down at my work and hoped R realized I was not responsible for John’s foolishness. Later, when we were alone at the van, I took him to task, asking him where on earth logic and common sense had departed to!

I had to establish contact with a quarrying company in Hedland, on behalf of the engineering company, and arrange for delivery of gravel needed for their cement batching plant.

Today, I learned about a thing called a Variation Order – which I was to get to know very closely in the months ahead. This was to claim extra money above the contracted amount, for unforeseen variations to the work and contract. My first encounter with this came when one of our men had to clear a fire break around the site perimeter. Such had not been originally specified, but it was now agreed that it was necessary. Hence, I had to prepare a Variation Order to go to head office for them to process and deal with FMG over.

I decided I could really get to like this work. The detail appealed.

BB wanted his own 4WD, which was here because he had driven here, relocated to Broome airport, after he flew out of Hedland tomorrow. From there, he and his family would be able to collect it, at some future time, after flying in from Alice Springs via Darwin – there was a direct Darwin to Broome service.

There was some discussion about how this could be done. It was settled that John would drive the vehicle to Broome – some 700kms – stay there a night, then catch a bus back to Hedland, where someone, probably me, would collect him. Just a pity for John that the country between Hedland and Broome was so tedious to drive through.

It looked like our company would now be employing H, the manager of the Fly Camp. He had approached BB to see if there was a job for him. I didn’t know why he wanted the move – maybe he thought the Fly Camp role would end soon, maybe the pay was better. In a sense, once the Fly Camp had been set up, there was not a great deal for him to do anyway.

WEDNESDAY 20 SEPTEMBER     NORTH POINT CAMP

The nights here cooled down a bit, which was pleasant. The days were hot – into the 30’s.

The camp generator, which was a constant background noise, went off about 4am this morning. The silence woke me up! There had been some wind through the night, which made the shade cloth and tarp flap around a bit.

When I checked phone in the morning, had a text reply from daughter. So phone had worked last night. I was pleased – did not feel quite so isolated now.

View to west from RV1 site – access road.

I did the room schematic and recorded where our people were staying. An ongoing task would be to keep up to date with the movements of our staff and subbies and liase with the FMG contracted staff who ran the Fly Camp, to ensure they had space available for them.

Emailed a copy of the Excel spread sheet with building numbers off to M at head office, along with yesterday’s Activity Sheet. Still wasn’t sure I was completing this properly.

As requested, I collected the men’s pay sheets for sending to Head Office (HO). One of the men, Mc, was flying out tomorrow for his week off. He had been here since the beginning. I had to tell him his flight times, as arranged by HO. I gave him a hard copy of this that had come through on the fax and also put one in his file. In my previous “proper” career, we had been meticulous about keeping every note made and every bit of information about each student, in their file – just in case something came back years later, to try and bite us on the bum. It was just second nature to me to file any relevant thing here.

The two high ups from FMG were back again today, along with their Port Hedland head person. John inducted him.

At HO’s request, I had to chase up K’s record book and invoices he’d received while he’d been in charge of the show here for the past few weeks. He was a very unorganized person, it seemed and had no idea where these might be. It eventually turned out that Mc had them.

BB told me to find out and list who had the various keys and spare keys for the company’s plant and equipment on site here. I found this hard to do – more poor organization meant no one seemed to know!

BB left today – he was driving his own vehicle.

Fly Camp tea tonight was corned beef, mash, peas and carrots, zucchini and squash in a white sauce, followed by chocolate muffins. I would not record any more meal details – had done enough to give a representative sample of the quality of meals we received. To date, there had been ample quantity and I hoped that would continue as the camp became fuller.

TUESDAY 19 SEPTEMBER     NORTH POINT CAMP

I worked 6am to 6.30pm.

John had to take some people to the afternoon plane out of Hedland. He left our site at 2.30 and got back to camp at 7.30pm. I was so happy we were being paid by the hour!

The big event of today was that the comms man, working remotely from Alice Springs, somehow got the internet working! Yay! But the printer was still not working, though. But at least, with the photocopier, internet and fax, I could do much of the stuff needed.

One of the first documents through from head office, when the fax was working, was a document for me on company reporting procedures. These related to:

* Delivery dockets for buildings being brought to the site. It seemed that everything would be portable and made elsewhere. The docket process varied depending on whether the buildings came on a company truck or via another transport company. Delivery dockets came in duplicates and triplicates – why make it simple?

* Building numbers – every building delivered should have a company serial number on it and a manufacturer’s number. These were to be recorded as they came and sent daily to head office. (I wondered just how many would be coming each day?) Of course, the only way to make sure such numbers were correct on the paperwork, was to trot outside and play hunt the numbers on said buildings.

* A Daily Activity Report was to be completed and faxed to Head Office each day. Something else I had to figure out. I could think of some things that came under that heading, but some of them were certainly not the company’s business!

* Weekly Milestone Progress Reports were to be completed each Sunday and faxed through to head office. Not by me, I hoped……..Milestone? Progress?

* Milestone Completion Certificate – to be completed as soon as it was considered that the Activities had been achieved, and faxed to Head Office. This would support the company’s Tax Invoice to FMG. These had to be countersigned by a representative from the FMG Team. (Worry about all that later, since nothing looked like being completed for a while yet.)

Yes, well……For someone with no prior knowledge of the building and projects industries, these instructions raised more questions than they answered!  I just had to hope that all would become clear in time, and before I stuffed up something important.

Camp locations (Zoom, current). Shows the Great Northern Highway, the now completed railway, only a rough graded line when we started; scars where Fly Camp and RV1 were once built.

Some of the instructions the secretary back in Darwin had tried to give me, had related to delivery dockets filing and keeping records of same. I could not really follow her system then, but decided now that from what I had understood, it was unnecessarily convoluted and that I would work it out for myself. She was dealing with different sorts of deliveries up there, anyway.

I decided to tackle the easy seeming things first. Faxed my updated contacts list to Alice Springs, along with a $3000 bill from a Hedland forklift company. Hoped someone there knew how same had been incurred, because I didn’t – it was just lying around in a heap of papers on a desk.

I found a template document amongst the papers I’d been given in Darwin, for Daily Activity Report. Aha – meant to be a summary of work done and by whom, and any other relevant information, like accidents.  So filled that in as best I could – not really knowing what work had taken place the day before, who was even working here, and there not being anyone I could ask. That information was going to have to come to me, somehow, in the future.

I phoned the Shire to notify them that we had started site work. Despite my reminder yesterday, the boss had not done so.

Several times, the boss asked me to make phone calls to check on things – and I really had no idea what I was asking about! But I was definitely learning fast.

I decided to tackle head on the business of the building serial numbers. A few buildings had already been delivered, before we had access to the site, and these had been put down in the parking area at Fly Camp. I made a start by walking around them and finding the plates with the numbers on and recording same.

Already delivered buildings

With John’s help, I organized a spreadsheet to keep track of these records. I would be able to update it as more buildings rolled in. There would be a lot to keep tabs on, as RV1 was to have 70 four room sleeping portables alone, plus all the other buildings for things like a gym, an ice room, first aid room and so on.

I had found a diagram of the proposed village layout, in the office, and been amazed when I studied it, at the facilities that were going in, and at the sheer scale of it all. And the company was putting in a second one of the same, some 150kms south of here – RV2. It had been explained to me that this would be staggered a few weeks behind RV1, so that sub contractors would finish their work at RV1 and then stage down to the other site. There was a Fly Camp set up down there too – South Point – but I gathered it was even more primitive than ours.

Some of the big guys from FMG visited the site. As John had gone to Hedland, I had to induct them onto site. Talk about the blind leading the blind!

The Fly Camp boss had asked me to sort out which of our staff were occupying which rooms at the Fly Camp – and to work with them about keeping track of this as workers moved in and out. So I got a drawing of the camp from him this evening, so I could make up a room allocation schematic.

R arrived, having driven from Darwin – good to see him again.

Tonight’s camp meal featured a meat curry and two types of meat stew, rice, pappadums, Greek salad, curried cooked green beans, sour cream, yoghurt, followed by some sort of peach crumble. Really good food, at least.

Discovered that our mobile works – a bit – outside, at night. A matter of wandering about out there, keeping one eye alert for any bars on the phone and the other alert for stray death adders. Snakes hunt at night, don’t they? I texted daughter to test it out.

Sunsets here were pretty spectacular. In fact, the whole environment was beginning to grow on me. I really liked returning to Fly Camp from the site, with the low hills of whatever range it was, in the distance.

TUESDAY 12 SEPTEMBER     HOWARD SPRINGS

We were back at the office at 8am, for another session, that lasted until 10.30am.

Another $175 earned!

John spent the time being taken through yet more manuals and procedures. I tried to gain more understanding of the paperwork and procedures. It still remained daunting, and scary.

We then raced around, doing all sorts of odds and ends. After weeks of doing very little, it was now much frantic activity.

John finished injecting his timber and getting it wrapped for the journey south. It would be kept like that and not despatched until we phoned them to send it – when we were home again to receive it.

I bought fish to stock up the van freezer, figuring that might be the hardest protein to get, out in the bush. I already had some meat and chicken in there.

R had been so vague about our accommodation arrangements at the site, so I did not even know if we were being fed, or given supplies.

We were to report to someone – called H – at the fly camp, whatever that was.

Even the directions were vague! R could not show me where we were going on my Road Atlas map! We were to take the Great Northern Highway south from Port Hedland, for about 100kms, then take a dirt road to the left, and the camp was up there. There should be a sign at the corner! The “about” part concerned me; and how many dirt roads to the left were there likely to be in such an area?

The general area shown to us on the Road Atlas map, where we were supposed to be going

At a luggage shop at Casuarina, bought a large overnight bag – one that would do for us both if we had to fly home at Xmas.

Got some groceries. Returned the library books. I went to a book exchange and stocked up.

Refuelled at Coolalinga – $1.35cpl.

We did most of the camp pack up.

I cooked up our stocks of tomatoes, potatoes and onions, so we could take those through quarantine at the WA border. I gave produce I couldn’t use to the guy behind and threw some out.

It was a very tiring day.

Meanwhile, work on clearing the construction site had begun

MONDAY 11 SEPTEMBER     HOWARD SPRINGS

We were at the company office from 8am till 2.30pm, with no breaks.

6.5 hours each, at $35 an hour, meant that we had just earned a total of $455!  It seemed quite unreal.

It was obvious that we were both embarking on a really, really steep learning curve!

R took John through all sorts of safety related stuff – manuals, stuff about chemicals and their handling and storage.

We were both told about some of the site procedures. It was all routine for them, but totally new to us. John was told that, on site, there was a Toolbox Meeting, every morning, before work, where the men would go over what they would do for the day, and any special safety procedures they needed to note.

The secretary tried to show me some of the office and paperwork procedures. She tried very hard to be helpful, and fortunately gave me a lot of material that I could take away and try to digest at a slower pace. I couldn’t admit it to her, but I was quite at sea with the way she zipped around different pages and displays on the computer.

She said she’d had to go out and buy everything – apart from furniture and machines – that would be needed to set up two offices at the sites, and these supplies were being trucked down.

Later in this year, I obtained photos of the area of the first construction  site, before work commenced there. The top photo showed the access road from the Great Northern Highway, that ran east-west and connected with the service road that ran along the length of BHP’s rail line from its mines near Newman, to Port Hedland. The fly camp (temporary accommodation)  could be seen in the distance.

The lower photo showed the site of the actual camp that the company would build. It was to look very different a few months later! The photos were taken early in August.

R issued us with work shirts – orange, high-vis ones, with the company logo on.

There was so much technical type paperwork and terminology to get my head around.

R seemed fairly vague about conditions and accommodation where we were going. He said something about there being – or would be – a fly camp. That meant nothing to us, then. It obviously was not a holiday venue for blowflies! We were to find out that it was a temporary camp – put up “on the fly”, by the Fortescue team based in Port Hedland – to house workers, as needed. It took me a little time to work out that it was not the responsibility of our company, at all – that company workers were guests there, just like aboriginal heritage advisors from local communities, or environmental survey people, from wherever.

I was very pleased that we would be taking our own accommodation with us, but had no idea if things like power were available, or any bathroom facilities!

I was very hesitant to reveal my total ignorance by asking questions about things like this!

We learned that R was actually to oversee the entire Pilbara project. There would be Site Supervisors – J at Site 1, P at Site 2 (though this changed around soon after we arrived there, because P would be later arriving). In the Alice Springs office I would be dealing mostly with V, who was co-ordinating the FMG projects. M kept track of where buildings were and arranged staff air flights. K did Personnel and paid accounts and salaries.

We were invited to R’s home for a BBQ tea tonight. That was nice of him.

Most importantly, today we were told that we were to drive ourselves down there ASAP. The little training we were getting here would have to suffice – it was all systems go down there, now. The company would pay our fuel and accommodation costs in getting there – nice.

As soon as we finished at the office, raced off, grabbed a Subway late lunch, then went to a specialist work gear shop to buy ourselves the steel capped boots we had been told were mandatory, all the time, on site. They were far more comfortable than I had expected. Also costly – some $120 for each of us.

We must wear long sleeved shirts, long trousers and steel caps, on the work site.

I went and bought books on Excel and other Office programs I thought I needed to quickly try to learn!

John went to the landscaping place and bought more African mahogany – on the strength of the money earned today – $400 worth.

The evening meal at R’s place, at Palmerston, was very pleasant. They have a huge outdoor living area, under cover, surrounded by lush green gardens – as is the norm up here.

R’s daughter, who we’d already met as she was the secretary at the Darwin office, was there, and his wife, who had recently set up in business as a property manager.

Through the course of the evening, a clear message was conveyed to John – they wanted a compliant safety person, rather than a really pedantic one, because they did not want any hold ups to the work! Maybe that explained why they hired someone with no formal qualifications in the field – although as a former school Principal, John had been familiar with some aspects of such matters.

It seemed that R expected to be down there on site, at some stage, managing the work from there rather than totally from Darwin.

We heard on the radio that there were bad bushfires down around Adelaide River. Hoped the highway didn’t get cut.