Beyond the Black Stump
Ok, so at the moment I am literally in the middle of nowhere. I'm sitting in a communications hut(room full of phone lines, networking gear and servers) at a place called Challenger. Challenger just so happens to be the most remote mine site in Australia, going by distance to closest GPO.
It's about 200kms south-west of Coober Pedy, as the crow flies(not that I've seen any, just flies) but is about a 3-3.5 hour drive(or less than an hour by charter plane) along 170kms of dirt track to the Stuart Highway, and then a number of kms north to Coober.
Getting in and out of Challenger is easy, it's a plane flight from Adelaide, quite a bumpy one at times. I tell you, you haven't flown until you've been in an aircraft that gets blown around by the wind at the drop of a hat. Take-offs and landings feel....hairy. Anyway, depending on weight the plane may or may not have to refuel on the way up here, if it does it lands at a place called Wudinna, which is a small town pretty much in the middle of the Eyre peninsula.
Challenger itself consists of 3 main locations. The airstrip, which is basically a graded bit of dirt with plastic hats and stuff marking out where the runway is and an apron area for the planes to disembark/pick up passengers and refuel. The main chunk of Challenger is the mine itself, this consists of a big hole in the ground and the milling/refining area where all the admin, geologists and lab techs work. The other bit is the village where everyone stays, this is about 1 km away from the mine itself, get there either driving or walking along a track where the electricity cables were run.
It's not as hot as I was expecting, at least, not until mid afternoon anyway. It takes quite a while for the place to heat up during the day, mainly because it feels like it gets pretty cold at night I think. Once you get to mid afternoon its pretty bad. The wind is generally hot after blowing across the plains, and the sun is relentless, nowhere to really get any shade, most of the buildings are small transportables with no overhangs etc.
I'll post up some pictures when I get back, I've taken a few and grabbed some off the computers here. I fly back down to Adelaide tonight, apparently the afternoon flights are by far the worst ones for turbulence, lots of thermals etc to knock the plane around...
It's about 200kms south-west of Coober Pedy, as the crow flies(not that I've seen any, just flies) but is about a 3-3.5 hour drive(or less than an hour by charter plane) along 170kms of dirt track to the Stuart Highway, and then a number of kms north to Coober.
Getting in and out of Challenger is easy, it's a plane flight from Adelaide, quite a bumpy one at times. I tell you, you haven't flown until you've been in an aircraft that gets blown around by the wind at the drop of a hat. Take-offs and landings feel....hairy. Anyway, depending on weight the plane may or may not have to refuel on the way up here, if it does it lands at a place called Wudinna, which is a small town pretty much in the middle of the Eyre peninsula.
Challenger itself consists of 3 main locations. The airstrip, which is basically a graded bit of dirt with plastic hats and stuff marking out where the runway is and an apron area for the planes to disembark/pick up passengers and refuel. The main chunk of Challenger is the mine itself, this consists of a big hole in the ground and the milling/refining area where all the admin, geologists and lab techs work. The other bit is the village where everyone stays, this is about 1 km away from the mine itself, get there either driving or walking along a track where the electricity cables were run.
It's not as hot as I was expecting, at least, not until mid afternoon anyway. It takes quite a while for the place to heat up during the day, mainly because it feels like it gets pretty cold at night I think. Once you get to mid afternoon its pretty bad. The wind is generally hot after blowing across the plains, and the sun is relentless, nowhere to really get any shade, most of the buildings are small transportables with no overhangs etc.
I'll post up some pictures when I get back, I've taken a few and grabbed some off the computers here. I fly back down to Adelaide tonight, apparently the afternoon flights are by far the worst ones for turbulence, lots of thermals etc to knock the plane around...