Apologies for not posting for a while dear reader, but I have been rather busy. If you’ll excuse the colloquialism, I’ve had my arse hanging out. First I had to squire some overseas colleagues on mine and port visits and then I had to write a report for a court case I am expert witnessing on.
I sometimes wonder which was the harder. The first one involved extensive planning then being on the road for the best part of two weeks with flights, long drives and lots of coal dust which had to be washed away by the occasional beer. Only occasionally I have to stress because we were all alcohol tested at every site and had to draw lots to see who got drug tested at every site. The mining industry is far too serious these days. The second job involved writing a hundred words when ten would suffice in plain-speak. But we’re talking legalese. And leaving out a comma could mean the difference between a slap on the wrist and death.
The trip was quite interesting for me – 11 coal mines, four ports and seven separate meetings plus lunches and dinners spread over ten days. I say interesting because even though I’ve been in the industry for centuries I never got to visit any of these mines (apart from one) because I always worked for a competing company so the respective owners wouldn’t let me in the gate. Now I work for a steel company which buys a……I was going to say truckload of coal but while a truckload of some things, like paper clips, is a lot, for coal it’s a veritable eye-drop. Anyway, the cost of what they (I’m on contract so strictly speaking, am not an employee) buy from mines in my state every year is measured in the billions so it was nice to be treated respectfully by former competitors. Oh and the “apart from one” mentioned above was one I worked for when it was owned by one of my former employers and the less said about them, the better. One of these days that little episode will probably find its way here but I’m still looking for an amusing angle and right now that’s like looking for sincerity at the Oscars.
My visitors were from Singapore, India and Holland. All of them whip smart and experts in their respective fields but half of them had never been to Australia before so it was like herding cats. A half kilometre walk from one meeting to another in the city would see the group strung out over a hundred metres or so because photos had to be taken and walking was more accurately described as carefree meandering. And time management…pfffft.
Notwithstanding it was a very successful trip. We didn’t lose anyone despite going into a number of very large and very deep holes – that’s the most important of all success measuring criteria – and no one got hurt. The paranoia about safety in these places is bordering on the fanatical. In fact it probably is when you consider the need for a safety induction, a long sleeved shirt, a hi-vis vest, gloves, steel capped boots and a hard hat when you don’t even get out of the vehicle. Interestingly some open cut mines don’t require you to wear a hard hat because what’s going to hit you on the head – a bird? But others do. And some don’t require the boots or the gloves. My mates in production will be horrified at my devil-may-care attitude to safety but when I worked underground (as a mine geologist, not a miner) many moons ago, no one really gave a shit. And apart from the occasional mine visit nowadays most of my post-underground time is and was spent in offices and aeroplanes. I am rather a stickler for safety when it comes to flying though.
As I’ve already mentioned, either side of the mine visits I have been writing an expert witness report for a mining related litigation and the less said about that the better – literally. Legalese is a foreign language and a very wordy foreign language. If there isn’t at least one statement of the bleeding obvious in each paragraph then you’re not trying. But it pays the bills. As a mate said recently, every time he did a job like this it was another cruise for him and his wife. Not a bad way of looking at it as I wend my way wearily into the semi-retirement sunset. As if….