Alliance Mar 24 (Esco a/w)
Digger Man

Digger Man Blog

by Nick Drew  |  Sun 28 Jul 2013

Michael Bullock’s earthmoving adventure continues Down Under

In this post, we catch up with Michael Bullock, our Englishman down-under, taking a look at some of the latest kit he has been lucky enough to operate, as his Australian experience continues.

Michael Bullock’s earthmoving adventure continues Down Under
After Michael completed his assignment with Leighton Contractors, he took six weeks off and headed from Western Australia, to Sydney for the Xmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations, and as one can imagine, he had a fantastic time! At the start of this year, Leightons offered Michael a new job on Barrow Island, working on the LNG (Natural Gas) project, with a very generous salary on offer. Sadly for Michael, the main client Chevron had specified no temporary visa holders could work on the site, and with Michael being on a backpacker work visa at the time, he was unable to start there. After realising the potential pay details, Michael described himself as being “gutted”. As such it was back to the drawing board for Michael, applying for a few jobs online. After a couple of days the phone rang and a new start was arranged for the end of January, with a mining and bulk earthworks contractor. Michael started on a Caterpillar 330 hydraulic excavator as seen above, performing some batter trimming and drainage works, and also some spells on some small Cat D6’s, which Michael described as fun, bearing in mind that he has previously been spending time on the massive D11’s! Michael then moved on to a Hitachi Zaxis 670, which was one of two models on site doing similar duties. Michael was then posted on to a 70 tonne class Volvo EC700C, which he described as “A great machine to drive, very smooth and powerful with it. I was loading a fleet of 40 tonne ADT’s, three generous bucketful’s from the EC700C and the trucks are full!” A few months later Michael was put to work on another 70 Tonne class machine, this time from the Caterpillar stable. The Cat 365 was engaged in loading clay, into ADT’s for dam construction. Michael also spent a month at the controls of a Hitachi EX1200 for a local mine, where he was loading a fleet of Cat 777 rigid dump trucks and various 40 tonne ADT’s. Michael said, “The Hitachi EX1200 was a big beast compared to a Takeuchi TB016 that I was on when I first started operating just 5 years ago! Michael has been extremely lucky with the variety of machines he gets a chance to operate in Australia. For an Englishman with a passion for kit, it’s a dream come true moving around the mines, operating a whole host of different excavators and bulldozers. One of these dozers was a Caterpillar D6R LGP (Low Ground Pressure), which the locals refer to as “swampy dozers”. In this shot that looks like a scene from a lunar landscape, Michael was performing hill batter work and “erosion” tidying up. In this photo, we see one of three Cat D8T’s on site in action. Michael was pushing some large oversize cap rock over the edge of the tip area. In this shot, we see a Cat D10R and a D11R parked up for “smoko” break. This shot of the two dozers side by side just shows how much bigger the 110 tonne D11 is when compared to its 70 tonne smaller brother the D10. Michael spent some time on the D11R pushing in a new haul road. This particular D11R has a power upgrade on it, with its twin turbo V8 engine churning out around 1000hp compared to the 900hp for a standard D11. It certainly looks like Michael has a decent blade full of clay in this shot! Michael has also had a chance to operate some motor graders, like this Caterpillar 16M, with which he was tidying up the haul roads and pit floor for the ADT’s. If Michael ever decides to come back to England, he will virtually be able to name his price having gained so much experience on this type of kit! During Michael’s time on the grader, the Hitachi EX1200 was moving a large gravel stockpile, so he was in cleaning up his mess from the overspill.  A Bell B40D, badged as Hitachi AD400, gets 2 decent buckets and it’s full. Larger rigid haul trucks could not be used, due to the steep, narrow haul road. Last but not least, here is a picture of Michael stood next to another D11R. This “beast” as Michael describes her, has the 20ft wide semi U-blade and triple shank ripper setup. Michael has been operating this particular machine full time for 4 weeks now, ripping cap rock, setting up benches for the diggers, new haul roads, and he will probably be on it for a while. Commenting on these giant pieces of earthmoving kit Michael said, “A while back the 3rd D11 with the same semi U-blade, went side by side with me, and we moved an incredible amount of dirt in such a small space of time, they really are awesome machines.” Michael’s backpacker one year temporary work visa expired in June, but his current company have sponsored him on a four year work visa, which appears to be a great vote of confidence in the lad. Michael said, “ I do miss England, but the money, weather, scale of jobs and equipment I get to operate on a daily basis, is simply in a different league!” I would like to add, stick with it Michael, it all looks amazing to me and I’m sure our readers would echo my sentiments. You are clearly living the dream and at the end of the day, there is not much worth coming back to England for these days. Good luck for the future, and I look forward to covering some more of your adventures again soon here on the Digger Man Blog.  

Loads more