More Aussie adventures for our Englishman Down Under

Sun 17 May 2015

More Aussie adventures for our Englishman Down Under

For the past 10 months Michael has been working in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, at a major iron ore site for BHP. Michael takes up the story, “The company I worked for had the bulk and detail earthworks for a new 7 bay dump truck workshop for Caterpillar 793’s. We fly up to Perth on a flight which takes about 1 hour 45 minutes straight into a private airstrip 120kms north of Newman. We have been living in a very well equipped accommodation village along with 1200 other workers! This accommodation is fantastic, you get a room with en-suite complete with Foxtel TV, there is a small shop, a bar, gym and a swimming pool. It’s a FIFO contract which means fly in-fly out, our roster was 3 weeks on and one week off”. Michael’s designated machine on this job was a Caterpillar 329D hydraulic excavator seen here doing a bit of batter work.

Michael’s Irish work mate Jason Cooney is also working on this job, along with another Irish lad called William Doyle. On this job Jason was operating a Volvo G990 motor grader seen here on a cut and fill operation.

William Doyle has been operating this Caterpillar 980K seen here in action stockpiling pipe dust.

In line with Australian working laws, the construction site would shut down every 13^th day to allow workers to “rest up”. On these rest days Michael and the lads would often take the opportunity to go for a swim in the nearby Karijini National Parks, but sometimes they would take a drive south to the mining town of Newman. Newman is home to Mt Whaleback, the largest open cut iron ore mine in the Southern Hemisphere! There were some impressive static machines on display here from the bygone era at the mine. In this photo we see a shot of the “A-Team” living the Aussie dream, from left to right, Jason Cooney, William Doyle and Michael Bullock, in front of a Wabco Haulpak dump truck. This machine is the only surviving example from a fleet of 22 A and B models, that used to work the mine from 1975 – 1992.

The Haulpak was powered by a 12 cylinder two stroke General Motors EMD 645-E engine, had a cubic capacity of 126.8 litres and produced 2,475 brake horsepower. The machine had a diesel tank capacity of some 2650 litres and the truck weighed in at 190,000kgs unloaded. It carried a payload of 212,200kgs making its gross weight 402,200kgs. Michael climbed up into the seat of this old P&H face shovel and dished out some typical “truckie” abuse to his work mates about how he had to load a few more trucks before going for a pint of the amber nectar!

The main mine workings had an impressive fleet of equipment including, 7 x Liebherr 996B excavators, 4 x Hitachi 3600s, 65 x cat 793 trucks, 994 cat loaders, 1200 Komatsu loaders and probably around 10 x D10 dozers. But more on that in a future blog post.

The magazine for owners + operators

News

Digging deep into construction machinery news

More Aussie adventures for our Englishman Down Under

Loads more

Ritchie Bros. to host the spring auction in the UK...

Star Power expands into the North West with new de...

LIV Golf UK by JCB swings into action for another ...

Subscribe to Earthmovers