The Actual “Working” Part of being in Australia

I believe it is time for a blog about the actual work I have been doing while here in Australia. I was brought here to work on a LNG pipeline project. The project was to do some pre-construction geotechnical investigation work including drilling and test pitting at various locations along the pipeline. The pipeline is to carry coal seam gas from the extraction location in the interior of Australia approximately 650 km to the export plant along the coastline where they will have plants to cool and liquify the gas to load it onto ships. Due to extreme flooding and various other complications, about 4 weeks after my arrival, the client cancelled the project (not typical).

I have just completed my second rotation of 11-days on/3-days off shift for a different portion of the project. Golder is currently working on phase 3 of the plant portion of the pipeline project. The current phase is to provide engineering guidelines for the proposed 100-m diameter tanks that will hold the liquified natural gas (LNG) before loading it onto cargo ships. The plant is located on Curtis Island, off the coast from Gladstone. The investigation consists of advancing 9 borings in the area of each of the proposed two tank locations. The borings are advanced to 40 meters. We begin each boring using an auger screw with SPTand tube samples every 0.5 m from 0 to 10 m below ground surface then every 1.5 m. When we get refusal with the auger, which usually happens before 10 m, we switch to washboring (mud rotary) to refusal and then switch to rock core drilling. We are able to auger and wash through the topsoil, colluvium, and residual soil (highly weathered bedrock). We have mostly encountered mudstone, claystone, chert, and siliceous mudstone.

The fun part of the project is that we get to take a boat to and from the island every day! We see the sunrise and set every day over the water. It is truly beautiful. Curtis Island is full of animals, most of which I have only been told about and not gotten to see; including wild pigs, brumbies, and dingos. I have, however, gotten to see and hear the kookaburra, lots of spiders, and one legless lizard (that’s the closest I want to come to seeing a snake)!

Great Ocean Road

A flight from Gladstone to Melbourne, $650. A rental car with air conditioning for two days, $118. A campsite along the Great Ocean Road for two, $23. Seeing a wild koala jump from one tree to another… Priceless! Yep, it’s true! Jill and I met in Melbourne for my three day weekend, remind you that was after an eleven day shift. I picked up the rental car from the airport and drove into downtown to pickup Jill. She had gotten in about four hours before me and took a bus tour of the city (great idea!). It was a city like all others, an international section, a university with lots of green spaces, a part of town with lots of skyscrapers, and heaps of people walking the streets. It was a nice city, but the open road is where we were headed. After getting lost in Geelong, we finally found the Avis shop and were able to swap our car for one that had air conditioning, instead of blowing hot air when it was 25°C outside. Uuggg. We camped our first night in Otway National Park. We decided to watch the sunrise, so we exited the park while it was still dark. There right in front of us was a wild koala climbing down a tree! We were amazed! We had luck on our side! Not only did we see a beautiful coastline filled with amazing erosional features of limestone (seastacks, bridges, tunnels, blowholes) but throughout the day we saw wildlife, including another wild koala in the daylight that jumped from one tree to another, two emus, puffins, a fox, lots of kangaroos, bandicoots, lizards, swarms of dragonflies, and ringtail opossums. To see photos and the koala jumping video click here:

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/alidennison/GreatOceanRoad#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebGxpGKGamM

Rain, Rain, go away!!

The rain has again interrupted my stay here in Australia. It rained about 2.3 inches last night in less than three hours! Therefore we are unable to work. We have two drill rigs out and we need a truck to be able to drive to the rigs to refuel and bring water for the actual drilling. As you can see from the photo above (that’s the road to the site), this can’t happen. So, once again, I am left with no drilling. We are hoping that the extra hot, sunny weather will help clear out that water in a hurry. Not to promising though. We are going to check out the island again tomorrow morning. Wish us luck!

Actually Working!

Well I have been in Australia and I am finally doing what to came here to do! Work! And I love it! OK, I love most of it. Except for the long sleeve shirts, hard hat, and midges. No but really things are going well. Weather is amazing. Warm, sunny, thunderstorms, amazing sunrises and sunsets. My drillers saw some kangaroos this morning. Hope they come back tomorrow. Enjoy the photos!
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/alidennison/WorkingInGladstone#

Photos posted here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/alidennison/JBAndAliInAustralia#

Rainy visit with my Hubbie

Where to even begin… JB arrived in Brisbane on March 25th to a beautiful sunny day. We enjoyed the sunshine swimming at South Bank and touring the local Milton and Toowong areas. We had a lovely dinner with Jill before we headed north to Cairns the next day. After a two hour flight delay, we finally arrived in rainy Cairns and picked up our Spaceship, aptly named “Quagmire”! The Spaceship was our cool little camper van/means of travel to explore North Queensland. To keep the blog to a minimum size, I must now begin the short recap of the events. Our favorite camp spots were at Bingil Bay and Palm Cove. We visited Coffee Works in the Atherton Tablelands and tasted 21 types of coffee, plus lots of tea, and chocolates, really what could be better! Yum! We caught a glimpse of some amazing views while touring the Mamu Rainforest Canopy Walkway, including a spider almost 6 inches across (that’s 15 cm for your Aussies). The entire trip was sadly filled with lots of rain. We even witnessed first-hand a flash flood in Cape Tribulation that engulfed the only road in or out of the area. We literally watched Cooper Creek rise 1.5 meters in less than one hour! Luckily, no one was injured (although one local almost pushed his luck too far) and we ended up being able to cross back over the creek after waiting for only 3 hours! It was amazing how fast the water came up and then went back down! We spent our most beautiful weather day scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. It was my first time diving and I LOVED it! We visited three different reef sites and all were amazing. JB, the diving expert, was even quoted as saying, "it was one of my top diving days ever". It was an amazing day full of bright sunlight, bright blue ocean water, brightly colored fish, sharks, sea turtles, sting rays, beautiful structured coral, and warm waters. Another of our favorite places was Port Douglas. It was a super cute little beach town with lots of lively night life and an amazing running beach, 4 Mile Beach. It was the perfect beach to run on, flat with hard packed sand. I will dream about that one. We spent JB’s last day back in sunny Brisbane. We had a wonderful time touring around Australia, but we hope for better weather on our next trip. Hope everyone had a wonderful and Happy Easter! I am off to Gladstone this week for some actual work… yeah!

More Stories to Come Soon

JB has arrived in Brisbane and we are headed to Cairns for lots of adventures tomorrow. More stories to come…