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…

A St Patrick’s Day to Remember

Work in the office was quite slow this week, although we finally made it out to the field on Friday! We got to go to the Brisbane airport! We went out to check on the CPT rig and get site orientations before heading out to observe some drilling on Monday. We watched planes take off and land right next to us! We also had very exciting St Patrick’s Day! Unescorted by an Aussie, Jill and I decided to hit the town on a lively night. The night was full of surprises: a live band, a quick assault by a VERY drunk guy, I got punched in the head (it was a mistake and he apologized), drinks bought for both Jill and I by a true Irishman, and a fancy dinner bought for us by an Aussie bloke! The night (and the next day) was a success filled with laughter and fun! I am excited to get behind my first Australian drill rig on Monday after waiting for more than 4 weeks.

AAAHHHH!!!

I just saw my very first, honest and true ring tailed opossum! I actually almost felt it! I was taking my nightly run on the trail along the Brisbane River, when I came to a narrow section in the trail. As I was running along the left side (just like the cars) the railing was about elbow height. I was running along, minding my own business when I was startled by a figure just off my elbow. I ran past it and caught a glimmer in its eye. I stopped turned around and realized that an opossum was just sitting there on the railing. Two local gals walked up soon behind me and confirmed my suspicions! It was much cutter than the opossums we have in Woodinville! I have a second reason for my screams today… my hubbie is coming for a visit! Our drilling has been postponed until the 6th of April, so what a better a time than for a ‘holiday’ (ie: vacation)! He will be here a little less than a week, so I have a lot of planning to do. Better go and work in it!

Lighthouses

The weekend was filled with wind, rain, more wind, and two lighthouses. Jill and I rented a car and successfully drove to Fingal Holiday Park on Friday night. After arriving afterhours in the dark, we successfully checked in and set up our tent on the grassy lawn with about 10 other campers in a 40 campsite area. The sleeping, however, was not as successful, the wind blew so hard that I thought we might end up like Dorothy and get blown into the sky. We awoke to a beautiful day that continued to be windy. It didn’t end up like the perfect beach day as we had hoped for so we headed to Byron Bay. A cute little hippy town at the most easterly point of Australia mainland. At the most eastern point was a large lighthouse with lots of walking trails all the way to the beachfront. Sunday ended up being just as stormy, so we headed back to Brisbane the scenic way while stopping to admire the Fingal Head Lighthouse with the well-formed columnar basalts. We also saw dolphins playing in the waves while visiting both lighthouses! We drove in and out of extremely heavy rain storms, but made it back to Brisbane safely.

South Beach

Well is it Friday at lunch time and it is almost time to head out for another weekend adventure! Jill and I are heading to the beach (Fingal Holiday Park) for a weekend of camping, surfing, snorkeling, and of course relaxing. We are picking up our rental car in a few short hours. The week has gone by quickly! I have been running and biking all over Brisbane. I even went on a run towards the top of Mount Coot-Tha (photo at the top of this blog). I didn’t quite make it to the top, but I will next time. I also went for a swim this morning at South Bank in a man-made sandy beach “pool”. It was amazing! The water was warm and clear, the sun was shining, and it was of course warm. Now all we need is for this perfect warm and sunny weather to continue through the weekend. As for work, it has been kind of boring in the office doing busy work. Our fieldwork has been postponed as the flood waters are taking their time receding. The hope is to be out in the bush drilling in two weeks, but only Mother Nature has control our future for that.

Leeches, wallabies, leeches, leeches, and more leeches

Jill and I met up with a guy from work, Shaw, on Friday after work to head down to the Green Mountain section of Lamington National Forest for a weekend of camping and adventure. After a three hour drive with the last hour of the drive through extremely narrow and windy roads, we finally arrived at the beautiful campsite. The campsite had about 20 level, gravel pads for tent set-up. There were three other tents in the entire place, so we got a great site. We woke up to a beautiful view of the valley with wallabies all around us. They are so cute! We decided on a 20.6 km (12.8 mile) hike through waterfalls and lookout points. The weather didn’t do us any favors because it rained throughout our entire hike. And the rain brought out the leeches by the millions! About 20 minutes into the hike we realized that we were covered in leeches. About an hour later, after almost turning back, we realized that Skin-So-Soft was doing the trick. Lucky for us, the leeches hated it! We continued to find them throughout the next morning, but you could feel when their fangs went into your skin, so I don’t think we lost too much blood. It may have been raining in the rainforest, but the temperature was still pretty high and kept us warm throughout the adventure. Sunday morning we decided we had enough of the leeches and headed for the beaches of the Gold Coast. It was hot and party sunny. The sand was soft, the waves were big, and water was warm (about 80 degrees). We had a wonderful weekend and can’t wait for our next adventure!

Strange Words

G’day Mate! Since arriving in Australia I have heard a variety of new words. Some of the words are uncommon to me while others are just comical slang words. Yesterday Jill and I learned two words with the same meaning: Budgerigar smugglers and TD. Know what they are? The other one that is similar is: toggs.

Well, the rain continues, but I was able to get in a short bike ride this morning before heading into the office. The bike trails run along the river bank, it is beautiful! I will have to bring my camera on my next ride. Jill and I are planning for our weekend of fun adventures in the Lamington National Forest. A fellow from the office has offered to drive and accompany us. Should be quite the adventure. Cheers!

Less Rain More Humidity

The rain was gone and the high humidity was back for my morning run along the Brisbane River. Instead of finishing being soaking wet with rain, I was soaking wet with sweat once again. There has been a lot of talk on the news about flooding all over Australia. The rain has also caused a delay in our field work; the actual real reason I am here in Australia. Our drilling has been pushed back two weeks but we have been asked to help out with the geohazard reconnaissance. Basically this means we will be walking the pipeline alignment looking for things like erosion, landslides, etc. We are hoping not to have any more rain so that the roads can dry out and we can go out to site on Monday. The soils here have a very high clay content which causes the roads to be very slick and boggy when wet, which is the reason there is not field work when it rains. A crazy concept for us Seattleites. Can you imagine if we didn’t work in the rain? I reckon that’s all for now.

Kangaroo and Bats

After being in Brisbane for over a week, I have decided to start my own blog. My goal is for my posts to be short & sweet but often. To sum up my first week, it was awesome and humid. After traveling over the Pacific Ocean overnight for 13 hours in first class, I was well rested and ready to start my adventures in Australia. I have traveled to Australia to work for Golder with a fellow co-worker, Jill. Another co-worker that transferred to the Brisbane office 1.5 years back, Mitch picked Jill and me up from the airport. He was awesome and showed us all around Brisbane for the first weekend. We visited South Bank, the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, and viewed Brisbane from the top of Mt Coot-Tha. The sanctuary introduced us to all of the animals, good and bad, that we will see here. The kangaroo was the softest animal! The first week in the office was a bunch of training, but yesterday changed. We went out to a 4-wheel drive training class and ripped it up! It was a blast and we saw our first wild kangaroo. Unfortunately the kangaroo was along the side of the road… sad. Jill and I ventured out on a run/walk last night and saw a lot of bats. When I say bats, I mean big bats! Batman sized bats! Yikes! I hope to only ever see those flying far away. That’s it for now. Cheers!