End of another chapter.

Posted by Hap
in Australia, Field Assistant Work, Tasmania

Howdy folks,

Yep, it’s that time again for me where another chapter comes to an end. I have let work know that this week will be my last, signalling the end of my Tasmanian chapter which has been my third longest chapter at 9 months

For those of you that don’t know, I was working as an Exploration Field Assistant on the West Coast of Tasmania. Some of you that have followed my journey from when my blog first started will remember I did the same job out in the Western Australian outback. But the only similarities between the jobs were the job titles. Everything was different, firstly I was living in a small residential town of 200 people as opposed to living in a mining camp, at this job there was no mine as we were doing the prefeasibility tests for a proposed mine and were doing a different type of drilling (I won’t bore you).

The biggest difference was the climate; in fact you could not get a more varied difference if you tried. In my 2008 job I was working a 2 hour drive inland from Marble Bar, the hottest recorded town in Australia, with the record of having 160 consecutive days over 37.8˚C. This is what the weather website says about Tullah, the town I worked in Tasmania:

“Tullah is one of the rainiest and overcast places in Australia. It experiences exceptionally high rainfall, humidity levels and numbers of cloudy days………..”

Now I could not agree with the above more, in fact it is the rainiest and most overcast place I have ever lived and worked. Literally everyday bar two during the winter whilst I was here it rained, I kid you not. So it made for a pretty tough place to work for a skinny fella who loves the sun. Plus in the winter there is minimal field work due to the rain, so all winter was spent in a shed, measuring, cutting, photographing, weighing rocks – yes it was a long winter. But there was a good bunch of people and it enabled me to save a bit of money for Africa, and in summer the odd sunny blue skied day is pretty dam spectacular as you will see at the end.

But at the end of the day I was in it for the wrong reasons (saving money and writing), and working in a shed has a shelf life. So back to Melbourne it is where I’m hoping to get work in a local bike shop and be surrounded by biking enthusiasts. Failing that, any job the allows me to get enough money to live on and gives me some spare time to organise Africa. As Africa looms closer it will be a great to be on the ground for the organising as our press for sponsorship increases, our fundrasining event in May, getting bikes, organising gear, route planning, filling container – it getters rather taunting at times thinking of what needs to get done before our departure.

Now for my final week of work in Tasmania, and I have to say it, it is probably going to be one of my best weeks of work in my working the world quest. For my final week of work I’m being helicoptered out with 3 others into the middle of nowhere and camping for 5 days whilst taking some soil samples. Hell yeah, this is what being an Exploration Field Assistant is about………..ummm maybe I should stay and see out the summer……………

OK, here are some of my rosier/summery photos from my time in Tullah as I realise I have been focussing all my blog posts on Africa,