Greetings from Mt Black - nothing to do with the house..... sorry girls

Howdi all,

Greetings from Mt Black, My office in Rosebery Tasmania. If you think the place looks like a hole in the ground well your dead right...... it is, a bloody big, bloody deep hole in the ground that extends over 4ooo meters deep and they pull all the good stuff out of it. They mine some Copper, lead, and even some gold (between 30 and 50 kg/month, enough to cover payroll Im told), but by far the biggest product they mine here is zinc, some 660,000 tonnes of it last year. my job here is to look at a mine expension that will involve a new flotation line, a SAG mill and a ball mill that will boost the mines output to 1,000,000 tonnes of zinc a year. So the last couple of days I have been involved in a site survey of the mines HV electricity distribution and to finalize the location of several substations as well look at various other bits and pieces for different projects.

Ive been staying in a place called 'top pub', the local hotel where I have been meeting a few of the locals. Good, honest (mostly) straight talking folks that pretty much call it as they see it. The food here has been absolutely magnificent. You can get beautiful tender piece of scotch fillet for $22 bucks, great stuff.

The only bad thing is that this morning I was woken at 5am by the sound of the beer truck reversing, then the sound of the guy firing up the fork lift to unload it. Apparently I should count myself lucky that the guy slept in........ the beer usually arrives at 4am most weeks !!

Well its been a great trip, Ive finished all the stuff that I came here to do, had my trip down memory lane (I was last working here 17 years ago) and had a few good steaks as well, so all there is to do now is to drive back to Burnie, jump on the plane and be back in Melbourne for dinner with the ol ball and chain :)

J