A bit of a background...

All this started in 1998 when I was in Australia. I was there on a one year working-holiday visa and did not have a lot of money, so I was taking the working side of the holiday pretty seriously. I had landed in Perth and started working in Kalgoorlie where prospects were rumoured to be better. They were indeed, but the work was considerably tougher. 'Kal' is a mining town about seven hour's drive East from Perth. Like all true, hard-boiled mining towns set up in the last century in the New Countries, Kal has broad streets, inhospitable climate, unattractive suburbs and a very special charm that would always make you glad that you took the time to visit it. I was living in an old brothel that had been turned into a hostel. It primarily accommodated men who were working in the area, but had a really friendly and unintimidating atmosphere that made it a great spot for any backpackers who passed through.
I suppose that 'brothel' bit caught your eye. Well, like most old mining towns, Kalgoorlie had a relationship with the oldest profession that was as old as the town itself. This relationship exists to this day with a street that has a number of these establishments that are still used as intended. My hostel was one that had been sold and redeveloped. The rooms had a few more beds crammed in, but touches like the pool table and mirrors on the ceiling remained.

Anyway, for work, I ended up doing drilling. Exploration Drilling. RC, air core and diamond drilling. Huh? Well Kalgoorlie was gold territory and to find where the gold was, people had to dig holes and check out what they removed for traces of gold. Methods like air core and RC produced a bag of dirt for every metre that they went down. This was drilled up and blasted out with air pressure and the results would be examined by a bored geologist who would make his way out to the site, (puncturing every tyre on the way and expecting an off-sider to fix them). Geologists would then have an idea of what was under the ground. This was how companies assessed the viability of a claim and decided whether it merited further development, ie. do we build a mine or not. When things looked good and they decided to take a closer look, that is where diamond drilling took over. Diamond drilling was gentleman's' drilling because it did not use air pressure and meant that there was less dust, dirt and mud. It also went deeper and could be slightly directional which meant that you could be situated on the side of a large open cast pit and drill down and towards the middle of the pit so the geologists could advise on where to go next.

It was hard work, they did not like men over 30 or under 25 because of the physical demands of the work. While actual miners might have a 9-day-on-5-day-off routine, drillers would be 28-days-on-7-off and on less pay, although that was not the case in the Eighties. Now that is 12 hour shifts in the baking West Australian sun with water and the sandwiches you made for sustenance. After that you would retire to a camp bed in a tent after a meal around a fire cooked by the 'tucker-fucker' - and that would be you every few days. Hard yakka, mate!