Logistics

This is not what I was expecting, but luckily it’s only for a month. I mean I really can’t complain, I am working in one of the most beautiful and sparsely inhabited countries in the world. I still feel that I should have stuck around Monterey until mid September when HARC starts, and then I could have picked up some MMO work after that. But this is good experience regardless of how homesick I’ve become already, and it will look good on the old resume. Just feeling a little rushed trying to get all of the papers in, organize places to stay, get a phone number, find a bank account, figure out taxes, and deal with all of the minor monetary issues back home. Welcome to the real world. This isn’t really a holiday yet, again looking forward to my first 10 days off.

Let me give you a run down on what my job will be for the next month. First of all Mackay is basically a coal mining town located on the shoreline of the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. There are 3 major coal mines located inland from the city (I’m told it’s the second largest coal extraction site in the country). This requires a harbor with sufficient loading platforms to allow for cargo ships to load up the coal and ship it to various parts of Australian and Asia. It’s worth mentioning here that coal is the number one source of energy in Australia (sad I know, but luckily the population is small enough that the energy needs are not too great to make it a major problem…yet ).

The Mackay harbor currently has 2 docks for the cargo ships, not enough space to efficiently ship the coal out. On average there are usually 70-100 ships waiting offshore for their turn in the harbor. Hence the need for a dredger to dig out a third birthing for ships to load coal. They hit a problem during the initial stages of the dredging though, literally they hit bedrock. To make the new dock deep enough to allow the ships to come in, dynamite is needed to clear away the pesky bedrock. Dynamite of course has the potential to be highly destructive to any wildlife in the area, and since Mackay is inside the GBR, Marine Fauna Observers are required by the government to insure that no wildlife is injured during the process.

Our job will be to sit atop two different platforms (South and North Tower) and monitor the area that will be blasted, and track the movements of any fauna in the area. Along with 2 boat based platforms at 1150 meters and 2000 meters from the blast zone. We will be following the same protocol from the Straddie humpback whale survey I finished last month, which is why Dave chose Kylie and I for the project. We will begin our observation an hour before the blast is set to tack place. If we track anything that moves within a certain radius of the blast site, then we will give the call to hold the blasting until the sighting is clear. Fauna will include anything we see, whales, dolphins, dugongs, large schools of fish, flocks of birds, even large aggregations of jellies, swimmers. All will result in halting the operation.

We will have a dry run tomorrow to see what works and doesn’t, and we should officially start work on Sunday. Luckily we still get paid regardless of whether we actually work or not, so at least I’m not wasting my time here. I may be flying up to the northern part of the GBR to hang out with a friend from the Straddie project who’s working on a snorkeling boat for my first 10 days off. It will be nice to get into the water after hanging around a noisy coal loading dock for a week and a half. Unfortunately the reef blocks all of the good swell, so I won’t be able to surf until HARC next month.