visiting justus

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one morning many moons ago i got mail from my boss. in the mail was offer to go to work in a project far far away from home - phosphate hill they call the place.


toomas likes this kind of things and so i went. on sunny sunday morning i flew to townsville together with my indian collegue. travelling on company's expenses is good. holiday inn has 20 floors and pool on the roof and image as one of the best hotels in town. its highest for sure.
there is also other side - getting into mine site is a hassle. u need full medical examination including ecg, audiometry, spirometry and drug test. as doctor in brisbane skipped some of tests it happend that we had to see doctor in townsville too.
also it meant us flying on later not monday morning but on wednesday. no worries, mate, 3 days in townsville with fully paid hotels and meals let me see difference between **** and *** hotels and try many different eating places in town but then we flew on...
there are stories about mines in oz. roumors say this is place where wages are bigger than imagination and workers live in a blatant luxury.
well, lets see what i have to say.


phosphate hill is a mine site, thats where they excavate phosphate ore, mix it with sulphuric acid, add some ammonia and voila they get fertilizers. mine site means high safety, common uniform with steel cap boots. you wear helmet and safety glasses and respirator in many locations.
Alltogether it reminds me estonia, the military service i did there. discipline, strict rules, life sharply by the clock etc and time is shifted here...

my day:
i wakeup 4:45am, get myself together and step out of my box


by the way, i live in 'kosovo' (thats called so as its worst accommodation in camp and we are there cause we are short timers) in a container - room is ~3x1.5m + shared bathroom that is squeezed between two rooms. this space hosts bed, table, chair, fridge, tv, wardrobe, sink, me, and many different bugs. grasshoppers are hopping in uncountable numbers around and shiny big beetles who are too lazy to fly roam around accompanied with mozzies who r always happy to suck my blood and in toilet (yep, straigght in the pot) there live frogs -


silvergreen stickyfingers who havent heard about gravity and can walk around on ceiling as flies...
haa, almost forgot, a/c is there too it that makes lot of noise and keeps my home cool.

30 minutes for eating breakfast and confecting lunch (i even have nice plastic box for that :)


and 5:40 leaves the only morning bus to the plant that is 16 km south.


here are two main placees: plant and camp (ok, between them there is also an "airport" - thats only for us cause closest populated place is over 60km away and there lives like 1 man and his dog). closest real town is mount isa ~150km north so plant is where work is, camp is where u sleep.


camp is called monument village thanks to the rock just next to camp. this rock is ancient aboriginal holyground hence taboo for white people. there are several restricted aboriginal sites around the place.
hill with monument rock is called mount cock and two nearby sites as tittie hills, shouldnt take too much imagination to understand why. 6am i step into my office to start another fructuous day


for those who dont know yet i'm contracted here to replace old computers with new ones so thats what im supposed to do, strangely not all of new computers are here yet, and noone seems to worry nor hurry. then it will be 12 hours of fun fun fun and 6pm bus is ready to take us back to camp.

dinner is available until 8pm so usually I go biking or gymming for ~1 hour, make it to canteen for 7:30pm for quick eat and for 8pm im in my room ready to watch tv.
tv has 2 inhouse channels showing 'made in hollywood' movies every night and dozen of popular skychannels too. limited human experiments have shown that the more I sleep the better i feel next morning, maximum sleep being so far 8 hours.

thats my life.

positive:
food is very good, big variety, lots of healthy stuff and in unlimited (thats bad also as i tend to eat too much :P ) quantitiy
nature is just beauty. thanks to recent heavy rainfalls everything here is very green,


except rocks that get very red at sunset
there are free to use mountainbikes (i bike mostly around camp on firetrails)
25m swimming pool, tenniscourt, fully equipped gym, bar with pool virtual golf and more.
and they pay me and they accommodate and feed me for nothing

to be continued...

where mountains are blue

pushing my limits. 600km is not bad for a 20$ bike but 5th post is personal best for a toomas.
dead rodents r not too popular on both sides of blog – i just had to kick maxi (christian name for one of our taleless feline) out of the kitchen

who just came proudly growling with next fat rat stuck in his mouth.

no worries ratlovers - there r other issues this time... toomas did the Blueys!
!commercial! World Heritage-listed Blue Mountains – offers a range of experiences found nowhere else on Earth! like worlds steepest railway that is

inspired from old mining tramways constructed long time ago (end of 19th cetury i mean). they say ’railway line descends 415 metres through

sandstone cliffs, via a rock tunnel with a maximum gradient of 52 degrees’.
remark: I just found that efficient 4x4 things like nissan patrol can climb just up to 40 degree slopes. hmmm... must be steep one then
next time if im too injured or old for climbing i will check this train out


it took 12 hours & 1 old holden commodore to move 3 men 1000km south from brisbane.
our home was now blackheath - small village in heart of the mountains. three days were more or less full of rocks and climbing. good tihnig about

rockclimbing is imminent necessity to go to nature and blue mountains have plenty of it in high quality.
days
1. day, morning: 4 routes with grades 18-20, location is nice, for two routes belayer must click himself to the wall as start is on narrow ledge over the void



view from top of the 3rd route (grade 19) while Aaron is climbing up on 4th route (20)



1. day evening: 2 routes 20&19, first route is with bad protected bouldery start so we stick clip first bolt (i first met this technique in oz

and according to guidebook it seems to be standard on many routes).
as a bonus after climbing we went to swim and i onsighted my first deep water solo (dont know official grade but i would say its something around 6a)


jumping to water from top of this ~10m cliff gave good shock even when watering properly feet first so would have been real bummer to fail that solo@the end

our campsite included bbq place so pieces of dead cow we grilled there aussie way - big and bloody together with bundaberg rum+ginger ale and international company of other campers

2. day, morning: saturday caused more people on the rocks that caused us to warm up on 21 as easier routes were busy. sun was also busy so we had to escape from heat after making one 19.


2. evening: after mornings inspiration from sun we decided to go to sector freezer. lotsa walking and getting lost on a way is guaranteed but place is super. just views alone are wotrth getiing lost over bad description in guidebook.



after 18 for warmup i onsighted 22 and 23 (last one in toprope cause bolts vere really shitty). back to car we got in dark and back to sleep much later.

3. day morning: @zap crag - another nice place with a good bouldering spot by side.


18, 20 and 22 all onsight last one perfect overhang with big holds, steep as a bastard.

and back to brisbane we went through australia on australia day...

next morning was tuesday. i went to work.

ps.

small table for hint about oz grading (from www.mountaindays.net):

French .......... USA .................. Australian
4+ to 6a ........ 5.8 - 5.9 ............ 15 - 18
5+ to 6a+ ....... 5.9 - 5.10a ......... 18 - 20
6a+ to 6b+ ...... 5.10b - 5.10c ...... 19 - 21
6b to 6c ......... 5.10d - 5.11b ...... 20 - 22
6c to 7a ......... 5.11b - 5.11d ...... 22 - 23
7a to 7b ........ 5.11d - 5.12b ....... 23 - 25
7b to 7c+ ....... 5.12b - 5.13a ....... 25 - 28
7c+ to 8a+ ...... 5.13a - 5.13c ....... 28 - 30

remark: more pictures today i experimented with interactive panorama photos, there are couple of these in this post. like this:



if they dont work then install latest flash (http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html) and try again or then just forget it...