BIG Blue Sky Mining

I got to thinking about yesteryear and recalled a time when I sat on a porch, watching and waiting as a storm approached. Barely sheltered beneath the overhang from the blistering heat of a summer’s day.

We were living in Kambalda, a small mining town in Western Australia, of roughly five thousand people, mostly men. The majority were housed in the cell-like barracks of the single men’s quarters. Because we were married, we were lucky to have a small house owned by the company, for a nominal rent deducted from our paycheck once a month.
The town itself was a little odd in that it was actually two towns, East Kambalda and Kambalda West. It lies approximately 380 miles inland from Perth, 80 miles north of Norseman and 35 miles south of Kalgoorlie. 
The claim to fame of the original town of Red Hill, where East Kambalda now stands, was gold, that the prospector Percy Larkin, discovered in 1897. That started a gold rush, and over the next ten years, produced over 30,000 ounces. But by 1908, the gold, along with the hopeful had long gone, and the land reverted to scrub and bush once more.

Not until 1964, the year I was born, when Western Mining Corporation began an exploratory drilling program to prove up and expand Kambalda's nickel reserves, discovered ten years prior, did the people start to come backagain.

By 1966, full production at Silver Lake Mine was well under way and it in turn, sparked the great Australian nickel boom of the 60's, making fortunes for some, especially on the stock exchange... while losing fortunes for others.
I don't remember now when Western Mining Corporation began drilling for gold, but I was there in the late 80's when they were. 

The people that lived and worked in Kambalda, were without a doubt the hardest working, toughest, and some, the most downright ornery SOB's I've ever met in my life! They played hard too, yet were family orientated and loyal. 
Once you became a member of the mining family you were treated as such, and it was something that we all relied on, especially when times got tough or when someone needed help. A more generous, compassionate, caring and fun- loving bunch of misfits, who were far more than just the people we worked with, I've yet to meet from around Australia and different parts of the world. They were our friends, our neighbors, our extended family.

For recreation, we had Lake Lefroy on the doorstep; a massive salt lake covering over three hundred square miles, perfect for land yachting and for the optimistic contenders looking to break and set new land-speed records.

I'll always remember the first time I saw it on the day I arrived. 
Coming from Kalgoorlie, I came over a rise and saw what appeared to be the ocean spread out before me. It looked absolutely breathtaking, with the water glittering so brightly in the sun that I had to squint. It went on forever disappearing into a mirage of shimmering reflected heat.

Yet I soon learned that most of it though is only a few inches deep and not even that during the long hot summer months. The water would evaporate in the scorching heat and the top layer would dry to a thick, crispy, whitish crust that rusted metal like acid. 
One lesson I never forgot, I learned at the personal cost to my most tender of body parts. 
Stuck in the bottom of the goldmine pit sampling and cooking alive in the 48 degree Celsius heat (118 degrees Fahrenheit), I watched as the water truck came down the sloping dirt road into the open cast pit, spraying down salt water on the road to lay the dust. 
Desperate to cool off, I jumped on the running board of the truck as it came closer to where I was and asked the driver if he’d give me a spray down. He obliged and I was duly saturated from head to toe and grinned a mile wide at the instant relief... until I started to dry. 
An oven-like dry heat that sucked the moisture from your body, soon had my skin, hair and clothes dry in minutes. But I had forgotten about the high saturated salt content. 
As I dried while I worked, moving along behind the drill rig and taking samples from different depths, the salt began dry and rub.
To crust behind and around the shell of my ears, between my thighs, front and back, under my arms and my neck. It felt like ground glass after awhile, my every movement, scouring the skin raw over the last hour of my workday until I could barely move from the pain. 
I learned to rinse off after that in fresh water.

There were places we'd swim – left over pit mines, that because they were below the water table, they stayed full with salt water and became gorgeous turquoise-colored pit lakes. 
Some were impossibly deep yet the salt saturation was such that you literally couldn't sink. 
It was amazing how quickly even the bizarre became normal. 
The pit lakes were great for learning to swim in or how to windsurf, even if it did totally mess with your head.

One day, while heading between jobs, I stopped the ute (4x4 utility truck) by the side of the lake and watched the Oils – the rock band Midnight Oil – do some takes for their music video, Blue Sky Mine. I was utterly fascinated by the completely surreal sight before me, as I watched this big tall bald man hopping and bopping around on the salt flats, looking for all the world like he were doing a parody of a rain dance. It's a fabulous music video and shows much from the town too including the Red Hill lookout and opens with a blasting scene. 

We also had the local speedway, the horses we kept and rode, and the music club. That was fun. A Sunday arvo (afternoon) at our place, would mean a house full of muso's (musicians) and their instruments surrounding our collective children, as they banged away on drums, triangles, kazoos, whistles, and harps. Even a few upturned cooking pots with a wooden spoon or two made a good racket in a pinch. We'd cook a few shrimps on the barbie and jam the day away until we were hoarse and the little ones had conked out. We were pretty good too! Even did a few gigs at several pubs.

Then there were the incredible places worthy of visiting like the run we did down to Esperance on the Great Australian Bite, with its perfect, perfect, empty white sand beaches and waters so clear it was like looking through glass.

****

So I sat on the porch after working all day...
The heat felt alive, rising up in waves to envelop and exhaust me of energy on contact. It seemed to displace the very air itself. It was so hot and dry that it always left me slightly breathless, even after three years of living there. 
On this particular day, I was minus my steel cap boots and thick socks, my cargo shorts with every pocket crammed full with tools, bits and bobs, my t-shirt, and hardhat. Sitting there in nothing but my bra and knickers, nursing a cold brew in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Staring off into the horizon, watching as the storm approached.

My clothes were littered by the back door. The chair I sat back in was old but comfortable, and I had propped my legs up and crossed them on the wooden railing in front of me. I hadn't even entered the house proper to shower, but had reached through the back door instead, flicked the fridge open and grabbed a beer. My hair, face and body where my work clothes didn't cover, were filthy with a thick layer of red dirt and dusty grime from the opencast goldmine pit where I worked.

The storm had been steadily rolling in for the last few hours. To the east it was still cloudless, sunny and hot, but to the southwest and coming swiftly closer was a dense black and purple wall that stretched for miles, flashing with fire and brimstone. 
A thrilling, terrifying sight yet magnificent in its fury.

And then it was suddenly here. 
Everything was black now. I could smell ozone in the air, felt the soft hairs on my body rise with static electricity moments before a huge jagged bolt of lightning ripped through the roiling, churning blackness to strike at the earth, with an impact that I felt from my seat. My eyes had gone funny from the flash. I could literally feel the drop in temperature as it swiftly plummeted and the first fat drops of rain thunked on the corrugated iron roof in a quickening rata-tat-tat-tat. Then... like the breaching of a dam, the deluge poured down in an unbroken torrent, immediately soaking and darkening the dried and dusty red earth. The sound of it swirling around me was a deafening roar.

I stood in the rain with my head back and eyes closed, my underwear instantly drenched and plastered to my body. 
Holding my hands up level with my chest, my cupped palms overflowed in a heartbeat as I opened myself completely to the moment, reveling in the maelstrom. 
In the absolute chaos and pandemonium of the moment. 
The sweat, the dust and ground in red dirt of the desert and even my bone-deep tiredness were dissolved, washing me clean in the blink of an eye. 
It felt incredible. 

Rejuvenating. 

Invigorating.

I must have looked a sight, standing in that storm with the lightning and thunder booming and flashing all around me. The rain was easing and catching movement, I looked back towards the porch where my husband stood with his arms and legs crossed leaning against the wooden post watching me. We grinned at one another, no doubt for different reasons. He, because his mad wife was laughing like a loon and standing out in a storm, and me, because I couldn't resist the magic of it. 
And just like that, the storm passed.

Within moments, the sky brightened once again as the black mass moved off as quickly as it had come towards the nor-east. The landscape around me settled heavily into a wall of rising heat making the soaked earth steam and shimmer. The deafening cacophony of cicadas restarted and apart from the steady drips that fell from the eaves, it was like it had never been.

I knew that there'd be wildflowers everywhere soon; orchids and the spectacular kangaroo paw, blue pincushion, pink mulla mulla, orange immortelle, acacia, hakea, milkmaid, poached egg daisies, and Sturt's desert pea, transforming the red brown scrub land into a virtual paradise overnight.

Nowhere else I have lived since, has compared to the night skies. They were so clear and filled with stars that seemed close enough and bright enough to reach out and pluck. Especially without the lights from a nearby city to mar their splendor. 

Or for the storms and their staggering, majestic fury, the sheer unbelievable intensity and yet their brevity as well; as living in that teeny tiny town, in the middle of nowhere...