Vacation Work at Birla Mt. Gordon
Start: 05/12/2007
Finish: 21/02/2008
Where: Birla Mt. Gordon Copper Mine, 120km northwest of Mt. Isa (close to the middle of nowhere).
Position: Metallurgical Engineer Vacation Student

During the Uni holidays Mitch, Felicity and myself were given the opportunity to work as a vacation students at Mt. Gordon copper mine. I am now at the end of my 2nd last swing here and looking back it has been an excellent experience and a great way to start a career in the resources sector.

I stated work on the 5th of December on a 9/5 roster, which means I work for 9days and then fly to Cairns for 5days holiday. For the first two swings I worked with the plant operators getting to know the ins and outs of copper processing.

The Mt. Gordon plant consists of a crusher which feeds onto a stockpile. From there the ore is fed into a Semi Autogenous Grinding (SAG) mill where is it is ground then sent on to the cyclones. The underflow from the cyclones is sent to the ball mill to achieve a finer grind and the overflow is sent down to the flotation plant. The flotation circuit consists of 4 rougher cells and 3 cleaner banks where the copper is floated and the rest is sent to tailings.

After acquiring some knowledge about the process used, I headed down to the lab where I began with preparing samples for analysis. After a few days of that I decided to find a job that would be slightly more exciting and involving (no offence to lab assistants). I teamed up with a Metallurgist named Daniel who was doing test work on Arsenic depression. For a few days I assisted him with his test work and after awhile was doing test work of my own. I have spent the rest of my time here playing with a mini float cell, discovering the effects of Ph, dispersants, depressants and reporting on my findings.

However to merely talk about the work would be leaving out a huge part of the experience. The camp that we stay in is located apox. 6Km from the mine. Myself and Mitch are staying in what are known as ‘dog boxes’. Basically they are tiny little rooms consisting of a bed, a desk, a fridge and whateva else you manage to fit in there. It sounds bad but realistically it’s all you need out here, although a bathroom would have been nice (damn you Felicity! :P)Between the gym, the pool and the bar I spent very little time in my room.

The people that I worked with also deserve a mention. Whereva I went and was willing to learn, someone was willing to teach me and towards the end people even began to ask for my opinion and treat me like one of the qualified Metallurgists. Most people seem to have the attitude that “These guys will be our bosses in a few years, we better treat them well”!

The bar is always packed after work for a drink or a pool party was the go, depending on what mood people were in. Fly out days are always the best, every1 is always excited about going home so the atmosphere is generally quite good. We have had a few pool parties lately, after I invested in a set of ipod speakers, apparently now I’m the ‘guy who hosts parties’. Not a bad reputation really! :P

Overall this has been an amazing experience and I recommend it to anyone looking to start a career in the resources sector and make some awsum friends at the same time!

Luke
(Pictures comming soon, the internet at the mine site won't let me upload them for some reason!)