Friday, May 26, 2006

Travel and golf

Busy weeks since I last posted. I am back at the coal mines again. This is an annual pilgrimage that I make to the throne of coal (also known as the money tree!)
I have a client that has several coal mines in the Central Queensland Bowen Basin. I have contracted to one of the new mines there for about 4 years now assisting with business planning, budgeting, project reporting and various other excel related jobs including some mine planning, operations reporting, incident reporting, labour costing and leave management. This is usually for 8-12 weeks a year.
The mine is in Northeast of Emerald which is about 1000 kms from Brisbane.
I generally fly up on a Tuesday morning and fly back on a Friday night, meaning I am away from the family for 4 days and 3 nights.
Getting ready to go was quite intense as I had a lot of jobs to tie up before I left. I did have one whole day off before leaving so Monday we went and played. We went to watch Ice Age 2 and then went out for lunch. The kids enjoyed seeing me before I left.

While I have been up here I haven’t had too much work to do this week as I am waiting for others who need to be organised. I played golf yesterday and managed a 61 for 9 holes – (par 36) which as I am on a 27 handicap works out at 47 or 11 over par. Still its my 2nd best ever score having once scored 60 on the same course. I had 2 holes that were only bogeys so I was reasonably happy with that too. Seeing as I play golf once or twice a year I am not at all concerned!

I have seen a wedge tailed eagle twice now while on the way to work as it was feeding off a large dead roo on the side of the road. It is a massive bird standing maybe most of a metre tall while on the ground. I expect its wing span would be 2 or more metres.

Back on the plane tonight to go home!