Photography.

[nomadpete]

Thanks Wille.

Not the sort of view that Tourism Australia would caption "Where the bloody ell are ya?"

But it representative of a bloody lot of our wide brown land.

 

When I first travelled the outback in my teens, all I saw was endless monotony. But the country grew on me. Now, I miss it too.

We are heading to that country today. 

[willedoo]

9 hours ago, nomadpete said:

When I first travelled the outback in my teens, all I saw was endless monotony. But the country grew on me. Now, I miss it too.

We are heading to that country today. 

Have a good trip Pete, a good time of year to be heading out there. It's been over 14 years since I retired from working in the back country and haven't been there since. If I got my vehicle up to scratch I'd like to do another trip out there as I've never been there on a tourist basis, always working. From the east coast of S.E. Queensland it's bitumen all the way to Innamincka now. Last time I was out there the bitumen had extended from Jackson to past Ballera, but fell short of the border. It had been a good season with a good body of Mitchell grass as far as the eye could see.

 

In that same batch of photos, I fund this one of an abandoned well name plate at that field where we worked for a short time. Top line is Willowie No.1, the well name - ie: first well in the Willowie field. Second line, the well owner, Innamincka Petroleum. Third line the drilling contractor - Oil Drilling and Exploration Rig 30. Fourth line, the date drilling commenced. Spud is short for spudded, the term for when the bit first bites into the ground. Fifth line, the date it was plugged and abandoned. Last line, the total depth reached.

 

[nomadpete]

In my working life I drove just about every road in Qld. Numerous times. My territory was from Grafton, west to Birdsville, up to Threeways, across to Torres Strait.

 

As you know, working doesn't really let one see the country properly. So since retirement I've been visiting places that I promised myself to come back to, to see properly. Thanks for the tip.

[pmccarthy]

Willie you don’t know who M Bell was on that name plate do you? I had a schoolmate of that name who worked out that way.

[willedoo]

37 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

Willie you don’t know who M Bell was on that name plate do you? I had a schoolmate of that name who worked out that way.

Peter, I don't know him. I'd have to check to see who's name goes on those abandoment markers. I'm fairly sure the information on them is a legal requirement by the various state's petroleum regulations. It could be a simple tradition of the welder adding his name to it, or more likely it's the name of an authorised person attesting to the closure of the well. That possibly could be someone from the drilling company OD&E which was based in Toowoomba, or someone from Innamincka Petroleum, or if they used a contractor to seal the well, someone from that company. Schlumberger and Halliburton were the main well services contractors out there.

[facthunter]

It must have been replaced lately. There's no bullet holes in it.. Nev

[onetrack]

I was watching a video of a bloke touring the Simpson Desert, and he came across a similar sign advising the earliest drill hole in the Simpson, Beachcomber #1. Someone had a sense of humour.

The sign had no name on it, so one has to presume the name on the Willowie No 1 sign, is the welders name.

 

The welded letters accuracy and eveness is something to be proud of, and to put your name to, because I've never been able to weld letters and numbers that straight!

 

[willedoo]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

I was watching a video of a bloke touring the Simpson Desert, and he came across a similar sign advising the earliest drill hole in the Simpson, Beachcomber #1. Someone had a sense of humour.

The sign had no name on it, so one has to presume the name on the Willowie No 1 sign, is the welders name.

 

The welded letters accuracy and eveness is something to be proud of, and to put your name to, because I've never been able to weld letters and numbers that straight!

 

onetrack, I think you're right about the welder's signature. Now that I think back on it, I've seen a lot with signatures and a lot without. As far as a sense of humour regarding the naming of that well, It's not specifically meant as a joke. It's a Beach Petroleum well and all of their wells that I know of had beach and coastal themes in their names. I've seen a fair few of them as we used to contract for Beach quite a lot. Reg Sprigg did most of his early exploration work around the beaches off Adelaide in the 1950's and 60's with his company Geosurveys, then formed it into Beach Petroleum in the early 60's. At one stage they hired a dive instructor to teach them to hookah dive and did some seismic work on the gulf bed off Adelaide. They were a great mob to work for; of all the companies we contracted for over the years, I put Beach at the top of the list by a long way.

[facthunter]

Life's a BEACH  some say. I was an avid surfer. It's a wonder I didn't get Bitten.  I thought I could never be far from a Beach but everything rusts bar your trunks and flippers.  Nev

[willedoo]

4 hours ago, onetrack said:

I was watching a video of a bloke touring the Simpson Desert, and he came across a similar sign advising the earliest drill hole in the Simpson, Beachcomber #1.

onetrack, there's a few in the Simpson a bit older than that one, some dating back to the early/mid 60's and later 70's. In the 60's, I think the McDills and Hale River wells were the first.

[willedoo]

To keep within the photography thread topic, but on the same subject, this is a scan of a photo I took in 1984 with an instamatic camera. I'm not sure of the format ie: 126 or 110, Peter, red750 might be able to help there. It's a very small three wheeler drill rig that was used to drill shallow upholes on the surface of Lake Eyre South. I wasn't involved with it, but from memory they towed it with a Honda trike and the Argo buggy in the background was used to haul cables. I remember they had a heap of trikes on that job. It was right at that period in history where trikes were on the way out and quad bikes were first appearing on the market.

 

[red750]

Sorry, Willie, no personal experience with Instamatics. AI search revealed:

 

Kodak Instamatic cameras primarily use two distinct film formats: 126 film and 110 film. 

126 Film: Introduced in 1963, this 35mm-wide cartridge produces 28x28mm square images (typically masked to 26.5x26.5mm).  It features a single registration hole per frame and a captive take-up spool, allowing for easy drop-in loading without rewinding.
110 Film: Introduced in 1972 for the Pocket Instamatic line, this format uses a smaller 16mm wide film with a 13x17mm image area.  It also uses a drop-in cartridge design but results in significantly smaller negatives. 
While the term "Instamatic" is often used generically, 126 was the original format for the main Instamatic series, whereas 110 was reserved for the later, more compact Pocket Instamatic models. 

 

AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts.

[pmccarthy]

I did a lot of work with a Gemco auger rig similar to that, sampling tailings dumps. It had a VW engine. I learned to fix most parts of it.

[onetrack]

Unfortunately, a house fire destroyed over 90% of my photos in 1982, so I have little to contribute by way of personal photos. But Willies post about the Argo's, and the 3-wheel trailer-mounted drill rig reminds me of the Nickel exploration that was going on in the '69-'73 period around the Goldfields of W.A. - when the nickel price was ballistic, and the Poseidon Nickel shares were going the same way.

 

There was a lot of nickel exploration going on in the area South of Kambalda, around Widgiemooltha, at the time I turned up in the area, after leaving the Army at the finish of my National Service on 1st Oct 1971.

The older brother, my business partner, had gone to the Goldfields from the Wheatbelt while I was in the Army, and that was because there was a massive drought in the W.A. Wheatbelt between 1969 and 1972, and he ran out of work. But the Nickel exploration teams were pegging like crazy in the nickel boom, and dozer work was plentiful, so the brother took one of our Cat D6C's up to the Goldfields, and made good money clearing gridlines for the peggers.

 

When I rolled up, we were doing gridlines in the Widgiemooltha area, and the two main Nickel companies operating there were the original (U.S.) Anaconda Mining, and a Belgian company called Union Miniere. The area is full of salt lakes, with Lake Lefroy and Lake Cowan being the biggest, in a string of salt lakes that run from Kambalda to Norseman.

 

There was a lot of drilling to be done on the salt lakes, but getting out on them was a real hassle. They often contained areas of deep mud under the salt, although some areas of the salt lakes were quite firm, and could be driven on. The only way to get to the spots requiring drilling was building elevated roads, like jetties, out across the salt. As you could imagine, this was bloody expensive.

 

But Union Miniere had a neat little beast that could run around on the salt anywhere. I had a photo of it, but its gone. It was called the Cuthbertson Tracked Landrover. This Landrover was used substantially to get around on the lakes, and it was neat to watch. They were built by a Scottish company, who are still in business - but they no longer build tracked conversions.

 

I wasn't aware until I did some research, that Cuthbertson only built about 15 or 20 of these units, before they ceased production of them. I have no idea what happened to Union Miniere's Cuthbertson Landrover, maybe it wore out and was scrapped.

 

https://silodrome.com/tracked-cuthbertson-land-rover/

 

https://www.lrukforums.com/threads/tracked.256227/

 

Edited 11 hours ago by onetrack

[willedoo]

onetrack, that's a beast, that Cuthbertson Landrover. That's what I need for getting up and down the driveway. The only thing I've ever had to do with nickel was in the Kimberleys, about halfway between Halls Creek and Turkey Creek in 1986. That was just putting in some access tracks for the geologists to have a scratch around, no grid work. 

[onetrack]

The exploration gridding work produced teams of blokes working on the clearing and pegging. Essentially, entire leases had to be cut up into small squares by cutting parallel criss-crossing lines, so the drill rigs could drill on a grid basis.

 

In light country, the teams wouldn't use any earthmoving gear to cut the line, they just used axes and 4WD's to bash down the bush. It was brutal work on the 4WD's and they staked tyres multiple times a day.

 

So they ended up working out that nearly bald tyres, pumped up to higher pressures, were better at avoiding stakes than tyres with good tread run at normal pressures. The principle was that the stakes would skate off a relatively smooth tread on a tyre with high pressure in it.

 

The 4WD's took a hiding and the pegging teams would buy up old Landrovers, and the few available older Landcruisers, fit them with scrub-bashing bars, and go use them like a bulldozer!

 

Many of the companies favoured dozing in the grids, as it made it so much easier on the drill rigs and their 4WD's, even though it was higher cost.

[willedoo]

Yes, I kind of visualise the mineral grid patterns as being similar to hydrocarbon 3D grids. They can be a fairly tight pattern with lines every 400 metres over a fairly large area. They could be pegged to have a vibe point every 40 metres, usually three vibe trucks with the centre one vibing at the peg. What a boring job those drivers have, drive 40 metres, lower the pad and shake the ground, lift it up and drive another 40 metres and do it all over again, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I think these days they don't even lower and raise the pads any more; it's done remotely. The only excitement they get is when someone has a flat tyre.

 

Lucky for the environment the 3D intensive grid work came about around the same time as GPS, so that was a quantum leap in environmental protection having GPS surveying and GPS fitted machines. I can remember the days when they would have two chainmen working one vehicle. The driver would take off from a peg holding the chain out the window while the bloke or girl doing the running would let the tail of the chain overshoot the peg, then stomp on the chain when it shot past, pulling it out of the drivers hand. The runner would pull the chain back those few metres to the peg, then wave to the driver who would jump out and knock in a peg at his end. Then the driver would take off again while the runner ran up to the new peg and they'd repeat it all over . Now it's one person in a vehicle and a GPS telling them when to stop and put a peg in.

[willedoo]

On that subject of Beach Petroleum, this photo is their geothermal / hot rocks project on the eastern side of the Flinders Range. It was taken in 2011, and a bit better quality than than previous instamatic photo. This one was taken with my little Panasonic Lumix compact. Myself and a mate went down there for about five days to do a small job. Just to the left of the well head, you can see the Beverley uranium mine at the foothill of the Flinders, which is where we were accommodated. It's a pity the project fizzled out.