Hi all My names Bruce and I work in the Bowen Basin in Central Queensland, Australia. My background is Government (management). I started out in Queensland Forestry back in 1981 as a Junior and the plant operators used to give me a go on all of the machinery they were using. After a while I got my tickets and thought this is where my career was headed! So wrong...the bosses at the time thought I wasn't "bright" enough to be a plant operator and sent me off to school to become an Ranger. Since that time I have had many jobs in Government such as a TAFE Teacher, Park Ranger and Fire Service Inspector. On days off I used to help out a couple of mates who had graders and diggers just to keep my "eye" in, but all the time the "bug" was still there! Early this tear I sent in my resignation to Government and started driving semi Water Trucks for a new Rail Line in the Bowen Basin (didn't like this at all...too repetitive, although the money was good!) About 6 weeks ago a local contractor up here gave me a start on a body tipper when a day later their grader operator left them and he put me on a Cat 12h 9very steep learning curve!!). Just finished a 25km gravel road maintenance grade in cluding re-sheeting serveral sections of it for a local council...and they loved it! I found this forum by doing a search on "grader techniques" and boy what a site! A lot of the stuff I learned years I ago I've forgot and this site has so much good information and so many very experienced operators willing to share their experiences! regards Bruce
Welcome to the forum Bruce. :usa
Welcome Bruce from Maurie in Hervey Bay, Even though I'm only a junior member and new like you are. Yes, it's a great site and we are in the presence of a lot of great people from around the world. I run a big volume rigid tipper carting landscape material and it's a long time since I did roadworks but I know you are very lucky to get on a grader so soon. You must be doing ok otherwise you wouldn't still be there. Stay humble. Look, listen and learn as much as you can. Cheers. Maurie.
Thanks Maurie I think I was thrown in the deep end! Sink or swim! I keep on asking questions particulay of my mates who have been on graders for 30+ years (racked up one hell of a phone bill for the first month). I can honestly say I have learned new things every day of the week, remembered a lot of things too and will continue to learn!!! There is no doubt I'll be asking a lot of questions on this forum, and I hope that most of the people here will forgive my naivety? Good to see so many Aussies on this forum! Cheers Bruce
Welcome to the forum Bruce what part of QLD do you live in my see you around. cheers John
Hi John I'm based out of Coppabella/Nebo for work but live in Laidley. Cheers Bruce
hi bruce. welcome from another bowen basin lad. I am at german creek (lake Lyndsay) hey john, going thru gin gin tomorrow night on my way home from xmas lol
Hi everyone, looking through the forum and this thread caught my eye. Good to see so many Queenslanders on here! I'm a fitter and turner from maryborough. Almost everything I have learned about operating our excavator and dozer came from here (and I hope there's plenty more to come). There's plenty of good people on here who are very knowledgeable and always ready to help out( such as yourselves:notworthy) Keep up The good work!
G'day r_steven. Yes it is a great site. You better give me a ring on 0407155966 so we can talk about each other and everybody else in the area because I am only 30km away at Hervey Bay! Lets see if we already know each other?
Hi stondad, somehow I missed your post, sorry about that. I work for the sugar factory now, I'm supposed to be operating their new cane harvester if it ever stops raining! My name is Ross Steven, I come from down the pocket (behind the sugar mill) once again sorry about missing your post!
G'day Ross, Yes it is a bit wet. This tread must have popped up to you yesterday too with that dating scam. I live in the same street as the Piggford's cane farm and a stone throw from the Petersons. Know Steve Fermoyle and the family and the Doyles. You will have seen my red volvo 8wheeler tipper around town but I have parked it and am driving a log truck for Stutzy at the moment. The rain is giving us a hard time too. By the look of the forcast you wont get a start for another fortnight. What is the new harvester like? Cheers. Maurie Stone.
Alright, I think we're at our quota of Australians, especially Queenslanders. Welcome to the forum Bruce
Yep. I'll have a go and Willie will moderate. Did I do something wrong with my last post? Detroit is not the centre of the universe and neither is the USA. I have the greatest respect for you and your country and there are reasons for you to show Australians and New Zealanders the same respect. This Forum is a big help to members around the world so when was there a limit placed on the number of posts, comments, or members from anywhere ? Your post is obviously provocative and I am in just the right mood to reply in the way that I have. My name and phone number is public property so please phone me if there is a problem. Sorry Willie. I know the rules but how could I let this one go by? Cheers. Maurie
Stondad Although it's hard to get across with just the printed word, this comment was meant as tongue in cheek. You are correct, Detroit/USA are not the center of the universe, that would be Canada as I'm Canadian. My sister has also settled in Australia, on my visits I have traveled up and down the eastern coast and have enjoyed every minute. If your immigration laws weren't so restrictive, I would probably be settled in Queensland right now, even if my house was built on stilts. I hope to be back down there in January to insult some southern Australians. Usually it's the Americans that have the thin skins, maybe I need to start using those smiley things. I will keep your number and if I'm in the area we can head down to the club for a schooner, again no offense was meant. Tom
Hi Tom, I'm so sorry for getting the wrong idea. Thanks for your kind words. Would love to have a beer with you (what a way to make friends!) and we might even lure Ross from Maryborough into trouble as well. I get your sense of humour now. The best time to upset southerners is when the three game series of Rugby League called "State of Origin" is on, usually between May and June. Queensland just won for the seventh year straight. Cheers. M.
I thought you might offer to be my sponsor, let me sleep on you couch and drink your beer till my residency card came in. But I don't mind a few beers either Cheers, Tom
Good to see you fellas got this little misunderstanding all sorted out with no harm, no foul. And for parties involved, that's one of the benefits of using smiley icons. Any time you're saying something to someone you don't know, it helps to use a smiley to convey the meaning, as it is difficult to know for certain the intent when simply reading the printed word. Now that we know the comment was made in innocent jest, a poke as it were, it's kinda funny, but a or a icon at the end of the comment would help convey the intended jest. :yup
Don't let that stop you Tom, you can always catch a boat from the north, Govt. will even set you up with free accommodation!! Cheers, Greg
Thanks Willie, Glad that we didn't offend anyone, including each other and we may have another new friendship or two come out of the forum. Tom, I don't know if we should start a new thread on this but I would like to know how it is over there. Because I don't know what media you get about us and I don't know how good the media is that we get about you. But the truth is that you don't want to be here right now. I've had my own business here for nearly 18 years with trucks and machinery and had 4 full time employees at one stage. A few months ago I parked my truck and went on the dole. I am getting some work driving and doing mechanical work but it is nothing like it should be. Weather has something to do with it (look at what Ross in Maryborough said about the cane harvesting). The big deal is the Carbon Tax that just came in. No-one is game to spend any money. Sure, there is plenty of good paying work out west and in the mines but expenses are high and nobody knows how secure that really is either. So if I could help to sponsor you, I would, but you might be better off where you are at the moment. I am interested in your and your Sister's comments or anyone that has a perspective. Cheers. M.
The last visit the carbon tax was in the news, there were bush fires, a couple earthquakes in Christchurch NZ, rains and flooding in Queensland capped off with the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Your dollar was strong and Australians were looking at cheap homes and muscle cars in the US. Also seems like you were losing a lot of skilled workers to mining. I was looking through the preferred immigration list, they were giving two year work visas to a lot of trades, and I would have had no problem lining up work in Brisbane or Sydney. I thought Oz had weathered the GFC better than America. As for not having work, I've been able to spend winters in Australia because I have none. I use to have a waiting list, a retirement plan, and three properties worth about $450k. Now if I get a job I can start right away, retirement plan? whos retiring, the properties are worth $195k and in the winter there is no work to speak of here besides snow shoveling. Thats why I head down there. Tom
Hi Maurie, yes I have a good idea of where you live. I know the petersens and doyles (they brought q new harvester this year aswell). I'm pretty sure my grandfather carted cane for the fermoyles back when it was.wholestick. The rain sure is a pain especially when I quit my full time job about two months ago! The harvester looks nice (as it should, it cost the mill half a million) It has been widened by four inches to suit dual rows and I spent about a week hardfacing all of the wear parts. I'm typing this on my phone so I can't attach a link, but type in jd 3520 cane harvester on Google and you'll find it. When it stops raining and we get started I'll post some photos. Ross
For those living on the other side of the World the following is probably as good an explanation of Australia as you'll ever come across............. :tong WE, the people of a free nation of blokes, sheilas and the occasional w**ker. We come from many lands (although a few too many of us come from New Zealand) and although we live in the best country in the world, we reserve the right to bitch and moan about it whenever we bloody like. We are One Nation but we’re divided into many States. First, there’s Victoria, named after a queen who didn’t believe in lesbians. Victoria is the realm of Mossimo turtlenecks, cafe latte, grand-final day and big horse races. Its capital is Melbourne, whose chief marketing pitch is that “it’s liveable”. At least that’s what they think. The rest of us think it is too bloody cold and wet. Next, there’s NSW, the realm of pastel shorts, macchiato with sugar, thin books read quickly and millions of dancing queens. Its capital Sydney has more queens than any other city in the world and is proud of it. Its mascots are Bondi lifesavers who pull their Speedos up their cracks to keep the left and right sides of their brains separate. Down south we have Tasmania, a State based on the notion that the family that bonks together stays together. In Tassie, everyone gets an extra chromosome at conception. Maps of the State bring smiles to the sternest faces. It holds the world record for a single mass shooting, which the Yanks can’t seem to beat no matter how often they try. South Australia is the province of half-decent reds, a festival of foreigners and bizarre axe murders. SA is the state of innovation. Where else can you so effectively re-use country bank vaults and barrels as in Snowtown, just out of Adelaide (also named after a queen). They had the Grand Prix, but lost it when the views of Adelaide sent the Formula One drivers to sleep at the wheel. Western Australia is too far from anywhere to be relevant. It’s main claim to fame is that it doesn’t have daylight saving because if it did, all the men would get erections on the bus on the way to work. WA was the last state to stop importing convicts and many of them still work there in the government and business. The Northern Territory is the red heart of our land. Outback plains, sheep stations the size of Europe, Kangaroos, Jackaroos, Emus, Uluru and dusty kids with big smiles. It also has the highest beer consumption of anywhere on the planet and its creek beds have the highest aluminium content of anywhere too. Although the Territory is the centre piece of our national culture, few of us live there and the rest prefer to fly over it on our way to Bali. And there’s Queensland. While any mention of God seems silly in a document defining a nation of half-arsed sceptics, it is worth noting that God probably made Queensland as it’s beautiful one day and perfect the next. Why he filled it with dickheads remains a mystery. Oh yes and there’s Canberra. The least said the better. We, the citizens of Oz, are united by Highways, whose treacherous twists and turns kill more of us each year than murderers. We are united in our lust for international recognition, so desperate for praise we leap in joy when a rag tag gaggle of corrupt IOC officials tells us Sydney is better than Beijing. We are united by a democracy so flawed that a political party, albeit a redneck gun-toting one, can get a million votes and still not win one seat in Federal Parliament. Not that we’re whingeing, we leave that to our Pommy immigrants. We want to make “no worries mate” our national phrase, “she’ll be right mate” our national attitude and “Waltzing Matilda” our national anthem (So what if it’s about a sheep-stealing crim who commits suicide). We love sport so much our news readers can read the death toll from a sailing race and still tell us who’s winning. And we’re the best in the world at all the sports that count, like cricket, netball, rugby, AFL, roo-shooting, two-up and horse racing. We also have the biggest rock, the tastiest pies, the blackest aborigines and the worst-dressed Olympians in the known universe. We shoot, we root, we vote. We are girt by sea and pissed by lunchtime. Even though we might seem a racist, closed-minded, sports-obsessed little people, at least we feel better for it. You are, I am, we are, Australian.
Aw Nige ! Those of us that have been interested enough to read, have been treated to many an epic posted by you and learned heaps from your legendary knowledge of all things oily and how to keep everything from geasshoppers to sub-micronic particles out. Now you have excelled yourself by revealing to the world the true state of our nation and the fact that "A Cinema Near U" is somewhere in Australia. There are some good private jokes in there. Next time you could include how only we could allow a short gay Irishman to destroy one of our few remaining international brands while he keeps leering with both hands in the till. Thank you. Cheers. M.
I dearly wish that "A Cinema Near You" was somewhere in Oz. However unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth ...... it's currently a place far less salubrious. My warped sense of humour comes largely from having worked for a long time in an office in a far-away country largely populated by Australians. G'Day Cobbers .......... :drinkup:drinkup
Tom, I think Ross would agree that it's hardly stopped raining since you were here last. Sounds like things not a lot different anywhere no matter how much our politicians tell us we have a strong economy. I know loosing money when I see it. Ross, googled it. Nice machine. Photos please of first time you bog it. (shouldn't take long!) Cheers.M.
another aussie here from QLD based over seas now though.