Chandala Mine Tiwest

For the first time since we moved to Melbourne almost 3.5 years ago, I finally made it back to Perth! Andrew is there for 3 weeks for school and work and more school so I decided to make my way over to him for my semester break. We got pretty ordinary weather while I was there (I must have brought it with me from Melbourne... sigh) but it was really nice to spend some time with Andrew and to be back in Perth. While we were there we caught up with some friends who I hadn't seen in years which was really nice. We had a lovely, uber delicious Mexican feast with Claire in Freo, had drinks with Brian at the pub and caught up with Christine and Naomi and their families at King's Park. It was so nice to see everyone again!

Andrew and I also went back to our old stomping grounds in Tuart Hill to see the little unit we still own but now rent out over there. It was really weird but wonderful at the same time to go check out and inspect the old place. Walking in the front door, I was hit with a rush of memories from my early days in Australia and it was really cool to be back in our first little house together. The current tenant has kept up the place really well but we heard a pretty funny story about our previous tenants. Apparently, the 2 students that used to live there after we moved out weren't all that fond of gardening. They were asked to pull out the weeds to make sure the garden stayed looking nice and when the agent came back to check the request had been met, she found that all the weeds were lovingly cared for while all the plants had been pulled out! What? To make it even funnier... when asked to still pull the weeds and replace the plants and flowers the tenants planted plastic flowers. Who does that? Needless to say we're glad we've got a new tenant who has taken good care of the garden.

While we were in Tuart Hill we also got to go back to Cafe Bellini, a delicious, quaint little Italian place down the street from the unit where we had our first date almost 6 years ago. Awww so romantical. Love it.

One of the highlights from the trip, although rainy and grey, was going to an Open Day at Chandala Mine in Muchea. I think this is probably the closest I'll ever get to seeing what Andrew does and what work is like for him when he's out on a mine site. This site was only about an hour out of Perth so is much closer to civilisation than most of the mines he's at, but it was pretty cool to be there! Of course I didn't understand half of what they were saying... talking all science lingo on me... brought me back to year 10 Chemistry with Ms. O'Reilly which was NOT my strongest subject by any means (who are we kidding... I was the one who was in early before class and had to stay late after class for extra help just to pass the class!) but I plugged along with Andrew for a few hours trying to learn what I could. Anyway, all the talk about Ilmenite and Zircon (I think they was the main minerals?!?!... don't ask me what they do/are used for because I couldn't tell you) got to be a bit much for me so I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos.

We had to wear high res safety gear when we went on the walking tour of the plant. Don't we look sexy? Love it. I totally get why all these site workers wear boots and high res gear because well for one thing, it's a safety issue but by the end of the 40 minute tour my sneakers (mesh sneakers I might add... not the best selection for a rainy day) were soaked and muddy as were my jeans!

Inside the plant it's just how I would have imagined it... lots of pipes and other technical stuff I don't know the name of. It was loud and I will blame my lack of knowledge not on lack of understanding sciency stuff but on the fact that we had to wear ear plugs and I couldn't hear what the tour guys were yelling over the noise of the machinery. That's a good excuse right? It looks kind of cool though with all the pipes and yellow glow of the lights!

I did take note that in the picture above the steam stack there is a long, large rusty kiln which gets heated up to 1100 degrees and is on a 2 degree slope from left to right. When the minerals are put in at one end it takes 9 hours for them to travel to the other end and inside the fiery kiln, which one guy described as hell on earth, it's basically just coals that heat up the minerals. There are 10 pumps around the outside of the kiln that just constantly pump in hot air to keep the temperature stable. The tour guys said that if the kiln stops rotating for more than 30 minutes it would just implode on itself because it's so hot. Yikes!

I probably butchered some of that information but whatever, we all know I'm not a science expert. I think I'll stick to photography and leave the mining and metallurgy to Andrew. :)