Yes, I too work for SANTOS, on the same Supervision level as Peter, although in a different mode.
My function within the Organisation is Maintenance Planning Supervisor, and responsible during my duty cycle for the successful periodic planning in preventive maintenance.
We also co-ordinate with departments for daily "on line condition" maintenance as far as possible, and plan the work loads for shutdown maintenance.
The position is reasonably responsible, but is aided in as much that as we cannot stockpile our product, all of our train of events is duplicated with a mirror image item of plant. This means that should failure occur in a certain pump, its standby can be energised whilst the failed unit is isolated for repairs. Upon it's repair, this unit then becomes the standby.
The preceding paragraphs cover the actual gas plant inself, which consists of steam generation, gas cleaning and drying, removal of trapped hydrocarbons and stabilisation. Not only, but also, (to coin a phrase) our area covers the field facilities.
These consist of four satellite stations for glycol dehydration, three compressor stations for gas compression, and the associate field wells. One field has forty six wells, the next largest twenty five wells, and three other fields, two with fifteen wells each and one with two. Several other fields are soon to be brought online providing two more satellites and associated wells, so you can see it's quite an undertaking. At present our furthest field is 30 miles (oops) 48 Km away. When you read our hand out, reprinted from Rydges you will begin to grasp what maintenance group is up against, especially as we are developing the liquids side as well. As I am writing this the radio news has just announced the second largest onshore flow of oil from a field in the Cooper Basin.
Anyhow, enough of the work side for now, that can be expanded upon in a later bulletin.
Now, for my involvement with the club & Ham radio.
First noticed Peter and Mike struggling respectively with theory and morse and commiserating with them on their tribulations, and when they got their Full Call's, what jubilation. Watched them set up stations and try for the first DX's, listened avidly to the conversations with the far flung corners of the antipodies, and an interest was sparked. The spark kindled and burnt low for the first six to nine months because of the maintenance planning work load, which caused much midnight oil to be burnt, but that's another story.
The end of April saw the major items out of the way ready for the winter gas production, (and out of my hair, - You'll laugh at that one, my forehead goes back to the nape of my neck) and the addition of extra staff helped a lot too. Then annual leave, a caravan trip for the family, meant that June was just around the corner. Knowing that it was now or never, off went I to the P&T and put my name down for the November Novice Exam.
-Morse-! What was morse? To me it was a name for a specific type of tapered pin, and a continuous wave was a surfy's dream.
Enlisting the willing help of Pete & Mike, and gathering as many books and literary articles I could find, started "pressure cooking" and have got through to trial exams set by VK5AMH and achieved 80% correct, and have had Roger Davis' dit dahs up to here (indicates neck), but have now got to the stage of being able to receive comfortably at 5 words per minute and soon hope to QRQ to seven or eight. Sending practice gets on ones wick too and my hut mates groan when they see me back in the field. Morse practise 0600 - 0630, 1200 - 1230 and 1830 to 1930 (of course with earphones on), I'm not completely unfeeling, and theory takes another two or so hours of reading I suppose, about every other night or so.
Got to pass this exam or else! Funny thing, perhaps I'm perverse, or mascho chistic or something but get a lot of enjoyment out of studying for the N call.
Enough from me now, it's been a pretty long over, but I think I'll sign off now with 73's and go QRT.
Hope to hear you on Minnet,