Pilbara People
Southern Hemisphere. My world upside-down. Sun turning the opposite way, unbelievable dimensions and landscapes, people with roots from all over the world. Open, friendly, helpful, willing to spend time with me and my camera. Open doors everywhere. Amazing this other side of my world!
I was born in Port Hedland, it was a great place to grow up, it was a place where everyone knew everyone. I currently do rostering for train drivers at BHP Billiton. My father was a train driver, that’s how we ended up here. He was a train driver from Queensland, my parents started off in Goldsworthy. Mum had to come to Port Hedland to give birth to me because there was no hospital there, we went back for three months after I was born, but it shut down so they transferred my father to Hedland.
For fun I do hobby photography and we go fishing and camping, we’re outdoors all the time. A lot of people have family that live far away, and they create their own family in Hedland, we might not be blood, but we look after each other and that’s what Port Hedland is all about; it’s the people that you fall in love with, which makes it hard if you ever want to leave. A lot of people leave but they come back, because there is nowhere else like it anywhere in the world.
Amy Jo
I’m from Mauritius. I work as the assistant to the General Manager at the Port Hedland Yacht Club. I make sure everything is working. We do 300 people often, all at once for dinner. There are about four chefs; it’s a big place. I finished school and at 19 I started to work in hotels, I worked in Club Med in South East Asia for four to five years, then Melbourne and now I stay here.
I’ve immigrated to Australia, it’s one of the few places you can work hard and then you can go to the airport and buy yourself a ticket anywhere in the world. There is no-where you can work as hard and buy a ticket like this. It’s economics. Right now, I’m working for knowledge rather than money. One day money will come, and when is enough, enough? I spent five years in Melbourne, and after five years I wanted some sun and destiny drew me here. I got this job offer two years ago, because I’m very interested in wine. I’m here in transit because I want to move down to Margaret River where the wineries are. I wake up at 2pm, go to the Silver Train, read the paper and have breakfast, sometimes at 12, sometimes at three, sometimes at 10 in the morning. I work Wednesday to Sunday, and sometimes, Thursday to Sunday.
For leisure, I go to Pardoo, my little escape on a Sunday afternoon. I watch the landscape changing, its different, it’s beautiful. It’s a continent, there is everything in one- there are many options, that’s where I started learning how to fish, and I met some people, very kind people. I got the hat, shirt, fishing rod, but no fish. If I catch one, everyone will hear about it.
Jean-Phillipe
I’m the General Manager for BHP Billiton Iron Ore’s Port operations; that is everything from trains through to ships. I’ve been in the job since early January 2012, so over a year now. I was born in the United Kingdom, but grew up and went to university in Perth. I’ve lived in various locations around the Pilbara over the last 12 to 13 years including mine sites inland, and various BHP Billiton sites as a contractor on open cut mining, construction, and processing plants, mainly in iron ore. I’m now on the receiving end of work on the mines. The growth of the business and the entire industry in my time has been very interesting. We can now claim to be the highest tonnage port in Australia. We ship to major port destinations including China, South Korea and Japan.
My day starts between 6 – 6.30am. I typically go into work and check phone messages, and emails. I go to pre-shift meetings, most of which start around 6.30 – 7am depending on the shift arrangement. I go in and meet our workforce, and listen to what’s going on. From there, different things are planned throughout the day; certain parts of the day are busier than others. I’m office based for most of the time, but I look forward to the time spent in the field interacting with employees, asking questions, and being available to people.
Matthew
I’ve been a personal trainer for about 15 years and doing this job for two years. I’m an Active Life Coach at Tropicana (Ess Port Haven Village). The money initially attracted me, after that it follows my background, promoting and encouraging people to look after themselves. It’s provided a consistent income. The disadvantage of being a self-employed personal trainer is that the income is unpredictable, when people cut something, this is usually first.
An average day would be a split shift, 6am to 12pm, and 2.30pm to 8pm. I finish work and go straight to bed. Even though we do a split shift, it still feels like a 14 hour day. In the morning we do warm-up stretches with staff so they are ready to tackle their day and reduce the risk of injury. I run the gym, sports and social activities. Our biggest job here is to promote healthy lifestyle choices. We have a labelling system in the food hall, eat most, eat moderately & eat less, which encourages people to make healthier choices about health and well being.
I have 4 children at home, the youngest is my daughter. She is turning 12 in a week, I’ll be at work. She is always asking; When are you coming home Mum? It’s really tough. I don’t plan on doing this for too much longer. I’d like to go into mental health after this. Talking to a lot of people up here I see this is a big area that needs to be addressed in this sector. For me, being away from my partner and kids is almost unbearable. It puts a lot of strain on all relationships. Especially your partner at home. It’s hard. I personally want to give more to my relationship and more support to my partner. You feel quite inadequate. It’s emotionally really tough.
Karen
I’ve been working in Port Hedland about six-and-a-half years now. I lived here for about four-and-a-half years, and have been doing fly in, fly out for two at Port Haven. I finished university and I was applying for a lot of different jobs and ended up going through the BHP Billiton graduate program. The jobs seemed reasonable; the pay was good up here, so I thought I’d like a sea change from Melbourne. I didn’t have any expectations before I came. I hadn’t really heard of Port Hedland before. I moved up in the height of summer, so it was pretty hot.
I found the people very accommodating, you form tight relationships with people and the community, and it is a very welcoming town. After four-and-half years it was time for a change, the climate gets to you. I’m working in mechanical governance, we do structural and mechanical audits of machinery, we audit them for compliance against company standards.
The machines we work on are the stackers, the reclaimers, and the ship loaders. We do 6am until 6pm, twelve hour days; I have a work vehicle so I usually drive myself. On Monday morning we fly up on the 6.20am flight and get onto site at around 9.15am. We have a safe start meeting; we get together and talk about safety and work plans. We look at reports and recommendations, coordinating contractors.
I get back to Port Haven at 6pm. I’ll go for a run or go to the gym, I do that for an hour, dinner closes at 8pm, and then I get on the phone to Kate (who lives in Perth) and go to bed. The lifestyle is tiring. A lot of the workforce lives in Hedland, which makes it a bit harder – to have residential versus FIFO. I definitely enjoy the flight home, every single flight is full and I’ve started getting upgrades often, which is nice.
Tom
I live in Melbourne. I work in Port Hedland as a sex worker for ten days most of the time. There are three to four girls working here. You have to be thick skinned to do this job. I come once every three months, or when I feel like it, for about ten or twelve days. I’ve been coming to Port Hedland to work for about two years. There are a lot of girls from all over Australia.
I started in this profession because I was curious and I really like sex and now I love the money and the freedom. I love going down to the beach here. I get up in the afternoon sometimes, have something to eat, head to the shops, come back and relax by the pool and get ready for the night at work. We take bookings all through the night or wait, sit around, taking clients.
We go out and introduce ourselves, if we are happy to go with them, we do. Most of the time it’s an hour or two, sometimes half an hour, sometimes all night. I had a guy book me for half an hour but then he wanted to stay all night and we just slept. Some guys get attached and want to know when I’ll be back in town again. Some leave half way through the hour; they’ve done what they needed to do. We usually start at 7.00pm and work until 2.00 or 3.00am, its busier on some nights where we finish at five or six in the morning. Saturday night especially can be just in and out.
I read a lot of books; I do a lot of sewing and a lot of eating in my downtime here. We all eat ridiculous amounts of food as we need the extra energy to stay awake at night. We make a lot of money and we can be spontaneous with it, go off on a holiday, two of the girls are going to Bali from here. I don’t think I’ll be doing this much longer; it’s not something anyone can do forever but is a good opportunity to make money while chasing and fulfilling dreams.
Jewel
Hi, my name is Khalisah. I was born in Port Hedland and have been living here for 20 years. I like to get away to the city sometimes for a change from the Pilbara. I like the way that Hedland is a small community, as it gets the people to interact with community, events and other locals.
I am currently employed at Health Focus Pharmacy in Port Hedland, however I am on maternity leave and am planning to go back to work am also planning to study Pharmacy at one of the universities by correspondence.
My mother is President of the Islamic Association of North West Australia. My siblings and I also get involved when the Association caters or sells food for community events. My mother moved to Hedland when she was 16 years old, from the Cocos Islands, to live with her brother. She is now.
My father was born in Kalgoorlie and later lived in Perth, before moving to Port Hedland when he was 19 years old. He was a strict Christian and later chose to convert to Islam before marrying my mother.
In the meantime my daily routine is doing everyday chores and taking care of my baby, while doing drawings from time to time as a hobby. I am hoping to start my studies in Pharmacy soon this year and hopefully launch a career in the pharmaceutical industry in the future.
Khalisah
My name is Florian but people call me Filo. I am from Germany. I was 14 when I first thought about walking around the world. I started walking in Mumbai, India two-and-a-half years ago. I went through South East Asia, then arrived in Darwin and started my walk to Katherine. I discovered how dry Australia is, and it was the first time I had to buy a trolley to pull water.
I arrived at the Auski Roadhouse with German friends, who I worked with on a camel farm in Broome. I felt so good in this place, I knew I had to stay here and ask for a job. The owner of the roadhouse said it’s not busy enough so there is no work. I calculated my food and thought okay I will sit here for ten days. After twenty four hours I got a job. I’ve now been here around seven weeks, I’ve met many interesting people, we mainly service the mining workers from around here. I had no idea about this place, nothing. It has a special feeling. Some places in India, I felt the same way. I can work here for six months, then I will continue walking around Australia. Usually, I wake up with the sun and go to sleep with the sun, usually I cook a big dinner; I eat half and keep the other half for breakfast, then walk the whole day, nonstop. I don’t eat lunch, it makes me tired. I drink a lot of water, with some citron, a little bit of sugar, little bit of salt. On the road I’ve had nightmares I was home again, but then I’d wake up in my tent, in the middle of nowhere and say, thank you, I’m not back home.
At home, I felt always I’m sitting in a railway station, I’m waiting for a train and the train is so late. Then it was the right moment, I jumped on it and now I’m on my way. I hope that this journey makes me calm down, makes me peaceful with myself, makes me happy. You cannot make people happy when you are not happy with yourself.
Florian
I’ve been here close to 2 years, I was previously in Perth and originally born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, we came as kids to Australia. I was in Perth for over 20 years, then moved to Singapore for work which is where my kids were born, then we moved to Hedland; they are seven and nine.
It was a big transition for them from being city slickers, it took them a while to settle in, but being in Hedland allows them to have that experience and wisdom that the world is not just shops and clothes and brands, it helps them appreciate nature.
The good thing about Port is that it’s a small community, everyone knows each other, we have a circle of friends, that all live in a small area, we learn to appreciate family life and spending quality time together.
I’m an Occupational Physician Registrar at the Port Hedland Medical Centre. We start at 8am and end about 5.30pm. I see an average of forty patients per day. It’s a mixture of occupational health cases and routine general practice cases, chronic disease management, hypertension, diabetes, day-to-day acute ailments, from sore throat to diarrhoea. But our specialty is managing occupational health cases. Basically, we look at the various forms of stress related to work and ailments, finding the best way of getting people to work in healthy and safe environments. We diagnose them and develop a plan for treatment.
Heng
We’ve been married for 51 years; we come from Canberra. We left home on the 20th April and came up through the centre to Darwin, then all the way to the West Coast. We’re going further down to Perth, then over the Nullabor and through South Australia. We want to be home by Christmas. We escape from Canberra’s cold weather and spend four or five months of the year away. Our son lives in the house, looking after everything for us while we’re gone.
This was our first trip to the Pilbara, so it’s new and different. The distances between towns is unbelievable, its 350 kilometres before you get to the next one. About 8 years ago we came as far as Kalbarri, but then had a phone call to go home. We enjoyed Port Hedland; we liked the park where the ships come in, we had a look at the salt mine, had a look at industry. I found people very friendly and open; they want to know your life story. We’ve been traveling since 1996. We sold our main house where the kids grew up and then we were free to travel, there are about 15 % of people who sold up everything and just travel.
Edna and Pat
I like to sit in the sun and read a book- I go by the writer. I read mostly novels with the odd fiction in there every now and again. I was born in New Zealand (NZ), where my Dad used to drive those logging trucks, one of the companies over here needed drivers, so he and his friend ended up getting a job. He moved here first to sort everything out, a couple of months later my Mum moved over, followed by my siblings. I didn’t move over until a couple of years later.
Now, Dad works for a concrete company with my brother. School here was terrible. I dropped out two weeks into Year 12 and ended up working. I wanted to do hairdressing and I did that for a few months. Then I got a job at the Finucane Island Sports & Rec Club (Finny Club). Tom and Rau Keefe are the Managers, and I just call them Aunty and Uncle.
I do some admin in the mornings, security some nights and most of the time I work behind the bar. I love my job, it’s the best job I’ve had so far. I know I’ll be at the club for a while and meet all sorts of people there. Once you get to know the customers they become friends, then good friends, it’s always a surprise because you never know what sort of people will walk through the door. I like going to work; it’s a nice, calm environment, no tension or dramas.
I still have my Maori culture, I always wear my pounamu which has been in my family for generations and I’ll never stop wearing it. When I ring back to my Nan she talks in Maori so I won’t forget it. But the rest of my family has sort of lost a lot of theirs but I never will; I’m proud of my culture. I haven’t been back to NZ in three years. Most of my family moved over; in the last month a few of them moved down south. I don’t want to go anywhere else any time soon, I love where I am, it’s just nice the way it is and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
Jamez
My wife Rebecca and I have been here two-and-a-half years. We have six kids, aged 12 years to 12 weeks. I was born in Brisbane, my Mum’s family is English and Welsh, we’re originally from the Newcastle area, she’s second generation. Dad’s family is all English; they are the third or fourth generation. I live in Port Hedland on the edge of Pretty Pool; we are the very first house. It’s the original area down there.
I’m a Station Manager at Port Hedland Meteorological Office. Up until five years ago we had three or four staff, three observers and a technician. We also used to have forecasters. Now, there is only me. On the observation side of things, we fill in wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity, pressure, visibility, and any cloud, any weather. This is the meteorological weather report for all the pilots to access at various aerodromes around the place. We do radio crosses at 6.30am each day, we share that with Carnarvon. I usually get in here at 5.45am, we have a radio cross at 6.30am, generally looking at what’s going on overnight.
I studied Engineering at University. Since I’ve worked with the Bureau, we’ve been posted to northern New South Wales, up to Mount Isa in Queensland, after that Cobar in New South Wales, another mining town. It’s a bit of a novelty for us being on the coastal station, that was a big drawcard, so was living in Western Australia, although its a third of the country, most people have never been here.
My wife and I like living in these country areas. I do a nine kilometre bicycle ride to work and I couldn’t be doing that if I was living in the western suburbs of Sydney.
Daniel
We’ve been in Australia for 30 years and the Pilbara for 24 years, in Karratha, Wickham, Point Samson and Port Hedland. We spent six years down in Kalgoorlie and Perth. My Uncle introduced us to the mining sector; he took a liking to my husband and said, would you like to come to Australia? Tom jumped at it, that was in 1981 and we’ve been here ever since. During my first years here I never worked, my daughter was just born and our son was four years old, now he’s 35 and she’s 31. We also have six grandchildren.
We’ve given a lot to the towns we’ve lived in; we’ve always organized sporting groups, and fund-raising functions. We were founders of the Touch Rugby Association, that was in 1983 and now all the towns have started playing. Port Hedland is probably the best town in the Pilbara, even the state, given to help others with fund-raisers, and money for certain things. We do lots of fundraising events and people are always generous.
We manage the Finucane Island Club (known as ‘The Finny’) a not for profit organization with a committee. It’s a membership based club and at our last tally we had just over 5000 members. It’s a place for people to come, enjoy a good meal and enjoy the atmosphere. It used to be at the end of Finucane Island but they needed more land for the iron ore so they picked it up and put it in South Hedland. It’s a multicultural club; anyone is welcome here as long as they behave themselves. We don’t have high vis or work boots, people come here to relax and our patrons love it. We have a lot of FIFO’s coming here too and they enjoy feeling as though they are part of the community. We start our day at 6.30 – 7 am in the morning and go to bed about 1 or 2 am. We have excellent staff, when we need to rest they will just take over. Eventually we are going to retire, but we’ll never leave until we’ve seen the redevelopment of the club.
My husband is from the coast of New Zealand and I’m from the middle of the north Island, the hot pools and all that. We’ve enjoyed ourselves in Australia, at end of the day I’ll go back home, even if it’s in a box eventually.
Tom
I’ve been in Port Hedland for four and half years, I work with BHP Billiton as Superintendent of Monthly Scheduling, which involves scheduling the number of rakes per iron ore mine, per day, and the number of ships on each of the ship loaders.
I used to work for the Government in Brazil, I was a Project Officer working on public programs. My husband got a position in Port Hedland with BHP Billiton as an Electrical Engineer, he came as part of an international graduate program so I came with him.
I had low expectations before I came to Port Hedland, but I really liked it, it’s a great community, you have great people, a great lifestyle, good things to do and I enjoy going to the beach, and kite surfing. Despite missing my family, I’m really happy here, the life we have is really good, so I don’t see myself going back to Brazil.
Carol