Eye-opening year in WA mine

In a place where the ground temperature is so high spring water can burn you, frogs lurk in the toilets ready to spring a nasty surprise and your employer hires snake handlers so you can go about your work day safely, you might suspect job applicants need some form of counselling.

The reality is queues are forming for just such a job.

Western Australia's open-cast mines draw a steady stream of people, many from New Zealand, and with the potential to earn up to $A140,000 a year, who's worried about a snake, a redback spider or an unctuous frog in a most inconvenient place? Dedrick Bensemann, of Timaru, joined the job queue in 2008.

He and his new wife Shelley, also of Timaru, moved to Perth a year earlier and Shelley took a job with the West Australian Mint.

Husband Dedrick fancied a tougher life and a better bank balance and headed 1200km north to the largest open-cast mine in the world - BHP's iron mine in the Pilbara region - in search of his fortune.

He found it.

A tyre servicing professional in Timaru and in Perth, he was welcomed with open arms to the mines.

But there was one important difference - "the tyres I was repairing and changing were a storey high".

Tyres have been Mr Bensemann's stock-in-trade most of his working life, having spent six years with Beaurepaires in New Zealand, and some time with ITS.

He left the mines and returned to Timaru this year with even more impressive credentials - he is now the holder of a rare qualification called Heavy Mechanical Automotive Heavy Tyre Fitting (Heavy), an Australian accreditation and almost unheard of in New Zealand.

"It will help in my new job with All Tyre Specialists where I am now servicing huge tyres found on farms, such as harvesters and heavy tractors."

However, he is not expecting to find the same issues working on farm properties.

The Pilbara environment is tough on open-cast mine dump trucks.

Searing heat during the day and freezing desert nights meant the tyres on the 60 240-tonne Caterpillar dump trucks and numerous graders and water carts were forever puncturing and occasionally exploding.

Mr Bensemann's roster in the mines was 12-hour days, two weeks on straight, one week off. "There were four of us on the rosters, with four on days off," Mr Bensemann said.

"It wasn't much of a lifestyle."

He said the average worker burned out after a year.

"It was as hard on Shelley, really, as it was on me. After the year, we both were certainly over it."

Hot and often dangerous work alongside tyres almost the size of a house that were capable of exploding at any time took time to get used to.

And then there were the constant work schedule interruptions caused by the unpredictable and often hostile inland desert weather.

"Lightning, especially, was very disruptive . . . Dump trucks make a huge metal attraction for a grounding lightning bolt and if struck, a truck's tyres often exploded."

Weighing in at more than 5 tonnes each, the tyres and their rims were potential killers.

One worker lost his life in a tyre explosion.

The Bensemanns have arrived back in Timaru to a warm welcome and are looking forward to the arrival of their first child.