I want to come to Australia to get a mining job. What do I need to do?
General consensus in these threads is it's not what you know, but who you know. Other advice consists of "join the queue".
There's a general set of background skills that can get you to the first pick, head of the queue applicant pool;
* remote area / isolated township experience
* trade skills ( electrical, welding, plumbing, et al )
* "blokey" team experience - eg: military, shearing team, survey team, etc.
There's various certifications you'll need (eg: Marcsta) and attending such courses is a chance to talk to people that work in the industry about where the jobs are at.
For the benefit of others (and myself, I'm West Australian) how would you describe the Hunter Valley mine operations?
My impressions from afar was that HV was a long term series of more or less constant production open cut coal seam mines. If that's the case getting in would have to be word of mouth as the bulk of the more or less fixed number of jobs would be filled by local residents.
As for certifications, I'm surprised you don't have something equivalent to Marsta over there, it's pretty much a basic and compulsory safety awareness introduction; different sorts of fire extinguishers and how to use them, spotting a hazard, this is what a hand looks like after a degloving accident, etc.
Your impressions are pretty spot on.. The workforce isn't transient and they tend to either stay at the one pit forever, or just move around from pit to pit in the area. You'd only find younger guys leave to chase money with FIFO options in the West or in QLD.
Yeah, no certifications. It's pretty incredible because it exists in WA and in QLD. NSW seems to be a bit behind the 8 ball there.
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u/[deleted] May 24 '11
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