Travelling to work for a balanced lifestyle

Shane Gregory doesn’t like a long commute to work and yet his job at Jellinbah Plains in mid-north Queensland is a 10 1/2-hour drive from his home in Brisbane.

The distance is perfect for the diesel fitter, 30, and he joins a large number of mining and construction workers who fly in and fly out of their jobs each week.

“There are a lot of jobs in Brisbane I could do, but your annual wage is a lot better this way. And there’s no traffic,” he says.

Gregory works a week-on, week-off roster maintaining heavy machinery for Hitachi Construction Machinery, a contractor at the Jellinbah Plains coal mine. He works a 12-hour day and lives in a share-house in the town of Blackwater, 30km from the site. While he’s away all expenses, including uniform, car, fuel, accommodation and food are paid for.

“The only cost you could have is if you wanted to buy a case of beer for the week,” he says.

On his week off he returns to his home in Brisbane to spend time with his fiancee Julie McHarg. The arrangement suits the couple well as they have each developed their own leisure activities during the week they don’t see each other and often go away together once Gregory is home.

“It was hard for Julie in the first six months but I got her a dog and now she’s more used to it and enjoys her time with friends when I’m away,” Gregory said. “I’ve got a lot of mates who do the same work and we go motor bike riding around Blackwater a couple of times a week after finishing work at 6pm.”

These jobs are the norm for recruitment firm Stellar Recruitment, based in Brisbane, which places candidates in the resources and infrastructure sector in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

“This is a great way for people to get a lifestyle balance, a family can live somewhere like Brisbane and get the attractive mining salaries,” says Brisbane manager Shaun McCambridge.

The company recruits candidates from all over the country for these remote positions as well as from Asia and New Zealand. For the candidates from New Zealand the jobs are particularly attractive as they can offer two or three times the salary they could earn at home, McCambridge says. In addition to filling these roles with Australians, the company will occasionally help place a professional from north or south America in a mining or oil and gas job in a remote location in Australia.

While the bulk of the fly-in fly-out or FIFO workers are young, there are also more experienced, older candidates who take on this work before retirement.

“While the remuneration packages are attractive, the downside of these jobs is that it can put stress on relationships, given one person is away from the home half the time. Some couples adapt to this quite well and find they have better quality time together after they have been apart for a short while,” McCambridge says.

Offshore Marine Services, based in Perth, is the nation’s largest supplier of offshore labour to the oil and gas industry for FIFO roles. On average it would place up to 1250 people in jobs each year ranging from marine crew such as engineers to drill and catering crew. These people could work a roster of four weeks on four weeks off on remote oil rigs and various offshore vessels off the Northwest Shelf in West Australia, the Timor Sea or Bass Strait.

The company also operates a fleet of 11 support vessels which transport supplies, provide anchor handling services and accommodation in some cases. Like so many other businesses in this sector the biggest challenge for the company is finding enough skilled workers.

“Due to our large employee database and good reputation we’re filling the positions. However it’s always a challenge to source and maintain a skilled workforce in an industry where they are in such high demand. OMS emphasise the importance of meeting this challenge to its staff through its slogan, ‘the right people make all the difference’,” said Daniel Sweetman, industrial relations officer for the company.

“We acknowledge there are negatives to working offshore such as medical emergencies and crises back home, in these scenarios we do everything we can to ensure the wellbeing of our employees and their families.”

The salary packages and benefits are designed to be extremely attractive, says Sweetman and the company works closely with the Maritime Union of Australia, the Australian Maritime Officers Union and the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers in negotiating collective bargaining on wages and conditions.

The additional salary garnered from this work has certainly helped Gregory and he recently bought a holiday house in New Zealand.

“Let’s face it, I wouldn’t own either house if I hadn’t come to work up here,” he said.