A one horse city

Today I flew to a place called Gladstone in central Queensland. I'd been warned not to expect too much, but the warnings were hugely understated. Gladdy is a city but never before have I been to a city with 3 clothes shops, 3 restaurants, 2 pubs, two real estates and 1 supermarket. There are rural suburbs 30km from Brissy central that have more facilities than that.

To call it a one horse town is an overstatement. Perhaps that was true at some point but someone appears to have shot it since.

It does have industry though. Like, shit loads of industry. It has Queenslands largest aluminium refinery. It has coal mines. It has a very busy port (well, about 4 of them). It has power stations. I was there supporting one of our company projects that involves building a conveyor belt to carry coal from the stock pile to awaiting ships. Just like the conveyor belts at your local supermarket but on a slightly larger scale. Unless your supermarket has checkouts 3.9km long.

Here's an aerial photo of the place together with a red dot indicating me - well, the office I was working from.


The black area is the coal stock piles. To give you idea of the size of them they are topped up by ten train deliveries daily. The trains are in the area of 3km long and each pulled/pushed by 6 locomotives. That's a lot of coal being shifted each day eh?

And yep, those boats in the foreground are supertanker sized.

It was unsure whether I'd be travelling back to Brissy tonight and sure enough the work didn't get completed in the one day so I'm staying here tonight. I can't complain about the hotel. I type this from the balcony overlooking the pool. I'm tired. I was up at 4am to fly here, worked until 6pm and they say they're collecting me at 5am in the morning again. Joy. :(