From rock collecting in the Wheatbelt to Kalgoorlie for a start in the mining game

WEST PERTH

CLEARBLUE MINERALS HEAD OFFICE

"Vanessa's on the phone, she wants to know if you'll speak on women in mining again, and can you think of a new angle?"

Mmm. How to avoid being raided by the Federal Police? Why your ASX-listed company shouldn't prop up your daughter's private business? How to deflect from horrific abuse of young FIFO women?

Wasn't the end of 2024 full-on? Just when you think the mining industry is all professional, telling lovely stories of how we are going to save the world. Everyone, it seems, gets the drones out now. Landscapes at sunset, pictures of forests, smiling women in pink FIFO kit (happy in the red dirt), and the World Gold Council produces its very own, and extremely good, feature film. Beautiful images of British actor Idris Elba are floating about on the internet, telling us new things about gold – one miracle of nature, telling us about another miracle of nature. Impressive. Elba's lines include: "Look at how hot that is", and "I am so excited."

Anyway…back to Perth where it has been a big and, to be honest, annoying finish to the year. Frankly, it's had many of us miners, energy companies and industry groups – who have been doing the right thing – pulling our ‘governance' hair out. Our church is broad, and depressingly, there are times when the same brush tars us all. Business journalists, and their mum and dad readers struggling to afford a cup of coffee, are wincing at the blatant self-interest of billionaires. And I can't blame them. Reporters are putting nicely packaged comms content to one side in order to write tricky, legally-risky resources stories, with the help of crime editors. Here at ClearBlue, while normally winding down for the January holiday break, I'm busy trying to smoothly pull out of certain dinner parties and a long weekend down south. I definitely don't want to talk about the years I worked at MinRes. One… little… bit!

"Of course, would be delighted. How about ‘Women emerging as leaders in ESG, in the global resources sector?' More than happy to focus on the 'G', if that's required."

So, why write to you? Well, it's an absolute classic and brings me to the first, and maybe the most important, tip for women in mining.

Top Tip Number 1: Hang in There

Twenty years ago – when I was still comfortable wearing white silk shirts tucked in pencil skirts and enjoyed going out after 9pm – I had a burst of creativity. Feeling ambitious and a bit bored, I declared (to myself) that there was a demand to read about mining from different perspectives. Howabout a real woman working in it? Born and raised in Western Australia, but featuring international places. The idea of a women's column was pitched to a mining journal. They read it and liked it, but a bit too revolutionary: ‘Thanks, but no thanks, Sarah.' Well, it seems now… 2025… the time is right. The idea was mooted at a recent editorial meeting. What about a column from a woman?! Now there was an idea! Twenty years ago was a bit early. Now industry is ready for it! Absolute classic! 

But this story begins much earlier than that. It starts 30 years ago, in a town that so many us went to – Kalgoorlie. No one called me Sarah then. I was just Sal.

This was a time when those from the land still dressed up in bright satin gowns for B&S balls in paddocks; young people sang along to John Farnham; and dance floors were known to slide down hills in heavy rain. Our parents – and their parents – had gone farming without question. They cleared for crops with giant iron balls, smashing through salmon gums and flowering shrubs on ancient land that would never recover. Winter fires were lit with ‘endless' mallee roots. We don't do that anymore.

As a child, I'd walked around our wind burnt farm, forty-minutes' drive from Goomalling, collecting old bits of things: buttons, bones, bottles and stones. Long before Netflix, hours were spent staring at a rock collection, stacked on the floor near the bed. Rocks lifted from: gullies that ran only for one month a year; camping trips to Goldfields' relatives for winter holidays; and beach breaks to asbestos shacks at Sandy Cape. After boarding school, I had no interest making the morning tea and didn't fancy getting married. I wanted to work outside, but my elder brothers had dibs on the farm. There was a distant second cousin of Dad who was a hard-man driller and tales of long-gone Yugoslav relatives getting their start at Ora Banda, racked with poverty and losing loved ones to typhoid, so future generations could prosper. 

Careers guidance suggested those ‘very pretty' should consider the airlines. But waitressing in the air wasn't for me, and I didn't want to nurse, teach or be anyone's secretary. 

In 1994, Geology was ticked on a form at the end of school. I knew rocks were involved but not much else. I joined a few of us who put swags in the back of utes and drove from the Wheatbelt to Kal. To the School of Mines, for a start in the mining game. It was different for women then. No influencers or diversity and inclusion policies, and some men thought it was a direct threat to their manhood if you wanted to drive a work vehicle and offer them the passenger seat.

The first week I met Lachie. He was a few years older than me, a well-read Queenslander who managed to talk himself into a scholarship in exchange for assisting a Melbourne advertising man to work on his pet project, a gold mine near Fitzroy Crossing. In exchange for holiday work (mostly sampling in the heat), Lachie negotiated to have his expenses paid throughout his degree. Unbelievably, this included his housing! He rented a former brothel, with orange carpets and swinging doors to bedrooms, in Lamington, and charged us (his tenants) $100 a week. He actually made a profit on the house as the Melbournian hobby gold miner picked up the invoice from the real estate agent and we paid – for our dusty rooms and a worn-out, luke-warm shower – in cash. When we complained about our lot in life, Lachie would say he had ‘sold his soul' to the ad man and that also involved certain drawbacks that upset him from time to time. We all had our cross to bear. Decades later, I remain in awe at the cheek of the fellow for asking. 

At 19 years old, it never occurred to me, to find a benefactor before I arrived. I only had an unreliable ute and a little bit from holiday work on the wheat bins. That wouldn't last long. So, I went out the first week of term and begged for jobs in fast food places on the main strip and became a glassie at Flannagans on Thursday nights while The Lost Boys played.

Looking forward to catching up again in January.

Top Tip Number 2 is likely to be: If You Don't Ask, You Don't Get

All characters are fictional in this story. This column has been designed to reveal a woman's perspective working in the Western Australian mining industry. Overall, it celebrates the resources industry but, just as life is not always easy, not all columns will be light hearted. A Resourceful Woman offers insights into how far things have come over the past 30 years and how the industry is shaping up for the next 30 years.