Hugh Smithies: Bogged in the Pilbara

Hugh Smithies talks about the scenic beauty and some the challenges of geological mapping in the Pilbara 

Transcript

00:01 Hugh

The first sheet that I was assigned to map was the Whim Creek hundred thousand sheet, which was particularly good because (a) it had a whole lot of felsic and mafic volcanics and (b) and perhaps more importantly it had a pub on it. 

00:12 Julie

Welcome to The Rocks Beneath Our Feet. In this series, five geologists talk about their years devoted to working for the Geological Survey of Western Australia. From understanding early life, to the tectonic processes that shaped our planet, and making the maps that unearth our understanding of Western Australia’s geology, they reveal their shared passion for discovering the stories in the rocks beneath our feet.

I’m Julie Hollis.

In this episode, Hugh Smithies talks about the scenic beauty and some the challenges of geological mapping in the Pilbara.

00:45 Julie

Tell me about the Pilbara then.

00:47 Hugh

Gee, the Pilbara. If there's ever a place to go mapping, certainly at that stage, and to see the most amazing Archean geology, and the most amazing scenery, then the Pilbara is the place to be. As an Archean greenstone belt, it's certainly different from the eastern goldfields. So when I was told I was going to go back and work in the Archean, I thought, “Oh, no not more of the Yilgarn.” And, you get up into the Pilbara and it's anything but. It's exposed, beautifully exposed in places. There's topography and again, it's just this lovely bush. It’s even got creeks and they've even got water in them every once in a while.

So from the scenic perspective it's just absolutely glorious, from the geological perspective, particularly at that stage, apart from the seminal work that Arthur Hickman had done up there, from a lot of perspectives it was essentially untouched. It was just like a lolly shop for a geochemist. Whereever you went there was there was something new. There was something interesting.

01:45 Julie

Yep

01:46 Hugh

Yeah, just great.

01:47 Julie

Yeah.

01:48 Hugh

The first sheet that I was assigned to map was the Whim Creek hundred thousand sheet, which was particularly good because (a) it had a whole lot of felsic and mafic volcanics, that hadn't been looked <at in any detail from the geochemical perspective. And (b) and perhaps more importantly it had a pub on it. And so it really did, satisfied all my loves in fact. So I spent a lot of time at the pub and in the field. 

02:12 Julie

I was going to ask if you have any field stories that you wanted to talk about, particularly from the Pilbara, given that we’ve been talking about the Pilbara.

02:22 Hugh

There's plenty I can't talk about, even more that I shouldn't talk about. A lot of those, as you’ve probably guessed, have the Whim Creek Pub involved. But that was a Godsend, it really was, because it literally was right in the middle of it.

So the Sherlock sheet was the first sheet I mapped in the Pilbara. The top third of it was coastline and mangrove – fantastic fishing, threadfin salmon, sort of you know, 40 centimeter long threadfin salmon. You just toss out a bit of bait and you’re virtually guaranteed of catching one. Then there was the Whim Creek Pub was right in the middle of it. So you never too far away from the Whim Creek Pub.

02:59 Julie

Perfect.

03:00 Hugh

And it was always open too, it was always open to us. You know, you'd be out an outcrop, particularly hot days you’d just, come mid-afternoon, the flies were bugging you and the rocks weren't treating you nicely. You couldn't understand what the hell was going on. There was a number of occasions when I just yelled and just look sideways at the field assistant, Pete Boner in this case, and he’d look back. We just both collectively nod, without a word walk back to the vehicle, jump in, Whim Creek Pub. And that was the end of a day's work. Yeah, and if it's the bosses are looking, we got to the Whim Creek pub at approximately five o'clock.

03:40 Julie

Yeah, of course.

03:42 Hugh

Knockoff time, yes.

Yeah, look most the other, the stories from the Pilbara really relate to the beautiful places that we've managed to get to. You know, your brief when you're assigned to map a hundred thousand sheet is to try and go everywhere. You want to see all the rock, as much as possible anyway. And the Pilbara is locally quite a rugged landscape. And so, you've really got to plan your routes quite carefully. And there must have been numerous areas that we got into that probably no one else has ever got a vehicle into before. And you spent a lot of time carefully trying to get the four-wheel drives in there and carefully trying to get them out. It takes you to some, some absolutely wondrous places. We’ve come across natural springs that are just teeming with the native perch up in the Pilbara. Just some absolutely wild trails that we've managed to blaze through the country. Managed to do a bit of damage to some of the vehicles in doing so. Obviously trying to minimize that, because it's your lifeline out of there.

04:44 Julie

Yeah.

04:45 Hugh

And you seldom going to seldom go on a significantly long field trip without getting into a couple of absolutely horrendous bogs. And up in the Pilbara, when it does rain and you get out on those, on the greenstones, they’ve really got a clayey surface. If you drive into them and they're really wet, then you don't drive out of them very easily at all. And I've had a number of occasions where we've had bogs that have taken us literally a whole day to get out of.

05:15 Julie

Yeah.

05:15 Hugh

It's very draining. It's extremely time consuming and energy zapping.

05:19 Julie

Yep.

05:20 Hugh

And it's when you really appreciate having a good field assistant with you.

05:22 Julie

Yeah, absolutely.

05:24 Hugh

And very good, well set up four wheel drives and good equipment. It's worth its weight in gold in those situations. But they're also quite fun. They become they become challenges.

05:33 Julie

Yeah.

05:33 Hugh

Well, the first one does anyway.

One particular one, one that sticks in my memory I guess the most is on an occasion that I was stupid enough to go up to the Pilbara without a field assistant. So again, it was pre-oc health and safety. And I was mapping in the central Pilbara for seven weeks without a field assistant. That in itself is a strange experience. You know, loneliness creeps in and you don't even know it's happening. You start to change.

05:59 Julie

Yeah.

06:00 Hugh

When you come out people start noticing a difference in you for a week or so. I remember people turning to me and saying, “You been up there by yourself?” You think, ‘Oh shit. Is it that obvious?’

Yeah, but on this occasion, I got into one of these one of these absolutely horrendous bogs. When I first got into the bog it was about three o'clock that afternoon. I was digging all, all evening till about 9 o'clock. I you know, had the vehicle jacked up as far as I could, trying to free the wheels and pack as much of. I couldn't get any rocks. I was just trying to pack spinifex under it. But it was so wet that I'd put the vehicle down again and it’d just sink in and yeah, I was getting really depressed. I was a fair way away from anywhere.

06:44 Julie

Yeah.

06:45 Hugh

You know, I was in radio contact. So there was no safety issues there. I was probably 20 kilometers away from the nearest homestead and that's an easily walkable distance. So there's no safety issue there. It was just the depression in being so horrendously bogged. And what was really upsetting me was that the next day I was due to go into Port Hedland and I was going to catch up with Martin van Kranendonk and we were going to go out and get a few beers and go back to the hotel and watch the Bledisloe Cup, the rugby match against the against the Kiwis.

07:15 Julie

Yeah.

07:16 Hugh

And that was at the stage when the Wallabies could actually win a game. So, so that was a really golden patch in Australian sport. That's a bit of an ancient history there. Yeah, so I was digging until would have about nine o'clock. And then I thought, well I just curled up in the cab and went to sleep. And first thing in the morning, I did a radiophone interconnect with my wife. And I asked her if she could contact the nearest land owner. It’s actually a guy by the name of Colin Brearley. He’s still up there. He owns Indee station. Fantastic fella. And so Lynn phoned Colin. And it would have been about six o'clock in the morning and probably got him out of bed, just to tell him that I was bogged and sort of relayed my location and asked if it would be possible for him to come up and pull me out. Because I was just having no luck.

08:02 Julie

Yeah.

08:03 Hugh

Absolutely no luck getting out. And, so yeah, he said, “Oh yeah, no problems. I think I know exactly where he is. Tell him to light a fire and I'll see that and I'll be up there soon.”

And I thought yeah, he's gonna be on his way soon. I'll give this one more go. I’d buried a tire. I buried my spare tire and tried to winch off that. I didn't think it would work because the ground was so wet. But I did this and lo and behold I got it out. And so I managed to winch it on to what actually turned out to be a sandy island right in the middle of the boggy patch, rather than going the other way. So in fact, I was out of the bog, but I was actually in a more dire predicament then than I was before. And as soon as I moved I went straight back down again.

08:43 Julie

Oh, God.

08:44 Hugh

But when I got out, I actually got on the radio, radiophone. I called Lynn again said, “Call Colin. Tell him I'm out.”

08:50 Julie

Oh no!

08:52 Hugh

Yeah, and so Colin said, “Oh ok, great. I was just about to leave. I’ll go back and have my breakfast.” Then I took off straight back down into the bog. Back onto the radio. “Lynn, Call Colin. Tell him I’m back in it.” So he got out there about an hour later and being the old experienced cocky that he was, he, without the winch, had me out of the bog in about half an hour, easy. Just amazing what a bit of experience can, how useful a bit of experience is in that situation. Yeah, so I got out of that and I managed to Port Hedland in time for the rugby match though.

09:32 Julie

Excellent.

09:32 Hugh

So that was a good end to the day.

09:36 Julie

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