2 - Tools Down, Mouse Up: 4 Years to Become a Bullshit Tradesman

Not a bullshit tradesman in the practical sense, but figuratively, also I can bullshit my way through most situations, it comes with the territory. I remember the first time I ever picked up a welding torch. I was in High school, I was eager to make something cool like a sword or an axe, we weren’t allowed to make anything dangerous so I ended up making a firepit out of flat bar and welded it together. It was meh, what you might expect from a 16-year-old high school student who thought having dreadlocks and skipping school to go surfing was cool. By the end of school, I was interested in nothing. No direction, no prospects. I realized I knew nothing John Snow. I figured the smartest thing I could do was to get a trade, then use the money I would earn working as a tradesman to pay for my higher education. It would also buy me 4 years to figure out exactly what I wanted to learn and become.

So off to TAFE, I went. TAFE is Technical and further education, Australia’s equivalent to trade school. I enrolled in a pre-apprenticeship course so I could stand out above masses of late teenagers fighting for limited apprenticeship positions. It worked! After 6 months of training at TAFE I was taken on as an apprentice boilermaker/ welder in an aluminum and stainless steel fabrication workshop where again, I instantly realized I knew nothing.

Now, what happens when a 17-year-old boy is yelled at daily, paid $6.49 per hour, used as a whipping boy, and has not yet learned how to manage stress or bullies in the workplace? You guessed it he keeps working there for 2 years and says nothing. Inevitably I needed help, I remember how incredibly nervous I was calling a counselling service and asking for an appointment with a psychologist, I thought the receptionist was silently judging me on the other end of the phone. Of course she wasn’t. I can't remember his name but I can remember he had a well-trimmed white beard, and used his experience to simply ask me the right questions for me to make up my own mind on certain aspects of my inner circle. We made a little map of every relationship in my life and then expanded on which ones were giving me the biggest stress.

Hand grenade time! Turns out I had slipped into depression, which I was not bloody having. So for the sake of my mental health, I threw a hand grenade into my life. I quit my job. I torpedoed my apprenticeship (no job is worth destroying my mental health over. I moved to a new town 400kms away, I had saved up enough to buy my father's second car and I was gone with the wind. I had $900 in the bank and I was free baby! Took me 1 week to find a job as a trades assistant. $24 per hour, 12-hour days plus Saturday. I remember my first paycheck being $2400 before tax. And I was stoked!! The company realized I was more than a trades assistant and were happy to take me on to finish my apprenticeship, which they did, it was a larger workshop dealing with mainly structural steel giving me a wider skill set. Plus everyone there was super nice and I didn’t get yelled on the daily, which it turns out is super bad for your mental health, would not recommend!

I learned how to manage my depression and prioritize my mental health, but I had not yet learned the importance of taking breaks, setting boundaries, and prioritizing self-care. I was almost 20 years old and finally a tradesman.

You may be thinking oh he will go back and study now that he has a trade that he can fall back on. Great idea, but no. Western Australia has a unique iron ore industry. To make 1 tonne of carbon steel you need 4 tonnes of iron ore, understandably the demand for steel globally is HAAUUUGE, demand for 2022 was 1840.2 million tonnes. Meaning the global demand for iron ore is 4 times larger. The problem is all the iron ore deposits are located 2000-2500kms away from the closest major city (Perth) so to work on these remote mines the companies have built airports and mining camps next to the open pits and processing plants. Basically, the big rocks get crushed into smaller rocks then they go via long ass trains to ports where they are loaded onto bulk ore carrier ships, they then get shipped to China to be added into their furnaces to make steel then the steel comes back to make more mines, one big happy circle. In Western Australia, this industry employ’s 100,000 to 130,000 people all of whom get flown by plane from Perth direct to their respective mines to work a swing. They are called fly in fly out workers and no one does this type of work for less than $100k per year, did I mention the temperatures where these mines are located can get up to 45 degrees Celsius in the summer (113 degrees Fahrenheit) most trades will earn closer to $130k per year and have a significant amount of time off, the most common roster for FIFO is 2 weeks away one week off. Roughly 13 weeks off per year. For the more skilled people engineers, supervisors, managers, and geologists, will work 8 days on and 6 days off, or roughly 20 weeks off per year. Pretty sweet gig.

Naturally, I started working FIFO, Boilermakers are in high demand on mine sites because we are used to maintain the ore handling plant, the plant that makes the big rocks into smaller rocks and then puts them onto a train then onto a ship. I started to ask myself, why would I go to uni for 6 years when I can just work FIFO and earn $3500 per week before tax. So I did, and I thought I was smart because I put a 4-year max on working FIFO before I was going to get out of FIFO.

8 years later and I’m still working FIFO, I have gone through a couple of different roles, mechanical supervisor (babysitting grown men on a mine site) workshop manager (babysitting grown men in a workshop), shutdown coordinator (babysitting grown men during shutdowns) and back to working on the tools as a tradesman.

Today, I am proud to say that I have given FIFO the slip for now and have found a sweet job that Is close to my home and only work 8-hour days, so lots of time for activities in the afternoon. I have tangled with depressive episodes over the years, but I have the tools in my toolkit to beat back the depression beast. Take time for self-care, speak up when mental health is affecting you, and have things in the near future to look forward to. Holidays or live music gigs, things that you love.

I am a successful tradesman, and a semi-successful human. I have overcome the obstacles that once held me back. I am grateful for the support of those around me and for the lessons I have learned along the way. I hope that by sharing my story, I can inspire others to seek help and prioritize their mental health, no matter what part of their journey they may be on.

Reach out for help, speaking with friends is good. But speaking with acquaintances is also helpful, acquaintances are not as emotionally attached to our saga so they can often give a helpful perspective, or call you out on your own bullshit.

My challenge to you is to have at least two genuine empathetic conversations with another human being, I will check back with you next time.