This article was originally delivered as a talk to a Central Victorian Branch breakfast seminar in August 2015. Lucy Wittholz is a Senior Geologist at AMC Consultants.

I present my story as an example of an unconventional career in mining in the hope that it might provide food for thought for those of you whose career may not be panning out as you originally planned.

How I became the first underground female geologist in Queensland

I studied a BSc at the University of Queensland in the late 1970s and majored in geology. I enjoyed the way geoscience encompassed the other sciences: to understand rocks you need to understand their chemistry and the physics of their formation, and even biology is encompassed in the fossils they contain. I also loved the mapping of rocks and the way their relative position to each other tells the story of their formation.

At the end of my second year at University I was fortunate to be offered 10 weeks’ vacation employment at Mount Isa Mines.

While I worked in the Surface Section of the Geology department, I accompanied geologists underground on several occasions. I found I really enjoyed the 3 dimensional aspect of mine geology as well as it being integral to the mining operation.

So, when MIM advertised graduate geologist positions the following year I applied for one. The interview seemed to go well. One of the only questions I can remember being asked was what would I do about work if I were to get married and want children? My reply was that I had no intention of getting married until I was at least 27 and that a geologist’s career was best served by getting experience in a number of different deposits. I told them I saw myself moving on from Mount Isa long before I turned 27.

Shortly after the interview I received a phone call saying that they were keen to offer me a position but that they had some ‘boxes to tick’ before they could formally make me an offer. Five months later, just after receiving an offer of an Exploration Geologist’s position from a Melbourne-based firm, I was formally offered the job. I was told some years later, (although I have never verified this) that my appointment was actually run past the Minister for Mines at the time. The story goes that he needed to alter legislation, inherited from England’s tin mining reforms, which prohibited women and children from working underground.

Anyway, I took the Mount Isa job.

I remember my initial meeting with the Chief Geologist in January 1980 quite well. First he told me that union negotiations over the preceding couple of months had been quite vigorous and that the graduate geologist position had received 2 pay rises since I had been sent my letter of offer. ‘A most unusual and undeserved phenomenon,’ he said. Then he said that the unions were not entirely happy about the prospect of me working in an underground position so, while I would start as an underground copper geologist, if there was any trouble from the miners, I would have to be swapped to the surface geology section.

There wasn’t a problem so I stayed. I proved able to adequately do the job. Contrary to the naysayers:

I was not unduly affected by heat or ‘hard conditions’

I was happy to use underground toilets and to change in the ambulance station with the visitors, because there was no female change room at the time

union members’ jobs were not really affected by my presence as there was not a lot of interaction with other workers in my job.

At the time the underground geologists worked a 40 hour week, mostly spending the mornings underground, mapping and checking ground conditions of newly mined tunnels, and sometimes liaising with the diamond drillers. The afternoons were spent on the surface, logging drill core, plotting and interpreting the mapping and liaising with other professionals such as the mining engineers, surveyors and other geologists.

I would catch the cage down squashed in with about 60 other underground workers but once I reached the level on which I was working, I would mostly walk by myself around several work sites, moving out of the way of vehicles which passed and only meeting the miners at the work face. They may have to stop work briefly so that I could inspect the work site but, in the copper section, as the tunnels were not following ore boundaries, I was not directing the miners and so I had very little interaction with them. Mapping was usually done once the miners had moved on to another work site.

My role in the office was primarily providing information on the nature of the orebody to the mining engineers so that they could design and manage the mining operation. Even with ground conditions, while I advised of areas which I considered may potentially need support to prevent rock falls, the decision whether to implement my ground support recommendations was ultimately that of the mining engineer managing that area of the mine.

So here again, my role was neither supervisory nor managerial. I was fortunate that the other geologists at the time were either enthusiastic about equal opportunity or, at worst, indifferent to it. I enjoyed working independently alongside this group of friendly open-minded men.

There were other women in the geology department in office positions and, I am happy to say, that gradually more female mine geologists joined me and I was very glad to have their companionship both in the office and socially outside work.

My Career Changes

With the aim of broadening my experience beyond the Mount Isa deposits, I was seconded to exploration in the Yilgarn of Western Australia and worked with Angela Lorrigan and a male field assistant near Mt Magnet and Meekatharra. It was an equal opportunity camp so every third night we ate steak fried to resemble leather and over-boiled vegetables because that was all the fieldy could cook! Unfortunately, this secondment was cut short after 6 months when the MIM corporate philosophy changed and mineral exploration was cut to finance a JV in oil exploration. I was transferred back to the Mount Isa Mine and I worked in near mine exploration and the nearby Hilton Mine.

Looking for new opportunities, I undertook post graduate studies in Securities (ie the share and bond markets etc.) by correspondence and, at the same time, started applying for jobs with other mining companies. By this time the mining industry was in downturn and I was unable to secure an interview with a mining or exploration company so, during my vacation, I walked the streets of Brisbane, knocking on the doors of the investment businesses and secured a position in the investment section of Suncorp. Thus began my career in the securities industry. I became their first Mining Investment Analyst. For personal reasons, I wanted to move to the Sunshine Coast. In those days before internet and email, mining analysts worked from capital city offices and geologists worked in the field or mines. There was no working from home or FIFO. So I pursued a career shift to that of stockbroker for individuals.

By 1990 I was working as a Financial Adviser with the NAB making fortnightly overnight road trips to service eight branches within a 120km radius. My husband had a job which required his total commitment outside the home during daylight hours. When it came to having children, I could not envisage breastfeeding while interviewing clients, so, we decided that I would stop work to fill the role of main caregiver in our family. I changed career again to that of motherhood. One consequence being our income reduced to less than half. For the next 17 years raising our family was my main focus.

Going back to work as a geologist 20 years later

In 2006 I was offered a short contract assessing an iron ore deposit and this rekindled my interest in the mining industry. This lead to other bits of part time work accessing information from home through the internet.

By 2009, with my youngest child about to leave home, I made the decision to try to resume my mining industry career. I saw the need to upskill in geology related IT and went looking for suitable courses.

While doing this I met up with a colleague from Mount Isa who offered me a part time role reviewing the public geology records for a project in north-west Queensland. Several months later I became exploration manager for the project. Working from home I managed the design and implementation of a 5600m drilling programme and the subsequent project review and closure. I did travel and work on site and you can see that the camp conditions have not changed greatly from the camp in WA in the 1980s.

The next picture compares an exploration drill rig from 1984 with that of 2012. In it you can see a few of the changes WH & S have made. Since then I have continued part time work in exploration management and project assessment.

Returning to the mining industry I have used not only the experience and knowledge from my previous time as a geologist, but also many skills I acquired in the intervening years:

In budgeting for the exploration program I drew on years of bookkeeping for my husband and volunteer treasurer positions, as well as my experience as a financial planner.

Seeking tenders and dealing with suppliers and their accounts was familiar from a part time job I had for a few years at a plumbing supplier.

All sorts of event planning in various volunteer roles had honed my skills needed to coordinate the employees, contractors, equipment and supplies for the drilling programs.

I had dealt with government regulations and departments through voluntary positions, while interviewing people about their investment goals gave me skills for interviewing potential employees.

You can’t fail to learn management and people skills while raising children.

I guess my career has resulted from 3 keys:

I and my employer saw obstacles as things to go around rather than things to stop me. At times I gave lifestyle choices priority over work and money. My employers recognised my relevant skills, even though many were not acquired through a conventional career path.

Thank you.