Standing in the blinding crystalliser I sometimes cannot believe where I am and what happened to my life. In fact, I shouldn’t even know what a crystalliser is.
It’s a mining term for an epic expanse of land where industrial salt is grown after being evaporated from the sea.
When I send my friends and family back in London selfies in my new mining uniform, showing the light from the pure white salt and my high-vis safety wear bouncing off my face, they fear I am in the grip of a breakdown or a midlife crisis – or worse, that I’ve been kidnapped somewhere in the Outback of Western Australia, the most remote state in the world.
For almost 20 years before entering the salt mining industry, my career as ‘Mr Showbiz’ in London used to draw equal disbelief. Night after night, in my role as Metro showbiz editor, I’d be out at one of the city’s most expensive hotels, or at an illustrious VIP party, mixing it with the likes of Lady Gaga, Kylie and the Beckhams to get a scoop.
I’d jet off to LA to interview Snoop Dogg, or jump on the Eurostar to hang out with Enrique Iglesias at Disneyland Paris, or pop into Abbey Road recording studios to hang with Take That. In between, I would dash off to Sky News to deliver all the chatter from The Brits and Baftas, or be in the studio recording my Sunday morning radio show.
As the selfies got more insane with the likes of Taylor Swift and Oprah, so did the intensity of the questions from anyone and everyone I met. ‘Oh my god, what was she like? What did he smell like? Was she nice or a cow?’ they’d badger.
How I went from the camera-flashing doorstep of The Dorchester to driving a 4×4 ute in a hard hat draws equal questions of disbelief. Including from myself at times.
That’s because I went from being defined by a showbiz life to working for a salt mine. And I absolutely love it.
So, if you’re feeling institutionalised by work, afraid of the unknown or of unimaginable change, let me tell you why this couldn’t-make-it-up turn of events is the very best thing that ever happened to me.
How did I end up here? In short, it’s a classic Covid tale: locked out of Australia, couldn’t see my mum, finally got in after two weeks of quarantine.
Got there, Mum fell ill, I decided life was too short and ended my journalism career in London to stay here with her. I started hunting around for any job where journalism skills would transfer (luckily for Mum, she bounced back on top form).
Along came an opportunity to join the communications team at Rio Tinto, one of the world’s most formidable resource businesses.
The portfolio I landed was, umm, salt. What did I know about salt after a life in showbiz? I knew it was needed for tequila shots and that some celebs and their PR machines can be a little salty.
But it wasn’t long before I found some commonalities between a 3am after-party and the early starts and long days of the mining industry. I understood what a good picture looked like and what a good story sounded like.
‘An interesting salt mine story?’ I hear you ask. Let me surprise you.
There was the day I got to share the courage shown by our marine team – who help ship salt to other countries – when they saved a fisherman, helpless and bleeding in the Indian Ocean, from a circling shark after he’d been blown off the sharp cliffs.
And did you know that the scale of one of Rio Tinto’s projects is bigger than the Sydney Harbour? Or that a type of migratory bird hatches at the North Pole and flies through 13 countries and two hemispheres to feed on the rich food sources living in our salt pans here? These birds shrink their organs down to nothing to get here, then eat a year’s worth of food to get back. They are found only on our sites, which are globally recognised biodiversity areas.
Or there was the interview I shared for our newsletter with a gold-medallist Paralympian basketballer, who came to give our company a safety talk. In his previous life as a yachty, his foot was torn off by a boat rope.
I’ve learned that 232 heritage sites, and some of the oldest, most stunning indigenous rock art in the world, can be observed at Rio Tinto operations.
This job has allowed me to camp out under the stars by a glistening gorge, with the moon and the sun in the sky at the same time, during a cultural educational trip with indigenous traditional owners.
And the other day at work, I met a former Middlesbrough footballer who’d played against Becks.
There are extraordinary people here, who do extraordinary things. Any one of these events or stories would make a must-read feature in the paper.
So what does a day on a mine site look like? The alarm goes at 5am – about the time I’d have been getting home in my old job. At some sites you stay in little transportable buildings called dongas, and these accommodation sites are actually the dream.
They have a 24-hour ‘dry mess’, serving unlimited fresh-cooked food and snacks, including fruit and ice cream, round the clock, plus tennis courts, 24-hour state-of-the-art gyms, pool tables, arcade games and table tennis. You might even get escorted back to your donga by a kangaroo.
Next, I jump into my mine-spec 4×4 for the 80km drive to the absolute middle of nowhere to meet the Dampier Salt Limited team for a range of comms activities for the week.
As I drive I can see the sun rising over what look like huge, white, snowy mountains on the horizon. These are our piles of salt, ready to ship off from our own port around the world for use in the manufacture of electric car batteries, among other things.
The port is the other wonder of the job, with whale sharks and whales moseying by. It’s David Attenborough-type stuff. I had to hit the brakes the other day to let a little echidna – a spiny anteater – make his leisurely way across a dirt track. The archetypal Australian landscape out here could feature in anybody’s holiday of a lifetime.
I used to be petrified of flying, even as a globetrotter. Now I fly to sites on a small propeller plane. But instead of grey turbulence out of the window, gaze down at the coral reefs of Shark Bay. Recently through the plane window I saw whales breaching, too. Views like this more than calm my nerves.
As well as the great blue skies out here, the main breath of fresh air is the people. There are no uptight showbiz types, no sycophants. Don’t get me wrong, there are many lovely people in the entertainment industry. But it’s so great to be in a place where people don’t even know who the Beckhams are. Here, the talk is of fishing, exploring and helping the community. They have perspective. It’s good for the soul.
Before I came here, all I knew of mining was that it was a supposedly dirty world. But sun, sea and the wind are all that’s needed to produce millions of tons of salt per year.
Rio Tinto’s Dampier Salt Limited is a 99% sustainable operation and its salt is essential in making green energy products of the future. The sites also provide huge value to the communities around them and help them thrive.
I am thriving here, too. Never in the craziest cheese dream did I imagine this life for myself. It has taught me to let life happen – don’t try to write every chapter yourself.