One way to move a windmill

I arrived in the Northern Territory in early February; the first round of mustering was yet to start. As we waited for the end of the wet season to finish we worked close around the homestead – fencing, cleaning out water troughs, moving small groups of cattle to new water and fresh feed, and helping the mechanics do repairs. One morning at breakfast, Ray, the Manager told me and one of the other jackeroos we would be helping the bore mechanic (Big Gaz) for the rest of the week. Up until this point I hadn’t had much to do with Big Gaz. Of course, he was a shorter style of bloke, typical bush mechanic with massive hands and forearms the size of my thighs. His face was in a permanent frown, like someone had their hands on the side of his face pushing the skin towards his nose.

About 15 minutes into our first trip I figured out that we were moving a windmill. I’m sure what he was saying was making sense, but with the noise of the truck, and most of his noise coming out of his nose, I couldn’t understand a thing. We got out of the truck in front of a towering windmill, only just turning in the morning sun. I could be wrong, but I’m sure they were known as 40’ mills and I’m presuming that is because the centre is 40’ (or 12 metres) off the ground. At the time it seemed 100’!

For the first time, I understood what was going on. Big Gaz confirmed the plan: Take down the fans first, then lower the top mechanics, take the frame apart piece by piece, and then, “move it over there”… as he points off into the distance.

Reality had hit… I voiced up about my issue with heights. Gaz didn’t care and before long I was up the windmill, white knuckled and sweating. Gaz’s idea of a safety harness was short lengths of rope tied around my waist and to the mill frame… and I couldn’t do a thing. I was terrified.

After knocking the mill out of gear, Gaz tied the big fan wheel up to the frame of the mill and then we started to unscrew the fans before lowering them to the ground. The fan blades themselves were much bigger than me, and it was a job in itself staying on the platform. I was slowly, maybe, getting used to the height, but standing there holding on was one thing, moving around on the two foot wide platform (without railing), whilst working, without holding on, was another thing altogether.

This is where it got interesting; as we took the fans off the wheel the centre of gravity moved and the lightest part of the wheel (which we were working on) wanted to go to the top. So get this… Big Gaz told us to GET ON THE WHEEL and weight it down as he unscrews it! I can handle a fair bit, but this had gone too far. I tried to explain about the weight and that we should take the fans off at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock to balance it out, but to no avail. I now had a very angry, short, massive handed man screaming at me whilst I was some forty feet in the air… so, as my options were limited… I got on the wheel.

I looked around at the horizon which shimmered in the distance. It’s dead flat and you can see for miles. “Where the hell is the safety officer?”, I thought. “Shit…It’s probably Gaz.”

I was 12 metres off the ground, tied to a windmill fan, which is tied to the windmill frame with a bit of that yellow and blue ‘Parramatta’ rope that Gaz had kicking around in the back of the truck for the past decade.

I started to pray to the Almighty, Mother Earth, Allah, Buddha and everybody else… hoping someone was on watch.

If you were on the ground it was a very pleasant morning. I was eight o’clock, not a cloud in the big blue sky and it’s already close to 40 degrees…with a hot breeze just making the fan sway a little.

I stood on that wheel terrified… of Gaz and the height. I was continually fighting the urge to wipe my sweaty hands as a didn’t want to let go of the wheel. By this stage my eyes were closed and the fear had manifested as vomit in my throat. Gaz tied the wheel up again after removing another blade and started on the next one, but because of the weight the wheel kept swinging!  Well that was it for me. I started screaming for Mummy and wanted out. Both my mate and I jumped off the wheel and told Gaz to go powder his nose (so to speak). We climbed back down to earth with Gaz hurling nuts and bolts at us as we descended the ladder.

We took cover and sat behind the wheels on the opposite side of the Landcrusier, away from the incoming windmill parts, and in the most extreme example of stubbornness I have ever seen, Big Gaz took all the fans off the wheel himself that day… but lost most of the nuts and bolts in anger.

Gaz and I eventually mended our ‘relationship’, but it took some time, and he knew he scared the crapper out of me. The station manager thought it was hilarious and would send me out every now and then for the crack.

I’ve probably got Gaz to thank for conquering my fear of heights… but I reckon there was a better way to get through it.