After spending his first two weeks visiting sites and meeting apprentices, Matthew has spent much of his third week in Brisbane applying some of his own skills. His first day working on site was spent at Logan Hospital, which is undergoing an expansion to increase its capacity by adding four new floors. Matthew said: “I started the day with a full site induction with the Health and Safety manager. He covered the nature of the project, site rules and specific requirements of the main contractor and client.”
Working alongside Phil, an adult apprentice who’d moved to Queensland from New South Wales, Matthew helped to install bonding cables, running cables in the stud wall from an ‘earthing test point’ to an ‘earthing node’ by some cable tray.
Later in the week, Matthew and Phil continued installing cable supports, running a range of single core earthing conductors from 16mm up to 70mm and linking all the rooms out, bringing the cables back to the earthing node point.
Before the Easter Bank Holiday the site organised a barbecue for the workers on Thursday. Matthew added: “Morale was pretty high with everyone looking forward to their time off. We kept working till mid-afternoon, then ensured everything was closed up properly, I cleared my tools out for the day, ready for the next week.”
Over the weekend Matthew was lucky enough to enjoy one of the highlights of his trip so far: “I booked a trip up to Cairns and Port Douglas over the weekend to see the Great Barrier Reef. I’d booked a flight with a plan to go on a day of guided snorkelling off the coast of Port Douglas on the Saturday and a day of guided Scuba Diving on the Sunday off the coast of Cairns. This was one of the experiences I was most looking forward to over the whole visit to Queensland. Seeing the Great Barrier Reef was on my bucket list and I was keen to make the most of it.”
He continued: “I would recommend visiting the Great Barrier Reef to anyone if you have the means. It was one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life and I’m already trying to find another way of visiting again in the future!”
Look out for the fourth installment of Matthew’s Brisbane diary, exclusively on the JIB website.
