My New LIFE-O as a FIFO

Do you remember, back in primary school, what it was like when you had a new toy that all the other kids wanted. Briefly your popularity would soar to heady heights and you felt an overwhelming sense of place: you were wanted, you belonged.

It lasted about as long as it took your 'friends' to tire of your toy. As quick as your popularity came, it went again. I recall one occasion when the most popular girl in primary school was my BFF for a whole lunch hour. Unbeknownst to me, Pac Man was her favorite game.

Being a consultant biologist in the mining industry is much like being a primary schooler with a Pac Man hand-held game machine. When you have what everyone wants (knowledge of the biological environment) and you are a dab hand at regulatory liaison you are every mining companies best friend. When  your client gets what they want and you are no longer required you fade into obscurity again.

NOW LET ME BE CLEAR - I am not complaining! I get paid to do what I do and I have many many wonderful clients that send me to fantastic places to do what I love to do - catch animals.

But sometimes I just feel like I just don't belong anywhere. As a consultant you never enjoy the warm embrace of a team and you virtually never get to spend a decent amount of time in any one place because, and rightly so, no body in their right mind is going to pay you a stupid amount per hour to have a holiday!!

Well all that is changing. After 20 years in the environmental consulting industry, working for small private companies, I am now a 'patched' member of a mid-tier mining group. I am loaded to the gunwales with FREE PPE and I am sitting here at the airport departure lounge among my 'hommies'. I don't need to know their names. I see their logos and they see mine. I nod and they nod back. I am part of a team: I have that sense of place I have so long desired.

Eight days from now I will be back in my office, sitting adjacent my beautiful, highly motivated and exceptionally talented wife (co-owner and co-director of APM Pty Ltd) and surrounded by the APM staff that I know and love. We have been spilling the same blood in the same mud in the wildest and most remote places for almost 7 years and we have a spectacular time doing it. I know they will miss me, but it is only 8 days. They will be fine.

Schizophrenia anyone?