One day, the money will run out.
On the other hand, we’re completely serious about giving up our old careers. It is true that the money was great, and it has allowed us to buy and equip the boat and to purchase enough property to form a nice safety net for the future. The Information Technology industry has been good to us, and for many years we enjoyed the challenges. In recent years, though, as we went from contract to contract we have found that there are no new problems under the sun, and that usually those problems result from the clients making the same old mistakes. We realised that we were just getting frustrated and weren’t learning anything new. Being in a senior position is boring; it was time to find a new career and to start from the bottom again.
Over the three years that we planned this trip, we were also researching a number of different future career options. Among others, we considered running a cafe, running a B&B, studying medicine, teaching English, teaching SCUBA diving, and several more. In the end, we decided that although we would bear all of these options in mind, we would focus our minds on the mining industry.
Our new home, Australia, has some of the best mining opportunities in the world. The commodities market is all that stands between Australia and the worldwide recession. We foresee a boom time for Australian exploration mining, and there is also a lack of people who are willing to go out into the bush and get their hands dirty; the focus in all industries in recent years has been on the world of finance and business rather than doing the hard miles at the sharp end. In the mining industry in particular, people are rejecting the fly in / fly out remote working because it takes them away from their families and friends and cities for extended periods. We are keen to go the other way, to leave our soft office jobs and get out there into the wilderness. Our theory is that although we are older and less experienced than most career geologists, we will be valuable to employers because we are willing to go out there together and therefore won’t be stressed about leaving anybody behind.
This time, too, we’ve chosen two slightly different study paths. This isn’t just down to our differing interests; we’re very aware that for too long we’ve had all our eggs in one very small basket, and it feels good to be diversified. Bronwyn is doing a degree in Surveying Science. and I’m pursuing a post-grad diploma in Mining Geology. It’s good to be using our brains again, and we’re both enjoying our courses immensely.
