Train driver Geoff Harbud commutes the breadth of Australia to work in the outback mining region of Pilbara.
It is a practice cursed by Australia's struggling, isolated towns which increasingly see potential new residents flying in to work shifts lasting a few weeks, but then return to homes in larger cities.
Harbud, who transports iron ore from the mines to the coast, chose to commute from his home town of Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city in the temperate southeast, after his family decided the rugged northwest was not for them.
"It was very hard for them to adjust to the heat and climate and there is a whole new way of doing things here. They were never really happy," Harbud said.
Every few weeks Harbud flies west from Melbourne to Perth, then north to one of the Pilbara towns in a journey of more than 3,700km, or about the distance between New York and Los Angeles.
The Pilbara towns built during a resources boom three decades ago are in the midst of a second-wave iron ore bonanza fuelled by China's economic rise, but many workers at newer projects see little of the stark, red-earth region.
In the 1960s and 1970s companies opening Pilbara mines were made to build towns, creating urban oases of homes, shops and schools in a region where summer temperatures often top 40?C.
New satellite mines in the area are now more likely to fly workers around 1,000km from the Western Australian state capital of Perth and provide short-term accommodation for shifts lasting up to a few weeks.
`Short-changed'
Town leaders and regional politicians say the employment practice known as fly-in/fly out, increasingly common in the Pilbara since the late 1980s, deprives the towns of potential population growth and the benefits that brings.
"We struggle to get basic government services, and yet so much of the economy of the state comes out of the region. We feel we get a bit short-changed at times," East Pilbara Shire President Alan Cochrane said.
"We have been trying to get dentists for three or four years now."
Cochrane is based at Newman, a town with a population of about 4,000 people, built in the late 1960s for the Mt. Whaleback iron ore mine, now owned by the world's largest diversified miner, BHP Billiton Ltd/Plc.
Miners Rio Tinto Ltd/Plc and Billiton are spending billions of dollars boosting Pilbara production to meet a boom in demand by Asian steel makers, bolstering towns such as Newman, Tom Price and Paraburdoo.
But the Pilbara representative in the Western Australian state parliament, Larry Graham, said the region's towns risked missing out on their fair share of the action unless governments acted to ensure the local communities played a central role.
"It is reasonable to assume in the next five years that the economic output of the Pilbara will double, and it is likely that in the subsequent five years it will double again from that already higher level," he said. "The population growth and the employment growth will not match that."
Rising exports
Australia's iron ore export sales are expected to rise 13 percent this financial year to around US$4.4 billion, the government's commodity forecaster says, and production is set to increase over the next few years.
Regional politicians want governments to provide financial incentives for people to move to remote towns, and to spur companies to make Pilbara towns employment hubs and the base for a regional flight network.
BHP Billiton resisted pleas for a more locally based workforce at its new Mining Area C project, 120km from Newman, arguing daily commuting was not practical.
"We are hiring more people in Newman, we are hiring more people in Port Hedland, but for these remote operations we see that the model which is sustainable is fly in/fly out," BHP Billiton Western Australian Iron Ore President Graeme Hunt told reporters at the mine's October opening.
"A lot of the workforce actually want that arrangement because of their personal circumstances but we understand the concerns in the regions and we want to work in those regions to try and make sure that we do have a sustainable future."
Proponents of fly-in/fly-out say it allows workers to earn the high wages the jobs offer, without uprooting families from city lifestyles and wider educational opportunities.
But fly-in/fly-out employment in Western Australia, estimated to involve thousands of workers, is also prompting questions about its health and social impacts, such as alcohol abuse and marriage break-ups, as families are separated.
"Up until recently no one has really looked at the behavioral or health implications, the long-term implications of fly-in, fly-out," said Nicholas Keown, research officer at the Goldfields' Men's Health service, based in Kalgoorlie.
"It is quite obvious now that not everyone copes well."
Harbud said he was away from his home for more than half the year, working a rotation of 12 days in the Pilbara followed by 10 days' leave in Melbourne.
"There are people who like it and it suits them, but I find the guys here who have got young children find it very difficult," he said. "I wouldn't recommend it for a family."
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