Cover story

The Katherine workover

An integral part of bringing coal seam gas to the surface is the use of well workovers, giant machines that literally work over an existing well. Arrow explains: “Workovers rank among the most complex, difficult and expensive types of wellwork there is and are performed to optimise the production of existing wells which may have become damaged or have become unsuitable due to changing reservoir conditions.”

Rather than import a workover rig from the USA where they are manufactured and wait for it to be converted to Australian standards, Arrow Energy decided to have one designed and built for Queensland conditions. To design and build the machine the company turned to Integrated Metal Services of Katherine, in the Northern Territory, owned by sheet metal specialist Noel Brown, 38.

Brown had been working with hydraulics specialist Shane Andrews of SJA Hydraulics, the pair commissioned to build four diamond drill rigs for Schneider Drilling and Cairns Drilling in Queensland. “Together we’ve been able to complement each other,” says Brown. “Shane sells the winches, so that’s how we got onto that.”

It was that design and fabrication experience that attracted Arrow Energy, resulting in a contract to build a $600 000 coal seam well workover rig. “Shane rung me up and said Arrow Energy wanted to buy a winch for work in a coal seam gas project,” recalls Brown. “They already dropped a hole down 700 m to the gas, and they needed a winch to get their steel rods, their instruments, and pipes out of the hole and then lower them back into the hole. This mob only need to lift about seven tonne of rods but if they get stuck they’ll need a bigger winch to pull it up.” To make sure the rig could lift any required load, Brown eventually designed the machine to lift 20 tonnes.

“When these guys get out on site they just start the engine and pull some levers. If it takes them a half hour - they’re stuffi n’ around.”

Brown flew out to Queensland and met with Arrow Energy’s Workover Division on the Surat Basin site. He thought the rig he saw working there was overly complicated for the type of work it was doing. It was built onto the back of an over-wide truck. He knew that staff would be working at the well hole and needed space. As a result he designed a simpler version suited to the work in the Surat Basin. It could be pulled into place by a prime mover and had a deck system in the back giving staff lots of working room.

There are no electrics on the new rig. It has a specially designed hydraulic system to reduce the need for manual handling when it comes to setting up and rigging down as well as working on the rig. The hydraulics were designed by Andrews and installed by Brown, and were built for quick start-up. “When these guys get out on site they just start the engine and pull some levers. The legs will go out and down to stabilise it. You raise the mast up and lower the platforms, the back and sides, put the loaders on and she’s ready to go. If it takes them a half hour - they’re stuffin’ around.”

Before the first diamond drill rig job came along, Brown was completely involved in general steel fabrication and sheet metal work. He built an enormous shed for a customer at his Katherine industrial site, where he and his crew built custom trailers and steel frames with stainless steel bench tops. He built about 90 kitchens for upgraded homes in Aboriginal communities around the Katherine district.

As a designer and builder of complex drilling and workover machinery, Brown is entirely self-taught. “In design, each and everything you do affects something else,” notes Brown. “I’m a better welder than I am a manager. But if I can get myself better organised, I can step up a bit more.”

The Integrated Metal Services prototype has been completed and is set for operation. It will be trialled in the field near Dalby in Queensland, where four of the company’s five fields are located. A second workover rig is being considered by a New South Wales firm, but if it goes ahead it will be designed differently, incorporating the many lessons learned during the eight month fabrication process for the Arrow Energy model. “It opened up a lot of new opportunities for me, but I didn’t re-invent the wheel, says Brown modestly. “Drill rigs have been built before. I just had a go.”

Harold Thomas in the mall

While Cholmondeley’s Territory Colours displays a cross section of Northern Territory sculpture, glass, original jewellery and hand-crafted furniture, the space is dominated by the striking work of Harold Thomas. Thomas’s subjects are stately brolgas framed by pandanus palms, escaping bilbies in the desert and egrets fossicking among the water lilies. “It’s a searching way of painting,” observes Thomas. “You’re looking for the smaller molecules in the landscape, and that’s what I try to conceive. Occasionally I like to use the larger brush strokes to get a freedom and expression I want for the painting, but most times I’m painting close to nature - expressing nature at its most intimate.”

The work is also decidedly commercial. Commerciality is not, however, a word that insults Thomas. “The only way I feel about nature is the way I’m painting now. It works for me,” explains the painter. “The danger is that it becomes too commercial and you find you’re not painting for yourself. But artists have to live and they walk that fine line of being commercial or really genuine artists. I do paint for myself, but there is an element there to show more clarity because it needs to sell. After all, you’re not living in a garret anymore.”

It has been a long, productive road for the Central Australian-born artist. A part Aboriginal child, he was removed from his family and institutionalised in Alice Springs before being fostered out at age 12 to a white family where he lived until he was about 20. He had already started painting while in school and won a scholarship to the South Australian School of Art in Adelaide, later taking a position at the South Australian Museum.

It was the 1960s, the era of revolution and black power. And it was that energy that inspired Harold Thomas to conceive of the Aboriginal flag, symbolising through the red landscape, the penetrating sun, and the field of black the pride of being an Indigenous Australian. “The Aboriginal flag represents all of who we are by its simplicity. It’s overshadowed what I do as an artist. The greatest expression of me as an artist was to create that. I can paint landscapes and dingoes and quolls but the flag sits next to it and is just overpowering, because of what it is: simple and vivid and it’s very Aboriginal,” explains Thomas.

He is also very protective of the flag design. Just this year he was involved in a dispute with Google over its intended use of an 11 year old Australian girl’s artwork incorporating the Australian Aboriginal flag into its logo. Wikipedia describes the dispute: Thomas refused to allow Google to use the image featuring the flag after negotiations over compensation failed, resulting in a modified design without the flag being used instead. . Thomas claimed Google had opened negotiations with a request for free use of the flag and, while he allowed free use to non-commercial operations that gave health, education, legal and other assistance to Indigenous people, he charged a fee to commercial operations. He described Google’s subsequent offer as a ‘pittance’.

But Thomas never tires of his enduring creation. While he was not thrilled to see it used by Google, he loves seeing it emblazoned on T-shirts and hats. “It’s a signal to other people in the community that says ‘I’m proud - I’m Aboriginal. I’m proud to wear the colours,’” he says. “I like that. Now and again, I see a non-Aboriginal wear it, and that’s good too. I enjoy that. It’s not just exclusively Aboriginal. It’s got a life of its own. It’s everywhere.”

The art of Harold Thomas is ever-evolving, and the latest chapter is currently on show at Territory Colours, with the artist and shop-owner Cholmondeley carrying on a professional association that’s lasted 25 years. “Darwin isn’t known for its ‘you-beaut’ galleries,” smiles Thomas. “It’s a small population but Peter has got this great spot - the best spot he could get. It’s a long room with heaps of wall space. I just love coming here and relaxing. And that’s what all Darwin people should do - come down to Territory Colours and acquire a Harold Thomas painting.”