Geologists from Planet Earth

It's okay to change: a geological career - Helen Degeling

• Julie Hollis

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Ever wondered what happens when a young geologist, told she'd only ever be the "token female,"  decides to prove everyone gloriously wrong? Here's Helen Degeling, whose journey has careened from academia, to surviving a decidedly un-gentlemanly welcome at a Pilbara gold mine, to doing fieldwork seven months pregnant in 38-degree heat. Helen's is a tale of resilience, career pivots, and finding purpose in surprising places: a triumph of grit, gumption, and the good sense to know when to chase what truly matters. 

Teaching resources (questions prompts) for 12-16 year olds can be found here: https://www.tes.com/resource-detail/resource-13276404

Julie:

What do you know about geology? What does a geologist do? And who are these people who are so interested in rocks? In this podcast, I ask geologists from around the world to tell the stories that mean the most to them. And, well, it turns out they're not who you might expect. The remarkable things they've done... the experiences they've had and the passion that every one of them feels for the planet that we live on. But it's not about what I think. You decide for yourself. My name is Julie Hollis and you're listening to Geologists from Planet Earth.

Helen:

Hi, I'm Helen. I'm a geologist. Before we start, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we gather and meet today. And for me in Brisbane, that's the Turrbal and Jagera people. But I'd like to pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging across all the lands where anybody who is listening in might be gathered around the world.

Julie:

Thank you, Helen, and welcome. What are you going to tell us about?

Helen:

I'm going to tell you a little bit about my experience as a woman in the mining industry and as well my transition from academia through to industry and then through to government. The challenges along the way and the changes within myself as well that have led to those bigger career changes.

Julie:

So where does all this begin?

Helen:

It begins in school where in the last two years of school in Australia, I studied geology. I picked it up because I had been reading some books that had, it was a prehistoric storyline and, you know, I was a real fan of those books and somehow thought that if I studied paleontology, it would be the same thing as archaeology, which of course it's not, but... I was 15 or 16 at the time, so didn't really appreciate the difference. But I studied geology and I really loved it. And A lot of that is to do with the fabulous female geoscience teacher that I had in year 11 and 12. My school in Canberra, where I grew up, was one of the few schools that offered a full geology course over those last two years of school. And my teacher was a woman and, you know, I didn't think there was anything unusual about that at the time. And she was fabulous and really inspiring. But because of her and because of my enjoyment of the classes with her, I'm one of the few people that I know who actually went to uni to study geology. Most people fall into it, pick it up as an extra subject as part of a general science degree. So I definitely wanted to be a geologist.

Julie:

And so what happened from there?

Helen:

I really wanted to leave Canberra and see the big wide world. So I made the decision to move to the University of Sydney to study geology. But I did get a challenging statement from my father when I announced to him that I was going to be moving to Sydney and studying geology. And the response was, well, you can't study geology. You'll never succeed because it's such a male-dominated field and you're only ever going to be the token female. I used that as a little bit of fire in the belly to prove him wrong. So I went to Sydney Uni and I did well. Julie, for all the listeners, Julie was H.D. Hollis at uni. And I was the year behind her. And unfortunately, my nickname was The Freak, which was not anywhere near as nice as H.D. Hollis. But I'm not a freak. I just studied really, really hard because my father's words had stayed with me and I was just so determined to prove him wrong. I had a lot of fun. I loved it. One of the highlights from university was fieldwork for honours in Fiordland in New Zealand, looking at metamorphic rocks in Georgetown. Just, you know, the scenery, the topography that's so sharp and so high, plunging down into those fjords and wildlife. And that, of course, that whole experience that inspired me to do a PhD. So I went on and did a PhD. But unfortunately, the topic that I chose was to study some rocks in Antarctica. But the area that I was going to be accessing was only being accessed by a boat by the Japanese in that particular year. And I wasn't allowed... to go on their boat because they had very strict rules about the number of women allowed on the boat. You know, they had to fill up the cabins and if there was an odd number so that a female cabin wasn't full, then the women got booted off.

Julie:

That's awful.

Helen:

So I wasn't allowed on the Japanese boat, which was very disappointing. And I was lucky because my supervisor had rocks in his collection that I could study. But the whole reason I had chosen that project was because I really, really wanted to go to Antarctica and I never, I didn't get to, but I did go to Norway instead, which was not a bad runner up. I went over there by myself, which in this day and age, nobody would be allowed to do. I was too young to be able to rent a car with a reasonable, you know, reasonable insurance and everything. So the only thing that my supervisor's budget could afford was a rent-a-wreck. So I was striving this rent-a-wreck to get around in the field. And I was really worried about missing something in the rocks with nobody else there to, you know, to point things out and that kind of thing. So I collected a lot of rocks. I can remember driving back from the field on one of my excursions back into Oslo and the car, as it was sort of bottoming out over bumps and things in the road, the weight of the rocks in the back was like scraping on the road.

Julie:

So...

Helen:

Yeah, I got a bit of a talking to when I got back to Australia. I think I had well over a ton of rocks that I brought back, which was a lot. But anyway, I cut them all. I looked at them all in thin section and I think I chose two. Two in the end made it into my thesis.

Julie:

Yeah.

Helen:

So from there, I went to Canada, did a postdoc at the University of Calgary, looking again at some metamorphic rocks up in the Rockies, got to do field work by helicopter, fly up to a camp up in the mountains and collect rocks with a great team up there. It was a lot of fun and I certainly could have stayed, but did in the end come back to Australia and where I have to say the inspiration that I'd had for being an academic and the motivation to pursue academic research started to wane. And I started to question why, you know, why am I actually doing this? What is important to me and that sort of thing. And I realised that I needed a little bit of time to figure that out. So I decided to run away to the mining industry to earn some money while I decided what it was that I really wanted to do. It was only ever meant to be a stopgap, just to fill in the holes.

Julie:

So that's a pretty big change. How did that go?

Helen:

So I got this job at a small... gold mine in the Pilbara, which is northern Western Australia. You know, I was living in Melbourne at the time. So it was a flight to Perth and then it was a flight to Port Hedland. And then it was a couple of hours drive out to this little mine site. So for my first day, by the time I arrived there, it was pitch black at night. I can remember getting out of this four-wheel drive. It's dark. We're at the camp. And there's these spotlights shining on like in my direction or in the direction of the car park so that with everything else being black, you couldn't actually see anything. And there was a group of men who worked at the mine sitting outside their rooms looking right near the car park watching us drive up and I couldn't really see them but I hear this voice coming out of the dark oh come and sit on my knee love.

Julie:

Oh no.

Helen:

I just think oh my god what have I gotten myself in for you know I've come out of academia where it's reasonably civilized not to say that there aren't problems in academia but you know just just this totally different environment and on the other side of the country from where I live i don't know a soul and just help you know so but it got better from there and again i was like i was the only female on the management team and not because i was experienced enough to be a manager but just because i was one of two geologists and so the geologist helps inform decisions for the management of the mine it from day to day. Just working with these people, you know, most of them have never finished high school, but they're so practical. They're so knowledgeable about the things that they do, you know, whether it's fixing a truck engine or designing a blast pattern or just coordination of all these different groups of people and machines and, you know, on a 24-hour kind of shift work and just all the different components that go into it. mining operation and so much activity and things happening all the time, I very quickly developed an appreciation for the value of others whose experiences are different to mine. People have so much to contribute no matter what their background is. I just found that whole experience so valuable and it's taught me so much and pulled me down off my arrogant little academic high horse as well, which I think was probably something I needed and certainly not something that I have regretted since. And then, you know, coming from places like Canada and Norway to then the Pilbara, which is just the absolute essence of Outback Australia. There's spin effects, there's red dirt, there's, you know, the odd camel thing. Meandering past this. 40 plus degree days. This amazing country that is so dry and harsh in winter and then in summer it's wet and it's lightning storms and you'd sit outside at night and watch the lightning show. You know, just such an amazing place.

Julie:

So it sounds like this was the start of something for you.

Helen:

It was my first job in a mining operation so I had never even considered working in the mining industry before then. But I found that I enjoyed it. so much more than I thought I would, which then meant that the thing that was just meant to be temporary while I figured myself out ended up becoming the thing that I enjoyed so much more. And so I have since made, you know, my career out of working in the mining industry. From there, I ended up in Mount Isa, which is in Queensland. It was while I was there that then things changed because I met a cowboy, one of the local rodeos. And After a while, I fell pregnant, and my cowboy wasn't interested in being part of that, so we split up. And so I found myself then as a single woman working fly-in, fly-out to a remote part of Australia and, you know, about to have a baby. So obviously I could no longer be a fly-in, fly-out worker, and I was still living in Melbourne at that time. So that job... ended but I do remember before I left I was still doing field work as a pregnant woman and my baby was born my daughter was born in November so you know with the Australian seasons that's coming into summer and in that part of Queensland it's very very hot so a lot of those days were high 30s you know 38 degrees that kind of thing and I've always been fine with the heat before but when you've got your own little internal combustion system going on I had some really great female fieldies in that team. So they really looked after me.

Julie:

Wow, that's great.

Helen:

You know, sort of walk a bit and then I'd have to have a little stop and a break and sit down and then keep going again.

Julie:

And how pregnant were you when you were doing fieldwork?

Helen:

I remember doing fieldwork in September, seven months. There was one time when we were driving around in a ute, you know, sort of a trayback truck. And we had two spare tyres on the back, but we ended up with three flats throughout the day. My wonderful fieldies did most of the tyre changing. I was helping, but still, you know, it was a bit of effort. And so after the third flat tyre, I had to call up on the radio the local landowner to say, you know, we're miles from where our mine office was. It was too far away, but the local farmhouse. And so they... came out with a spare tyre for us and gave me a big lecture on, you know, being out and pregnant and what on earth do you think you're doing, you know, that kind of thing. It was all in. It was all, you know, meant very kindly and so we all survived. And the paramedic on site, this is up at Lady Annie, he was... keeping a very close eye on me. I've always been a bit of a workaholic. So I was working like 18 hours a day or something. And he got really cross with me about that and said he really didn't want to have to deliver a baby early out on site. And so he wrote a formal restriction of my working hours to no more than 12 hours a day. And then I was really annoyed when the airlines themselves said that I was no longer allowed to fly because I was still up until two weeks before I had my daughter. But by the time I had the baby, I was back in Melbourne without the baby's dad. I had a beautiful little girl called Lily. After about six months, there was sort of a change at upper management level or board level and they decided decided that they could not have an employee working from home who was meant to be fly in, fly out. I think really there was a bit of a downturn and they were looking for reasons to cut back on staff. So my contract was terminated and that was a bit of a tough spot because I was single. Now I was a mother. I didn't have the confidence to take the company to court, you know, to fight the decision that they'd made. I was afraid that it would cost me too much and that kind of thing. This was around 2012, one of the downturns. I applied for a lot of jobs obviously then and just got turned back because I couldn't commit to the roles that they were. at the level that they were saying. It was fine to work 18 hours a day when my baby was inside my tummy, but less so when she's outside and needs looking after. So then I decided I would give consulting a go. It was a very naive decision because you can't just decide that you're going to be a consultant. There's a fair bit of work that goes into that and a long time to build up a client base to support you basically, so that you can even make a living. I was living in Melbourne because that's where my previous partner had lived. But I decided that I wanted to be closer to my family who was still all in Canberra. And I love the snow. I love mountains. And so I decided that if I was going to change everything up, well, I was going to change that as well. So I moved to a town called Jindabyne, which is in the Australian Snowy Mountains.

Julie:

And so how was that transition into consulting?

Helen:

It's great working for yourself. It's very rewarding. You're very much in charge of your own destiny. But traveling with a little six-month or one-year-old baby is pretty hard. I can remember taking her, Lily, with me and putting her in childcare in nearby little towns for where I had to go to do my site visits. Everyone always thought that it was really great that I brought my daughter. Everyone was very understanding and very supportive but obviously it wasn't really an ideal situation and because there was a downturn it was also really hard to make a living so I had to pick up other work, non-geological work. And I can remember walking around Jindabyne with my one-year-old on my hip with these CVs that I had altered to reduce the emphasis on my degrees and on my experience, just to make myself more of a general worker. So dropping those CVs into cafes and shops. And to be honest, that was humiliating. The worst one was the bakery in Jindabyne had a sign saying, out the front looking for casual workers. So I went in there and the lady spent about 30 seconds looking at my CV, dismissed me completely. I can't remember exactly what she said, but I can remember how it made me feel, which was just the pits, just utterly and completely humiliated. So I almost gave up, but took a moment, put myself together and dropped off one last CV at the little local bookshop. in Jindabyne. Thank goodness they gave me a job. So it was a lovely, lovely, lovely place to work, but it wasn't really enough to live on either. But still, you know, I ended up working, you know, various other little jobs while I built up the geology consulting. And one of those jobs was with a lady who eventually became a very good friend who was really into what it takes to build a business. And so taught me a lot about the commercial aspects, the marketing aspects, how you market yourself and how do you get that message across. When people are looking for a geological consultant, where do they look? Most geology consultants, because it's so specialised, nobody looks up a geologist or a consultant on Google. It's all through word of mouth. So learning all of that sort of stuff which again has been a skill that I didn't know I needed. Certainly didn't learn it at university but something that has become invaluable and that I've applied in all other parts of my life as well.

Julie:

How long was this process from when you decided to become a consultant to effectively becoming a consultant?

Helen:

I'd say it was two or three years. Even when it was going, it was very hot and cold. At one point, you'd have that much work that there wasn't time to sleep. Then there'd be many weeks long gaps with no work at all. So I kept the other, particularly the job with the lady who was helping me understand business strategy and that kind of thing. I kept those roles ongoing just so that there was a steady income going on and then And looked through various clients and different channels. I ended up working for a junior gold explorer who was actually based in Jindabyne, being their exploration manager. It was great, except for that they were a really dodgy company, which I didn't know initially, of course, but you start to figure it out after a little while. The CEO of that company openly told me that he preferred women working for him because they didn't argue as much. and he could push them around more. But life changed again. I met a guy and fell in love with him, and it had to be love in order to get me to leave the snow. But he lived in Brisbane, so I agreed to move to Brisbane in order to keep that relationship alive. But I kept the job with the Dodgy Exploration Company. I told them that I was moving, and they In order to keep me, they said, well, that's fine. You can just work from home. I did that and my plan was to get settled in Brisbane and then start looking for something better because I really didn't want to continue working for them. But another curveball, within a month of moving to Brisbane, I found out that I had breast cancer. So the little company that I was working for was very reluctant to let me have any sick leave whilst I was going through cancer treatment because I was the only person in the company who was qualified to write or sign off on ASX announcements. So, you know, that sort of clinched it for me. As soon as I was well again, I started looking for other jobs and a job came up with the Geological Survey of Queensland, which I applied for. and got. Sort of thought, well, you know, it's government. I hadn't really intended to go there, but it'll be a nice sort of compliment to the academic and industry parts of my career. I'm sure I'll learn a lot and I'm recovering from cancer treatment. So all of the stereotypes working for the public service, I thought that'll be a nice place to go and hide and they'll look after me if I, you know, if I get sick again or something. So I had very personal reasons for deciding to take the job. But I ended up loving it so much more than I thought I would.

Julie:

What were you working on there?

Helen:

I was in charge of the minerals team in the geological survey and being able to take my industry knowledge and then combine that with academic skills and put them together and say, okay, what are the big technical problems that are facing mineral explorers in Queensland? And what would I do if I could solve them? I set up a bunch of research programs because I had a very generous budget. I had a team of really smart people working for me and being able to feel like I was making a difference in the industry that had taught me so much and given me so many great experiences. I felt like I was really giving back. One of the things that I set up while I was in the Geological Survey of Queensland, or GSQ, was a program on investigating mine waste, so tailings dams, waste dumps, that sort of thing, for critical minerals, with the understanding that a lot of mining operations will be very focused on a more traditional commodity and the associated critical minerals may have been ignored in the past and that actually came up in a conversation with one of the guys at the GSQ Vlad who I was asking him well you know where's the biggest cobalt deposit in Queensland and he very jokingly said oh that would be in the Mount Isa tailings and I was like well do we have some samples of that can we prove that can we like develop a bit of a data set on that sort of thing. And, you know, his response at the time was, well, we don't really have anyone that knows anything about tailings dams. But at the same time, there was a lady who just started working at the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland, Anita Pabaka-Fox. I had a close working relationship with the director there, Rick Valenta. So he put us in touch. We developed this fantastic program of basically going around and developing these baseline data sets for different waste stockpiles and tailings dams throughout Queensland. And then that got picked up at a national level by Geoscience Australia. So then they've taken the basis of the work that we did at GSQ and turned that into the Atlas of Australian Mine Waste, which I'm so proud that one little conversation has grown to be something so big. But then as part of that work, obviously I was talking to a lot of different companies about what was in their tailing stems and this little company called Cobalt Blue got in touch and were really interested in the work we were doing and wanted to know if they could be part of the research somehow because they had a technology that looks particularly at breaking down pyrite to extract the metals that might be caught up in the mineral. And pyrite is one of those low value sulfides that often gets sent to waste. So when I started sort of fishing around for what my next opportunity was going to be, Cobalt Blue created a position for me specifically to look for opportunities in tailings and mine waste. And one of the things that I love about it is even though I've spent over a decade in the mining industry. I've worked in mines and that sort of thing. I still am, I'm an environmentalist at heart. I got into geology because I love being out in nature and understanding the story of the earth and being able to walk around and look around you and think about how things might have been many, many billions of years ago and how that's changed and become what it is today, that sort of thing. It's that care of the environment, love of geology, but also I do love the mining industry. It's given me so much. It's full of so many amazing characters. You know, I feel really lucky to have found that.

Speaker 02:

You've transitioned a lot in your career through academia, industry, government, and through a lot of personal change and challenges. What do you feel you've learned?

Helen:

Sometimes the things that you think that you're going to be doing and the choices that you make as a young person are not what you end up doing later on in life and it's okay to change. You're certainly not a failure if you decide that something is not for you and that you need to move in a different direction. You're being honest with yourself and being more true to yourself by recognising that and maintaining your authenticity throughout your career and your career choices and recognizing that you can't separate life from career either you know that some choices will be personal we'd like to think that we make all of our professional choices purely on a professional basis but in the end the things that are really important come through and they deserve and should be considered as well

Julie:

Following her position as Director of Minerals Geoscience at the Geological Survey of Queensland, Helen Degling was the manager of RemindPlus at Cobalt Blue Holdings. My name's Julie Hollis, and you've been listening to Geologists from Planet Earth.