WESTERN Australia's Pilbara is no place for weakness. Every day, plane-loads of workers are flown in to grind out long shifts on the region's mines, amid the searing heat and red dust, for weeks at time. It's a macho culture, where you are expected to work hard, play harder and earn big money.
But news earlier this year that one of them had lain dead in his donga, a portable accommodation hut, unnoticed and apparently unmissed, for up to two weeks at a work camp for Woodside's $14 billion Pluto liquefied natural gas project disturbed many.
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Lilleyman is no stranger to the FIFO lifestyle, having worked away from his family between 1997 and 2001, and acknowledges it's a tough gig, especially when your children are young.
"It's very difficult to maintain a relationship with your kids over the phone," he says. But he says the lifestyle also has its advantages, such as having a long block of time at home with the family during the off-weeks, as well as financial and career opportunities.
McCartney, who also worked as a FIFO in the Pilbara, says the experience helped his family financially but that now, aged 60, he regrets missing so much of his kids' childhood. "It tears at me," he says.
There are plenty of stories of FIFOs who do handle the experience well, usually those with a clear idea of what they want to achieve and people to support them in these goals. Others are often unprepared for the consequences of earning a lot of money and separation from loved ones.
"When you spend lots of time away, that absence begins to deteriorate the marriage. It causes relationship breakdown, tensions, and affairs can develop," OzHelp chief executive Brenton Tainsh says. "So everything that they've been working for can just fall apart. That causes an almost instantaneous suicide in people's minds because they think, 'there's no point me going on because that's what we're working for'."
