00:00I thought it was great, very different than what it was going to be like.
00:03It was very dark, very cold, surprisingly, I thought it was going to be muggy, but I really enjoyed it.
00:09I was talking to some of the apprentices and stuff about the work they do and I thought I was
00:13very interested in it. I didn't really have a clue of what the mines actually was,
00:18but it really does change my mind because I feel like I'm more interested in kind of the mines.
00:24I'm doing a Cert II certificate in Electro Technology in TAFE. I'm nearly finished,
00:29doing great actually. I kind of enjoy all the sparky work that I'm doing right now.
00:32Yeah, so today's been a great experience for our boys, primarily in year 11 and 12.
00:38GM3 is one of our major partners in Illawarra, so they help us fund Canahooka and Lake Illawarra
00:44academies. From that today, our boys got a bit of an experience to go to underground.
00:48First time for our boys to go down to the pit, go down in the truck down below and get
00:53dressed up
00:54in uniform. So it's a bit of, I suppose, a bit of a taster of what the mining life's quite
00:58like,
00:59but it's about to work underground and just to show you how safe it is.
01:03Boys are really excited, so obviously a lot of nerves at the start when the boys are gearing up and
01:07putting their sperm suits on and going underground, you know, going into a bit of a black hole can be
01:12quite daunting, but when you're down there, it's quite safe, it's quite lit up. The boys walked away
01:18feeling quite, I suppose, optimistic about the future. We've got two boys that are currently talking to
01:23about some career pathways at the moment, so fingers crossed next year we'll have some boys
01:28starting our apprenticeship. Since our relationship with GM3, they've been partnered now for two years.
01:35Every year we come down and do a mine tour, so we take the boys underground, give them a bit
01:39of a
01:39taster of what it's like in the mining life, but in saying that, GM3 also come and support our
01:44boys on the ground. So they'll come to our morning training sessions, they will attend our awards nights,
01:50they will come along to our footy carnival days and help out the barbecue, so it is a partnership
01:55and our boys get to build relationships from our constant network and time spent with GM3.
02:00We have 12,500 boys currently in the program, I think we've got about 8,000 alumni, so the majority
02:07of our boys do go on that sort of trade type area. I think it's about 60 to 70 percent
02:14of our boys
02:14going to trade type work with a multitude of our partners here.
02:18All right.
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