35 Years in Business - January 2005

A Reflection On the Modern Australia Drilling Industry

From fording swollen rivers and surviving roller coaster light plane flights over remote locations, to just signing the contract for their latest multi-million dollar Soilmec drilling rig, Peter and Deidre Mitchell can look back on the first 35 years of their drilling company with both awe and pride.

Awe that they got out of so many sticky predicaments in regional parts of Australia that were then remote backwaters without the benefits of modern technology or communications.

And pride in the fact that through hard work, consistent service delivery, a view to the future, and a confidence to expand, they have earned reputations as two of the most respected senior figures in their industry today, with Australia's largest privately owned drilling company to their credit.

But it was a far more humble scenario that Peter and Deidre faced in 1969 when Peter bought their first drilling rig for $11,500 at a repossession sale. But the old Mayhew couldn't be moved from the sale yard until they spent their last $200 in the bank on a new diff.

Once on the road though, Peter put the equipment to good use drilling many water bores for farmers around Kingaroy, Quilpie and Coopers Creek Channel Country.

"We were in the grip of a drought, so my success at delivering water was well regarded and farmers always paid at the end of the job," Peter recalls.

In the early days it was Deidre who acted as offsider and cook until they expanded enough for her to stay put in Brisbane running things from there. During this early period, Peter saw a need to change his drilling focus though and started easing into coal field exploration work.

"Coal was booming back in the late 1960's so we followed the burgeoning industry and discovered we understood the business our clients were in, and their needs, fairly quickly," Peter said

This proved a timely strategy as the drought suddenly broke and farmers all over the region cancelled orders for water bores.

Starting in the growing oil shale and coal fields around Moranbah in what was then a very remote part of Queensland, Mitchell’s then expanded into mineral exploration in 1971, drilling for Thiess Peabody Mitsui (TPM) at Poitrel Station, west of Nebo in North Queensland.

Later in 1971, Deidre and Peter's son Nathan was born and by late in that same year, they had firmly established themselves as a force in the exploration industry.

"1971 is a real red letter year for us both personally and professionally – Nathan today is the Managing Director of the business and has grown the company 3 fold in his 5 years at the helm. And our strategy to get into exploration work sees us servicing the largest parts of the industry today," Peter said.

Through the resource boom years of the 1970's and 1980's, Mitchell Drilling contracted to nearly every major and minor explorer, working the oil, uranium, gas and coal reserves throughout Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

The business grew, as did the number of rigs needed to service the business that came in. The old Mayhew was replaced, and the fleet has grown to a scale that sees Mitchell's operating 21 rigs throughout the country, including two rigs deployed in India. Altogether, they employ over 200 people around Australia and abroad.

But it wasn't all serious business building the company, Peter is quick to point out. Many times during their early years in particular, events would unfold that would seem potentially disastrous (either for personnel or profit!) at the time, only to be the butt of much laughter and joking down through the years.

"We got ourselves into a few interesting situations, with the remoteness of our work locations usually amplifying the problem. But we always got things sorted and the job done," Peter said

But when you strip away the many laughs as well as tribulations that the company and personnel have tackled over the last three and half decades, the one thing that Peter and Deidre Mitchell most enjoyed is seeing the business grow alongside the exploration industry they served.

Most of all, they like to reflect on the decisions they made to work new areas and trial new equipment when others were more conservative, only to see their ventures become highly successful and recognised as such today.

"When we first went out to places like Moranbah, Blackwater and Glenden there was nothing there – it was desolate. Today these places and others like them are thriving communities, creating thousands of jobs and generating billions of dollars in production over the years", Deidre Mitchell said.

"So I look back with pride on being out there with Peter and the boys in our caravan and tents, blazing a trail in the early days and seeing what these little bush backwaters have become today," she said.

With their focus on opening new markets always at the fore, Mitchell Drilling recently drilled their 150th Dymaxion hole using the revolutionary surface-to-inseam coal bed methane drilling technology that they have pioneered. This gas drainage approach has excellent export potential and their record makes them the most successful and prolific drillers of this technique in the industry.

So with the company now in it's second generation with son Nathan - blooded into the business during school holidays back in the late 1970's – having grown it to a substantial business since taking over, there is a sense that the trails to be blazed are far from over for the people at Mitchell Drilling Corporation as they look globally for even greater challenges.