A highly successful St Barbara’s day dinner was held on Friday 1st December in Queensland. The fully booked event was appreciated by the organising committee and provided a valuable networking event for QLD ATS members to close out the year.
We would like to thank in particular our sponsors Aurecon, Barchip and CREG who made the night possible.
The highlight of the evening was the delayed (from ATC 2023) in person presentation of the Allen Neyland Achievement Award to Dr Charles MacDonald.
ATS vice president Jurij Karlovsek described the history of the Allen Neyland Award before handing over to Tim Brown (Systra) who gave an overview of Charles’s achievements over the last 50 years, including work in the underground industry in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and Singapore. In Australia major projects included the Melbourne City Link, the whole Westconnex Scheme in Sydney and the Brisbane Airport Link. Charles was Chair of the ATS 50th committee last year as well as lecturing at the University of Queensland.
On receiving the award Charles said, “I am humbled to be in the esteemed company of the previous Allen Neyland Achievement Award winners and would like to thank the ATS executive as well as the broader membership for this honour.” He went on to describe his tunnelling career and his association with the ATS.
Once again, a very big congratulations to Charles from the ATS.
We were all thrilled to have an impromptu overview of the feast of St Barbara by Albrecht Muller who described the history of St Barbara in Europe and noted the positive trend of the growing number of women in tunnelling. Annalena Chapman from the Diversity in Tunnelling committee took the opportunity to speak to the success of the DiT Mentor/Mentee program.
The St Barbara’s is never truly complete without the Young Member door raffle organised by Brodie Aitchison and ably assisted by Tomas Santolalla.
