Yeah there is always someone trying to bust you doing the wrong thing or telling the boss your hopeless to make them sound better.

$43 and hour is good for working in town. I know people earning less than that, flat rate, doing FIFO shutdowns. I would be asking the boss for a bit of overtime rather than going mining. I spend 6 weeks in the desert of southern Egypt supervising a maintenance crew and my hourly rate isn't a whole lot better than that. If i could get $40/hr in Cairns i would be booking a flight asap.

There are people earning 140k + but it varies alot. depends the job, the mine and the roster. The week on week off rosters would be 100-120k i would guess. Some places do give a healthy bonus too.

On job i hadn't thought of is an operator, not of the trucks or excavators but of the plant. I work in a gold processing plant and there are quite a few operators running the place making sure pumps are running, valves are open in the right places, checking all that sort of stuff, basically running the plant. There is no trade for it so anyone can do it.