Most people have no idea what goes into building the roads they drive on, the railways they catch, or the infrastructure they rely on every day. Seb does, because he’s one of the people who makes it happen.
Seb is a Blast Hole Driller at Mawsons, a successful company that produces quality construction materials throughout Northern Victoria and Southern NSW, and has a business history spanning over 110 years across regional communities. Mawsons’ growth in recent years has taken it to over 550 employees across 80 sites. Seb’s job is to travel between quarries, drill into rock faces with precision, and get everything set up and ready for the blast. It’s technical, specialised work that sits right at the centre of how this country gets built.
How he ended up here
Seb came into the industry as a plant operator at Pyramid Hill Quarry. He was getting across the equipment, learning how a quarry actually functions day to day, and then he got to see his first blast.
That was enough. A position came up on the drill; he went for it, and he’s been doing it for two years now. It’s less of a career epiphany story and more just a person noticing what they find interesting and following it. Which, if you ask most people who end up in roles they love, is usually how it happens.
What the work involves
Blast hole drilling is more technical than the name might suggest. Hard rock quarrying (Mawsons’ bread and butter) means drilling into rock faces before explosives are brought in to break the stone loose. From there, it gets crushed and screened into the construction materials that go into roads, rail lines, dams, and building sites across the country.
The drilling itself isn’t a case of just pointing a machine at rock. Placement, depth, pattern, preparation: all of it has to be right, because it all flows into a blast that needs to go exactly as planned, safely and accurately. Seb moves between quarries depending on where he’s needed, sets everything up, and on a good day gets to watch the whole thing come together.
“You get to watch most of your blasts. They’re pretty cool to watch.”
Fair enough, really.
What he likes most about it
Two things come up when Seb talks about the job: the travel and the fact that it doesn’t get stale.
Mawsons runs more than 80 sites, so there’s movement involved. Different quarries, different towns, different crews to work alongside. For someone who’d rather be out in the field than in the same building every day, that suits. And because every rock face is genuinely different, the problem-solving doesn’t stop. There’s always a new variable, a new challenge, something to figure out.
He also mentions that getting into a quarry role tends to open up more of the business over time. Mawsons operates across concrete, transport, mechanical, engineering and more, so for people who want to keep moving and building on their skills, there’s a lot more of the map to explore.
On qualifications (or the lack of them)
Worth putting this front and centre:
“You don’t need any qualifications to jump into this role, so don’t be scared and go for it.”
Mawsons trains people from day one. Specialist skills across machine operation, explosives handling and safety are all developed on the job, through structured training that’s been refined over more than a century of operation. The company has been running since 1912, and a big part of how they’ve lasted that long is investing in their people rather than expecting them to arrive fully formed.
If you’re coming out of school and university doesn’t feel like the obvious next step, the trades and resources industries have a habit of surprising people. The work is real, the skills are transferable, and the pay reflects the fact that you’re doing something that actually takes expertise.
Seb didn’t sit down and plan any of this. He took a starting role, paid attention, and when something caught his interest he went after it. Two years in, he’s doing skilled work that most people his age have never even considered, which is part of what makes it worth knowing about.
Find out more
Want to find out more about what a career at Mawsons looks like? Head to Mawsons’ careers page to explore opportunities across their quarry, concrete, transport, and engineering teams.
