A few surprises at the Cornish Mining Sundowner

There were a few regulars missing last night, due to Covid, which is enjoying a bit of a comeback down here in Cornwall. However there was a great turnout at Falmouth's Chain Locker for the March Mining Sundowner, as there were a few surprise guests, down here for tomorrow's Camborne School of Mines Annual Dinner in Falmouth. 

I was particularly pleased to see Helen-Louise Colbourne (née Leach), CSMs 3rd female mineral processing graduate, who graduated in 1989 and then did a post-graduate Diploma in Mineral Processing, before leaving for South Africa and Impala Platinum. She had some fascinating anecdotes about her time as the only female mineral processor on the mine. In 1997 she and her husband, CSM Mining Engineering graduate Chris Colbourne, moved to Australia, where she had many top jobs, including a long spell with Rio Tinto in Perth and in the UK (see also posting of 10 December 2016).

Helen-Louise with two of her former lecturers, Tony Batchelor and me

Not suspecting what would happen just over a year later, Helen-Louise (H-L) and Chris moved to Moscow in December 2020 and they were loving life there there until the awful war with Ukraine began, and life fell apart a few weeks ago.

H-L told me that on a beautiful balmy afternoon in Perth in December 2020, she said goodbye to her beautiful twenty-year-old daughter Sophia and said that the emotional pain of a mother, not knowing when they would see each other let alone be allowed back into the country was intense. The international airport was showing obvious signs of pandemic controls everywhere, something the rest of Western Australians had fortunately not seen in the community, which to that point had largely escaped the terrible high numbers of Covid infection seen elsewhere in the world. 

Chris had been offered work in a gold mining company with operations in Russia, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso, and Guinea with growth projects in various locations around the world and H-L planned to start a PhD focusing on the impact of Front-Line Leader capabilities on their team’s safety performance.

They moved into a fully furnished apartment with only a few modern luxuries to add to make life easy and H-L was determined to learn Russian and soon embarked on learning through Zoom lessons the new way of meeting and communicating. The impact of the pandemic was keenly felt in Russia although a strict lock-down was imposed in early 2020, as experienced by most in the world, and as soon as Sputnik V was available to expats, they stood in line to take the vaccine determined to help with the fight against this terrible disease.

One of her favourite activities was the walking group in Gorky Park organised by the Irish club and each Saturday they would meet at the front of Gorky Park and stroll quickly along next to the Moskva river, sometime in temperatures she had never experienced. She said that the bunch of pals they met there will be life long, all spread across the world now as these terrible events unfold. H-L fervently hopes for the very best and a swift resolution and that the people of Russia can once again be celebrated and travellers can return.

She was fortunate to be at last night's sundowner, as the escape from Moscow was traumatic. H-L needed to get back to UK to see her ailing 87 year old father but direct flights were not possible as the UK blocked Russian planes soon after the Ukraine invasion, so she tried in vain to leave via Germany and then Istanbul. On Sunday Feb 27 she boarded an Aeroflot flight to Paris, but within an hour of landing the captain announced that they were heading back to Russia as France had closed the airspace whilst they were flying. Fortunately Chris's company helped them both to find a flight via Dubai then on to London. They arrived two weeks ago and she was very relieved last night to be among old friends at the Chain Locker.

It was a special evening yesterday and I look forward to catching up with many more past students from around the world tomorrow night.

The next sundowner will be at the Chain Locker on Thursday 14th April from 5.30pm.

@barrywills