Gavin Cullip, Engineering Geologist

What is your role, and how long have you been at MGT?

I’ve seen and done a lot in the mining and exploration industry, so I’ve been shipped around a bunch of different roles in MGT.  I’m a garden variety geologist, with form and experience geotechnical engineering.  I’m currently pretty happy working on the seismicity problem at Golden Grove, which has me slated as a “Structural Geologist”.  I put “Engineering Geologist” on my email signature, as it seemed the most applicable.  What’s in a title?

I’ve been with MGT for maybe a year and a half. I was made redundant from my Exploration Manager role in the mini copper downturn of 2025, put out a sarcastic “woe is me / lamenting my lost job with a sense of deluded affection”  post on social media, and Lyndell Juggernaut, who I’d worked alongside of in a core shed in Kalgoorlie some years before, saw it and set me up to meet John Player and Alex Phillips.

What sparked your interest in this field?

My parents insisted that I go to university.  After a poke and a sniff of what was on offer there, I decided the physical sciences were for me.  Once I started, engineering was slightly out of reach due to only doing “Maths 1” in high school, and not being particularly enthusiastic about catching it up at the grand old age of 17 / 18.  So, I stuck in the science stream, then gradually migrated further and further into the geology sub-discipline, due to the combination of field trips, interest in subject matter, and the non-stop newspaper articles about the “$300k/y geologists were making prior to even graduating!” that were rampant at the time, but utter fiction as it turns out.  Ultimately, the concept of “adventure work”, and fairly good money with great opportunity to save said income is what swung me on the deal.

Share a memorable project story.

I’ve been on active mine sites with MGT since I started, and mine sites are notoriously circumscribed affairs, so it’s slim pickings indeed for memorable project stories I’m afraid.  If we were talking pre-feasability studies or exploration then I’d step right up and show you how to be a raconteur.  Unfortunately for you, dear reader, you will have to settle for technical problems haunting my memories.

Collapsed stopes, falls of ground, mine induced earthquakes, these are the things that have been the most memorable.   Saving tens of thousands of dollars and production time by justifying the safe reduction of shotcrete was a good one.  Actually, there have been a few laughs on the sites.  We formed a band to try and get a colleagues girlfriend back by him reading her absurd poetry by Tim Key while we played the verse from “Jailbreak” by ACDC.  I never found out if that got a result though.

What is a quote that has stuck with you?

It’s not going to fix itself.

A bird in hand, is worth two in the bush.

If you want to talk to me, define your terms.

What advice would you give to aspiring engineering geologists?

Work hard, be good to your mother.

Who in your team would you like to give a shout-out to?

Lyndell, first up got me on the team, then always picks up the phone and has sound advice on data collection and logging issues.

Alex, was my first contact on site, set me up with a really really nice bit of legacy work he’d been building throughout his career- a master spreadsheet for geotechnical calculation.  This formed the basis for my own empirical calculator experiments.  Also he got me into the “hive mind” mode of emailing the entire company with technical questions which lead to specialised answers from people I have never met in person.

Lauren, via the “hive mind” enquiry just mentioned, answered some wireline tool issues I had.

John, always picks up the phone and is ready to talk tech, strategy, data, papers.

Gordon, has sent me some good papers and advice, again via our “hive mind”.

And Peter, who has given me loads of his time regarding ground support.

I didn’t get to spend much time with Richard but he was just starting to divulge some good open pit experience to me in the short period we shared a project.

I’m a middle aged, middle career dude, so it’s quite nice to have more technically capable people above me.  He’s client side, not MGT side, but my current department head, Dr David Spencer is a dead set weapon.

Airleg. Shakes your skeleton, sounds like the end of the earth. Absolutely iconic over 100 years, check the compressed air captured coming out of the snout!

Rapid-fire questions

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I don’t know.  Probably since the time I heard punk rock for the first time and got a skateboard for my birthday, I can’t remember thinking about anything but getting my hands some on cash and being an adventurous wildman.  I think prior to that when forced to answer this question I said Renaissance Man.

How do you take your coffee? Or are you a tea person?

I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was about 35, when I met my partner.  I always considered it an expensive middle-class affectation.  Well, actually, maybe it’s because I’ve had a hand and a foot on a rung of the ladder since then, but now I drink new orleans style, moka pot coffee with actual fresh cream at home, which my partner doses with muscle dust (creatine) and MCT oil, because we are podcast-subscribing fitness and longevity eedjits.  My current site serves prison-blend instant coffee with long life milk that tastes like brown paint, but we persist nonetheless.  I mean, I drank green tea until I was 35 and pretended to like it, so this is a doddle.

What is one (or more) of your favourite hobbies?

Skateboards, guitars, dance moves, jokes, plants, hikes, landscaping.

Do you have a favourite rock/rock formation/mineral/element?

I’m a bit smitten with calcrete at the moment, which I realise is pretty pedestrian.  It’s a waste rock in mining and an impediment to the plow, which is why there’s freely available piles of it in wheat belts.  I built a gabion front fence with it recently.  I like the colour, texture and tone.  I like all the convict era calcrete rubble (people call it limestone) masonry in Australia.  It’s basically chemically the same as mortar (as far as I know), so I think it was born to be slapped together as a building material.  I also have a live side quest considering basalt gravel / crusher screenings as a horticultural soil ameliorant. Sorry, but ask a boring dude a boring question, get a boring answer.