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LIBYA 1982-84 - Party 140 and Party 280

Libya was my first posting as Party Chief. I arrived in early 1982 from Party 247 Australia to take over the job from Mike Worthington. The crew, Party 140, was a dynamite drill crew working for Shell in the Harugh-al-Aswad (it means 'black rocks', apparently), a large and inhospitable region of basaltic volcanic rock slap bang in the middle of Libya.

My abiding memory of the Harugh is dust and boulders - the boulder fields were horrendous, and the claypans weren't much better - although they looked nice and flat, after a few vehicles had been across them they disintegrated into bottomless 'bulldust'.

After completing the contract for Shell, and another one for Oasis (I think), the crew was converted to Vibroseis, given the party number 280 and moved to the plateau south of Tripoli to do work for Occidental.

The crew

Not all the following were necessarily on the crew at the same time, it's just a list of those I remember.

Brian Roscoe - Administrator

Nick Cain - Administrator

Roy Fox - Administrator

Martin Potts - Seismologist & chief brewer

Sean Johnson - Surveyor

Mervyn Sparks - Surveyor

Harvey Morby - Mechanic

Steve Collins - Mechanic

Phil Rowe - Mechanic

Trevor Mason - Mechanic

Jim Light - Driller

Bob Bonner - Driller

Andy Dunbabin - Observer

Greg Faria - Observer

Tim Voss - Observer

Brian Chiverton - Supervisor (Tripoli)

Gordon Browning - Supervisor (Tripoli)

Mike Moss - Tripoli admin