I first sat on a drill rig back in 2005 while doing a shoot for a four-person iron ore company in the Pilbara that would rise to become a A$3 billion company before it was eventually taken over.

Since then I have travelled the world photographing drill rigs, though I would hate to think how many shoots I have done on them.

Drillers are the quirky sidekick of the mining industry. Different to anyone else in terms of personality. Quirky. Humorous. Out there. Down to earth. And in the main genuinely good people.

They don't mind getting their hands dirty — perhaps because, as you will see here, drilling is a very dirty business.

Over my career I've learned that early stage exploration drilling is my favourite. The rules are fewer and you feel more at one with the bush. Well, at least that's how it used to be. Remote area exploration camps were generally comprised of a caravan for working, another for cooking, and then a series of swags and mossie domes outside around a campfire. These days that has all changed — the norm are flash caravans kitted out with internet.

I miss the days without it. When you could sit out bush and just talk. Which doesn't happen so much now as when drillers and their offsiders get back to camp generally the first thing they want to do is get online and call home. Anyone who experienced those earlier days yearns for their return.

Memorable times with drillers out bush include the occasion I went around the front of a drilling rig and returned to find a driller wearing nothing but a helmet, boots and a dust mask over his jats crackers. Which shocked me a little — but was undeniably humorous. These days it would be a sackable offence.

On that same shoot — and that same rig — I was introduced to the stock whip of one of the drillers. I promptly went and bought one the next time I saw the station caravan at the Marble Bar Races, and it became something of a stress relief. Driving late at night I would periodically pull up and let the stock whip rip in the middle of nowhere. Just because I could.

On another occasion, Anton and his crew waited for my arrival and put a pig on the spit as something of a celebration in the back-blocks of Ghana in West Africa. We'd first met out bush in the Great Sandy Desert — I recall driving in the middle of nowhere when Anton got bogged and I had to pull him out. That's how I remember it, at least, though he tends to argue it was the other way around.

Over the past twenty years I have photographed drill rigs on four continents — on the surface and underground, in large scale mining operations and for artisanal miners. I was also fortunate to produce the 25 year book for the old Ausdrill when Ron Sayers was in charge. He built an incredible company and I am exceptionally grateful to have been associated with them over such a long time.