Charles Stella has struck blue-collar gold: a mining-industry job in Western Australia.
The 31-year-old boilermaker from Pittsburgh is one of the relatively few American workers who have been picked to pluck and process minerals in such remote regions and under such demanding conditions that wages for even driving a truck have climbed north of six figures.
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John W. Miller/The Wall Street Journal
Charles Stella, a 31-year-old American boilermaker, has emigrated to Western Australia to work in mining. Pictured here in August in Pittsburgh before departing for Australia.
Working "Down Under" is an increasingly popular dream. After The Wall Street Journal last year profiled an Australian drill operator making $200,000 a year, the newspaper received hundreds of emails from eager Americans who wanted the same but have yet to make the cut or the effort.
Mr. Stella did. These days, the former art major is patrolling the far-flung outpost of Port Hedland, a flat, hot, red-soil landscape. He is inspecting paint, welding and grout jobs on pipes and machines, learning what snakes to avoid, mastering Australian slang and watching commodity prices. "This is my dream," he said.
What distinguishes Mr. Stella from those who don't make it, say labor experts, are his specific skills and a stubborn, three-year pursuit of his ambition. He shelled out $6,000 on a migration agent, visa application fee, FBI clearances and other expenses.
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"In the modern economy, it takes some active individual effort to make migration happen," said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University. "This is not like in the past, where European or American employers went and recruited a bunch of people from the same village in Mexico or Morocco."
To be sure, such opportunities are dwindling as commodity prices drop, prompting mining companies to cut back. In recent months, BHP Billiton Ltd., BLT.LN -2.37% Rio Tinto PLC, Xstrata XTA.LN -1.69% PLC and Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. FMG.AU +1.69% have announced layoffs.
Born in Pittsburgh and raised by a single mother, he attended the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia before dropping out to train as a unionized boilermaker, a type of supermechanic in steel mills and other heavy industrial plants. He earned between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, depending on how much work was available, finding employment for a decade in steel mills and other industrial plants in the Pittsburgh area.
In 2006, Mr. Stella heard about mining jobs from Australians he met at his house through a networking site called couchsurfing.org that matches travelers with hosts willing to welcome people for free. After mulling over the idea for a few years, he finally applied for a visa in 2009. It took time to gather all the paperwork and forms.
Three years later, on Feb. 28, 2012, Mr. Stella received word that he had a visa.
He needed a job.
In May 2012, Mr. Stella printed 25 résumés and headed to a job fair in Houston, organized by the Australian government. The surge in commodity prices over the past decade, fueled by growth in China, has led to a massive boom in the Australian mining sector.
A week later, Mr. Stella received a call from Monadelphous Group Ltd., MND.AU -2.46% a Perth-based mining-services company that offered a one-year contract paying "into the six figures," he said. He would reside in Perth and fly to remote mining sites at company cost. Mr. Stella accepted.
Alex Noye, a recruitment manager with Monadelphous, confirmed the arrangement.
On Aug. 13, Mr. Stella flew to Perth from Pittsburgh, via Hong Kong. Upon arrival, he learned that his father had died. He grieved but decided to remain in Australia, staying with people he met on couchsurfing.com while apartment searching. He bought a bike for $1,350. "Perth is mostly flat, and this allows me to save money," he said.
He spent a week of general training in Perth, learning about extinguishing fires and wearing safety harnesses. He took drug tests and physical tests that measured his capacity to grip ladders and perform other tasks.
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After that, he was ready for his first assignment: three months in Port Hedland, on the tip of northwestern Australia, at a site operated by BHP Billiton to sort and ship iron ore to China.
The port there has boomed in recent years with the growth of iron-ore shipments to China, shipping out over 15 million tons of iron ore a month. At the sprawling site, trains arrive from the outback packed with iron ore that must be unloaded and sorted for shipment.
Mr. Stella's current assignment is to help supervise the building of new plants, terminals and rail links to allow BHP to increase the amount of ore it can ship through the port. His 12-hour workdays involve traveling around the site by bus, inspecting and certifying welding and grouting jobs on new sorting and shipment plants so workers constructing the new infrastructure can build the next beam, platform or rail link."There's a lot of paperwork and certification, which is something new for me," he said.
Mr. Stella works three weeks onseven, 12-hour days a weekand one week off. He has a private room on site with a small refrigerator, sink, TV and Internet, in a complex that resembles "a college dormitory for adults." He eats in a mess hall. In the evenings, he takes walks, writes or calls home, and checks on his hometown Steelers football team. "I miss my family. I want them to be proud of me," he said. He sometimes hangs out at an on-site bar with co-workers, many of whom are blue-collar men roughly his age from India, the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia, but is usually so tired in the evenings that he sketches and listens to old-time blues on his iPod.
"People have a tunnel vision about the paycheck, but it's nothing glamorous," he said. Rather than splurge with his earnings, Mr. Stella is saving half his income for a new dream: a beer garden, probably in Australia or Pittsburgh, with a small menu and good music. He also plans to visit Thailand and other Far Eastern spots.
On a recent evening, Mr. Stella almost stepped on a snake at the site. "I've seen a few now and am figuring out how to keep my feet away from critters that will make your blood coagulate," he said. Colleagues have warned him about midges, flies that show up in November. "A guy was saying 'You'll eat some,' " he said. "He suggested netting for my hard hat, even though I already have a sun visor."
After placing an online ad looking for a place to live in Perth, Mr. Stella received some angry messages. One said: "Aussie jobs are for Aussies. Go home, American." But Mr. Stella said he has perspective. "I almost started to chuckle because I found it interesting to be on the other side of the fence," he said. "I thought to myself, 'I'm an official immigrant now.' " He recently found an apartment.
