Future Qld Resources: Fateful detour opened up new career

Nikita Lis was working to become a doctor but a gap year caravan road trip to Cape York changed her life’s plans.

Nikita Lis was working to become a doctor but a gap year caravan road trip to Cape York changed her life’s plans.

About three years ago, the 25-year-old completed a biomedical science degree and was trying to get into medical school but after missing out on her first attempt she decided to hit the road.

This story is part of The Courier-Mail’s special Future Queensland: Resources series that reveals the truth about the contribution the much-maligned resources industry makes to Queensland. You can read all of our coverage here

She took a gap year and was travelling around Queensland in a caravan before making a fateful decision to pull up at the Mt Carbine Caravan Park.

After reaching the Cape, Ms Lis returned to the caravan park with no money before a staff member told her the EQ Resources tungsten mine next door was hiring.

With no mining experience, Ms Lis applied for a job as a truck operator and gave herself three months to earn money so she could return to Brisbane to continue university studies.

But she’s still there. “Initially it was only going to be for three months so I could go back to uni,” Ms Lis said.

“Then I decided that I might do a year and stay, and then I decided to do a metallurgical engineering degree instead of medicine, and I’ve been here ever since – much to my mother’s disgust, because she misses me.”

Starting as a truck operator Ms Lis has worked her way to the position of production foreman where she oversees the mine’s wet crushing plant and all quarry side truck movements.

“I started in a truck and then when I got my go on the loader, I loved it,” she said.

“I never wanted to have lunch breaks because I had so much fun in it.

Nikita Lis on site at Mt Carbine tungsten mine Picture: Brian Cassey

“And to this day, I still love operating when I get a chance.

“I remember one of my first days, someone asked me to get a shifter, and I asked them what a shifter was. We all laugh about that. To this day.”

Ms Lis it was an industry she was learning in every day.

“It’s always something new and exciting, and it keeps me on my toes,” she said.

“There’s a lot of multi-tasking in this job, which is quite exciting and then lately I’ve been actually able to apply the things I’ve been learning at uni to work.”

Ms Lis said there were some times she missed her city life.

“I was just recently in Brisbane for my final exams for the semester, and the luxuries were nice, like I Uber’d myself a textbook I bought off Facebook Marketplace,” she said.

“But I do like the peace and quiet out here. I’ve always seen myself moving to the country anyway.”

Ms Lis still has four years of part-time study left for her engineering degree as she works towards marking three years at the mine in November.

“I don’t really have any set plans for the future,” she said.

“I remember at my biomedical graduation, someone got up and said the most useful thing to me in that degree.

“‘Just say yes whenever an opportunity comes along, even if you don’t want it because you never know what will happen’.

“That is what I did here.”

Originally published as Future Qld Resources: Fateful detour opened up new career