During the Term 3 school holidays, the Bendigo Tech School Student Ambassadors visited industry partner Safescape for an insightful and informative tour. Read on to hear from Catherine McAuley College student Flynn about the experience!

“We recently were lucky enough to go on a tour of local Bendigo company, Safescape. Safescape provides innovative safety solutions for the mining industry, right out of Golden Square down the road from the Tech School. We had a look at some of their previous products, like a ladder built into a plastic tube and interlocking barricades.

In my opinion, the most exciting project was their Bortana Electric Vehicle. The Bortana EV is a battery-electric heavy-duty truck rivalling typical mining cars like a Toyota Hilux or Landcruiser. Safescape is currently in their beta testing phase of production, with 10 vehicles waiting to be shipped to mines around the world for research and development.

The hope is to eventually be producing four vehicles a month. We were able to walk around multiple vehicles and ask questions to the engineers and mechanics who work on them. It was really interesting to see people from many different career backgrounds like engineers, software developers, and diesel mechanics all working on the same project.

They learn on the job every day in such a cutting-edge field with EVs, and it made me realise that you don’t have to learn everything you need to know in a career at school. So much of the experience comes from working on the job itself and sharing ideas with your co-workers.

Seeing a company in our local town of Bendigo doing such incredible and exciting things was an experience that I’ll remember for much time to come!”