I'm in a very big hole in the middle of nowhere and there's better mobile internet than in my Parliament House office.
Welcome to the Pilbara.
Rio Tinto has been rolling out autonomous trucks and drills across its West Australian mines.
Trouble is, for a truck to be driven in the Pilbara from an office in Perth, 1500km away, it needs a damn good communications link.
Until the end of 2013 the West Angelas mine was dotted with wifi trailers.
But they weren't reliable enough and the connection kept dropping out, communications engineer Luke Adams tells AAP.
So the company has set up its own 4G network which soon will cover all 15 of its mines across the Pilbara.
"All this is underpinned by that fluffy technology you can't see," Adams says, gesturing around the red dirt pit crawling with enormous trucks.
His fluffy technology was appreciated by the hordes of reporters and photographers there to record Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe looking at rocks and trucks.
Before entering politics, Abe worked for a steel company that transformed Australian iron ore.
He was fascinated to see where the red dirt came from and scrutinised rock samples.
Standing in front of the mine's central pit, both prime ministers underlined the importance of combining Australian know how with Japanese technology to make amazing things happen in the middle of nowhere.
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