With the exit of the major colliery proprietors and landholders such as BHP Ltd and Coal and Allied Operations Pty Ltd from coal mining in the Lower Hunter in recent years it is essential for the government and planning authorities to review their colliery lands and develop comprehensive land use and rehabilitation strategies that include reservations for conservation and biodiversity.

Planning strategies are needed because colliery land holdings near urban centres have been sterilised from urban use for coal production since early times. These lands have had relief from rating and when mining has been exhausted the company in a manner to achieve rezoning and maximum profits disposes them.

Councils through rezoning confer the betterment on the lands and a windfall profit that is about one third of the aggregate of current price for blocks. (Rule of thumb only)

Rezoning must be within a regional planning context and an effort should be made to achieve community gain, rehabilitation and ecological sustainability as the principle objective.

The exit of the BHP Ltd. from Newcastle brought agreement between the Government and the company for the dispersal and remediation of the company’s land holdings but unfortunately the process has been secret. At this date the lands are still in the hands of the company without a firmly binding planning instrument guaranteeing reserve status to the important conservation areas.

Coal and Allied Operations Pty Ltd is a Rio-Tinto company. It acquired the old J and A Brown mining empire in the Lower Hunter including the Minmi private town during 1960’s.

The company also holds extensive mining tenements in the upper Hunter including land at Warkworth, Jerry’s Plains, Muswellbrook and Singleton.

A comprehensive strategy is required that identifies the following matters before the divestment of further colliery properties in the Lower Hunter:

*     Those lands used for mining purposes or held by old mining companies.

*     The quality of these lands for conservation.

*     The extent of underground workings.

*     The areas of degraded open cut mine sites.

*     The effect of surface subsidence and burning coal seams.

*     The amount of remediation needed around coal washing plants

*     The degradation of down stream watercourses and wetlands.

*     The land capability for urban uses.

*     Lands suitable for conservation or biodiversity reserves

As coalmines are worked out or become uneconomical the surface lands invariably became available for real-estate windfall profits for those entrepreneurs who obtain the necessary rezoning. In many cases the surface remediation of the land is not attempted by the mining company or is not truly successful.

The BHP Ltd lands at Belmont have been underground mined for coal, surface mined for Rutile and Zircon, and finally quarried for construction sand. The community will have to carry out the restoration and protect the surviving wetland areas.

Parks and Playgrounds Movement has approached all members of Parliament with the view to obtaining Planning Strategies that guarantee improved outcomes for conservation and strategic urban development of former coal mining lands.

Yours sincerely,

Doug
Parks and Playgrounds Movement

A brief historical note:

Coal mining began officially with the establishment of the convict coal workings at Colliers Point at the entrance to Newcastle harbour in 1801 (Beneath the present Fort Scratchley) The convict John Platt was an experienced coal miner and he set out the first official coal mines using the bord and pillar technique just being introduced in England at that time.

The Colonial Government controlled coal mining until 1831 when the Australian Agricultural Company opened their first coal workings and was given a virtual monopoly over the production of coal. A 2000 acre grant of coal bearing land west of Brown Street was made to the AA Company.

By 1850 the AA Company monopoly became untenable and Dr Mitchell’s Newcastle Coal and Copper Company and others were working coalfields.

By 1860 there was widespread coal mining and coke making.

Large areas of land were quickly alienated by land grants for coal mining during the next fifty years by individual coal entrepreneurs and companies including A.A. Company, English and Scottish Mining Company, the New Redhead Coal Mining Company, the Wallsend Mining Company, the J and A Brown Mining Company and the Cardiff Coal Company in the Newcastle area.

The surface areas of underground colliery lands were sometimes only marginally affected by mining operations except for the cleared area around the pitheads. The timbered surface lands were used for production of pit props used for shoring-up headings in the underground workings.

Open cut mining however has left gigantic open wounds on the landscape and disruption of drainage patterns and underground workings often caused subsidence especially where pillar extraction or modern long-wall mining has been used.

Coal mining grants in Newcastle were sold on and ultimately became subdivided urban lands when underground mining ceased. The whole of the inner area of Newcastle at Cooks Hill and at Hamilton were former AA Company mining lands. The Hamilton South “Garden Suburb” is an example of imaginative subdivision by the AA Company of its former colliery land.

Important conservation lands at Blackbutt Reserve, Glenrock State Recreation Area, Mount Sugarloaf Reserve and Green Point Foreshore Reserve were all former colliery lands purchased back by the community after long and sometimes bitter conservation struggles.

DJL. 10.6.02