Miners come in to help upgrade

WORKERS at the New Acland Coal Mine have taken time out of their day to pick up shovels and wheelbarrows to help beautify Oakey.

Toowoomba finance worker Kara Bagorski was one of several volunteers amazed to see mining giant New Hope send nearly a dozen workers to take part in the Seven-Day Makeover program earlier this month.

Along with donating $7000 to the Toowoomba Regional Council-funded program, Ms Bagorski said New Hope even sent out about 11 miners, including the general manager, to help improve public spaces across the town.

“On the Thursday and the Friday, we were pretty low with hands on deck, and the New Hope community liaison team in Oakey had been helping all week,” she said.

“On the Thursday we were pretty light on and we didn’t think we were going to get it done, so the liaison team sent out an email to all the miners and asked if they had spare time to help.

“We ended up with six workers from the mine including the general manager and on Friday different staff came.

“There were about 10-11 involved in physical labour over the two days.”

Ms Bagorski said it was nice to see New Hope give back to the community.

“They could see we were light on with labour,” she said.

“They were literally swinging shovels and putting crusher dust down. Nobody complained once.

“To me, that was really big – it was a really selfless action.”

Ms Bagorski said she planned to head out to the mine next week with certificates for workers who helped.