ADANI HOLDS KEY TO THIS LITTLE TOWN
DONNA Thompson closed her roadhouse in the old mining township of Mt Coolon 10 years ago.
The bowsers are still there out front and the kitchen inside is still in working order.
Her washing hangs on the barbed wire fence at the side of the roadhouse.
She hangs it there because if she uses the Hills Hoist that is at the back of the roadhouse the cattle chew the clothes. It’s a battle.
Life has always been a battle in Mt Coolon.
That is what happens when geography and isolation collide.
This dot on the map, home to seven souls, is 140km southwest of Collinsville, 260km southeast of Charters Towers, 130km north of Moranbah, 300km west of Mackay and 335km southwest of Townsville.
Whether Donna opens the roadhouse again hinges on the Adani mine.
If the construction of the railway corridor proceeds and the mine goes ahead, Donna will reopen.
If things stay quiet the roadhouse will remain in mothballs and she and her husband Jon will continue to operate their road train business. Adani. It all depends on Adani.
Mt Coolon is just a smattering of buildings hidden among the ironbark and box trees in the Queensland Never- Never.
It is where prospector Tom Coolon gunned down four men in cold blood in 1918 after accusing them of trying to steal his claim.
After he shot them Coolon went home, drank some whisky, politely said goodbye to his wife and went outside and shot himself. The graves are down there on a grassy flat. There’s no monument, no fanfare, just the covered holes in the ground where the dead men lie.
It is always a town waiting for something to happen.
Hopes have been raised about gold mines opening in the area over the last 20 years, but the talk never turned to action. Now it’s all about waiting for Adani.
“I wish they’d just do it because we’ve still got the licences for the fuel and the kitchen. The rail corridor passes only about 10km from here,” Ms Thompson said.
“The way the whole Adani
thing stops and starts. It’s so frustrating.”
Over the road at the Mt Coolon Hotel, Liz Turner says much the same.
She blames the State Labor Government for stepping back and stalling the entire project.
“The LNP would have got it done if it had’ve been in government here in Queensland,” she said.
“We had a bit of a miniboom here a while back – it’s quiet again now. I don’t think we’ll see much happen for a few months. I don’t think anything will happen at least until after March.”
The rail corridor gate is 32km south of Belyando Junction, which is 245km south of Charters Towers on the Gregory Development Road.
It is along this corridor when it is completed that giant trains up to 4km long will carry the coal from Carmichael and the Galilee Basin.
There was no construction action in the corridor this week and that is the way it is expected to stay at least until the wet season is over.
Out here at places like Mt Coolon and the greater Belyando, people live in hope that work will start and that the mine on Moray Downs, just two hours away from Belyando Junction, will happen … sooner rather than later.