Locals work to regenerate land
NEW recruits at Wilkie Creek near Dalby are hard at work giving the coal mine a new lease on life as the site moves beyond mining.
The 10 new recruits, all locals and Peabody employees, are part of a team busy transforming the onceproductive coal mine into a variety of post-mining land uses, including cattle grazing land.
Peabody Australia president George J. Schuller Jr. said the new intake of employees shows Wilkie Creek is still an economic asset to the region despite working towards completion of rehabilitation works by 2023-2025.
“Peabody understands that mining plays an important, but temporary role in the life of a region,” Mr Schuller said.
“We take our commitment as responsible custodians of the land and good neighbours seriously and our progressive rehabilitation approach means we started rehabilitating the land well before the closure of Wilkie Creek in 2013.
“The team at Wilkie Creek are not only locals – most are farmers who have worked the land here and know what the soil and conditions respond to best.”
The team has put their local knowledge to good work, methodically reshaping and stabilising disturbed areas, as well as monitoring and managing groundwater flows to prepare the rehabilitated land for cattle.
“We have been conducting cattle grazing trials for more than two years now and our results have shown that the cattle grazed on our rehabilitated farming land have grown on par with those cattle grazed on native pastures,” Mr Schuller said.
Mr Schuller explained Peabody’s mine closure approach involved working closely with local landholders and property managers to ensure the site continued to be productive post-mining.
“As members of the local community themselves, our team at Wilkie Creek is best placed to ensure the rehabilitated land fits with the surrounding country and continues to be a community resource long after last production,” he said.
Local jobs are just one of the benefits of the rehabilitation phase with Wilkie Creek still contributing around $6.05 million per annum in direct supplier spend to the Queensland economy, with approximately $2.7 million spent with local suppliers.
Mr Schuller said Peabody strongly supports a “locals first” approach.