Let me share a story that spans decades of transformation in Australian mining. It’s a tale of how we completely reimagined the way people work and live in the resources sector, and I had front-row seats at Newlands, Drayton, and Yancoal.
Picture this: When I started, miners worked 8-hour shifts and lived in company towns with their families. The local pub was the community hub, kids went to the local school, and everyone knew everyone else’s business – for better or worse! I remember one old-timer telling me, “Mate, in a mining town, you can’t sneeze without someone offering you a tissue before you do it.”
Then came the big shift – quite literally – to 12-hour rosters. You should have seen the debates! “No one can work that long safely,” some said. “But think of the extra days off,” others argued. We spent countless hours around kitchen tables and in community halls, working through the implications for families, safety, and lifestyle.
But that was just the beginning. The real game-changer was the move from mining towns to drive-in, drive-out operations. I watched as communities grappled with this change. One day, a crusty old supervisor said to me, “First you want us to work longer days, now you want us to live in the city? What’s next – mining by remote control?” (Funny he should mention that…)
Then came FIFO – Fly-In, Fly-Out – and those camps that looked like something between a motel and a military base. I remember walking through our first camp thinking, “How are we going to make this feel like home?” The answer came from the workers themselves – they created their own communities, just different from the old mining town ones.
Perhaps the most fascinating shift was watching the workforce transform from predominantly unskilled to highly skilled workers. Where once we needed raw strength and endurance, suddenly we were looking for people who could operate complex digital systems and million-dollar machinery.
You know what makes me smile now? Watching young engineers controlling massive mining operations from air-conditioned rooms, while somewhere in a nearby camp, old-timers are telling stories about the days when mining towns were their whole world.
Times change, but one thing remains constant – it’s still about people finding their way to make a living from what lies beneath the earth. Just with better air conditioning now!
