Australia is one of the largest coal exporters in the world, and the rural Hunter Valley in New South Wales is the source of much of this coal. The Upper Hunter Valley today is characterised by a moon-like landscape dotted with empty craters and barren hills. Most of this landscape is planned to be regenerated through progressive backfilling of the pits. However, plans for rehabilitation and restoration are poor and there is no cohesive framework to guide the process of mine closure.
As the world responds to an urgent need to address carbon emissions, the pace of transition in the Hunter is changing. The industry is facing a terminal decline. This will ultimately see 130,000 hectares of mine-owned land become available for re-use over the next two decades. Part of this includes at least 25 so-called ‘final voids’, which have been approved to be left as toxic holes; these will present permanent, multiple threats to both the environment and local residents. As such, the future of the Hunter is in balance: a poorly managed transition will leave Hunter residents with a highly degraded landscape and a depressed economy, though if transition is done well, the end of coal could be the beginning of a brighter future for the region with diverse industries, sustainable jobs and a thriving natural environment. The types of decisions we make today therefore, will determine the viability of the region’s communities and their environmental future.
This presentation takes the final voids as its empirical starting point and asks the question of how we can reimagine post-mining landscapes in the Hunter. It draws on an ongoing research project on the social and affective dimension of the final voids and will. report on the early stages of community collaboration and efforts to reimagine these broken landscapes,