The Second Coming of Coal
I ended up on the frontlines of the Adani Carmichael Coal Mine
I originally wrote this piece in 2017, while I was working with the Queensland Music Festival. Many of my observations of the Isaac community informed my novel, 'The Man In the Water’. Everyone in the Isaac community wanted to talk about the Adani Carmichael mine. It ended up being built, after many delays. It’s enough of an environmental disaster to draw comment and protest from Greta Thunberg, Bob Brown, First Nations leaders and many others. Over its sixty year life, it’s expected to produce 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Flying into Moranbah, Central Queensland, the open-cut coal mines don’t so much dot the landscape as colonise it. A dozen big black holes yawn out of the earth, their inner contents shovelled out and piled up around their borders in biblical proportions. It resembles a child god’s sand pit. The sun’s about to set as we touch down, but it’s still forty degrees outside. The hot air slams into my solar plexus when I leave the plane. I am one of dozens of young men walking across the tarmac to the large shed where our baggage awaits. I’m the only one not wearing neon orange.
I’m here to write and direct a musical for Queensland Music Festival.
Of course.
Three days ago, Scott Morrison produced a prop in the House of Representatives—a lump of coal. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he cried before passing it around the backbench.
It’s February, 2017. Coal is at the core of the LNP government’s jobs and growth war cry, and it’s the key to a reliable energy future for a nation that is under attack from life-threatening heat waves and rising electricity bills. Scott Morrison’s show-and-tell comes off the back of blackouts in South Australia. Coal will save us all.
Moranbah, Queensland, is a few hours’ drive from the proposed Adani Carmichael site. If it goes ahead, it’ll be the largest coal mine in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s difficult to anticipate the actual effect it will have on the residents of Moranbah and the surrounding Isaac Shire Council region, although few are short on opinions.
I spend months embedded in the region with a creative team. We collaborate with the community to create a show about the Isaac people that they will also perform. We spend hours in the car traversing the flat bushland, covering a council region that is bigger than the size of Tasmania. Even in the dusty outskirts, small mining towns like Glenden, Middlemount and Dysart, we meet people keen to participate—the cast list soon bubbles to over two hundred.
One of the first is Sue, a hard-working mum in Dysart. We meet at the pub for lunch, and we’re served meals that could serve a family of four each. My chicken breast is the size of my head. One of my colleagues ordered a salad.
‘Do you want chips with it?’ Asks the young lady behind the counter. She’s not joking.
Sue is dressed in bright lipstick and chunky earrings. She’s brought gifts.
The first is a book of photographs collecting Dysart’s history. Dysart is one of the youngest towns in colonial Queensland. The sepia-stained pictures are remarkable. There’s an aerial shot of scrubby bushland, dated January 1973. A photo taken from the same position six months later shows a town in full operation. Six guys in singlets sit on the back of a ute, each holding a beer can. They’re sweaty, they’re made of nothing but lean muscle and enormous grins. Their arms are thrown around each other. Blokes sent out to build the town, settling the Wild West.
‘Are any of these guys still around?’ I ask Sue. She shrugs. She’s only been here for a few years herself. Not many people stay in Isaac for long.
‘The community is transient,’ she says, and she counts herself among those who only stay for a little while. Her personal story is reflected in the second gift - a small handful of pages recounting how she and her husband met, moved and settled in Dysart. Still, they only think they’ll stay in town for a few more years. The plan is the same everywhere: the husband works on the mine, makes over $120,000 a year, and Mum raises the kids at home. It’s hard work, but if they can grin and bear it for a few years, they’ll be able to come back to a city. Enough work and savings, and they might stand a chance of a downpayment on a home. For thousands of working-class Australians, it’s the most accessible pathway to home ownership when metropolitan property prices are out of control.
Sue’s story is more complex than most. Her second child developed leukaemia at the age of two. Four harrowing years followed, with countless flights to Brisbane hospitals.
‘The community really rallied around us at that time,’ she says. ‘I’ve never felt more supported. That’s the best thing about small towns. Everybody knows your business and looks after you.’ She pauses for a moment, smirks. ‘Well, I guess it’s the best thing and the worst thing.’
Sue’s words are in my head when I meet Jake a few days later. Jake's fifteen and stands out from the rest of his classmates. He’s the only boy I’ve met in the region with an asymmetrical haircut. He looks as though he’s come from a Melbourne salon, a jet-black fringe covering half his face. Despite his gothic appearance, he is bright and talkative. He doesn’t have much interest in singing or dancing, but he’s turned up to auditions regardless.
His art form, he tells us confidently, is American sign language. He’s taught himself from YouTube videos. He sits in the middle of a dusty classroom, plays pop music from his phone, and lets his hands move in long, elegant shapes. Every turn of his fingers has a pulsing heart beneath it. His hands breathe.
Jake came out as gay to his classmates at school assembly in year ten. His father threatened to throw him out of the home. He’s found a precious cluster of friends at school but is often the victim of vicious bullies. Without the internet, I wonder if Jake would have a vocabulary for his sexuality at all. The classic male Australian stereotypes populate the Isaac region with cartoon-like consistency. If you diverge from this path, as Jake has done so bravely, you walk a very lonely road.
The local council have asked us to focus on youth. The mental health statistics are just as troubling in this region as they are nationwide, but the tight-knit communities mean that the distress is more keenly felt. In the Middlemount school, five staff are employed under the auspices of health and well-being. The extra care has paid off. Middlemount is one of the few schools in the region that doesn’t have a culture of self-harm or suicidality. The school staff across the region are usually young and only in their first years of teaching, ticking off their time on regional rotation for Queensland Education. Like the rest of the population, they only plan to be in these towns for three years. The kids are the ones who suffer, finding it hard to lock into secure friendship groups or reliable mentors.
Their whole sense of place is disrupted. Their towns don’t get mentioned on the news. These are places built on economic interest, but each resident I talk to, no matter the age, is yearning for something greater. Here, Australia’s most profound existential questions are writ small, brought into the very mundanities of living: is our future reliant on coal? What price are we paying? How long can we keep doing this?
Scott Morrison promises the nation that coal isn’t scary, but the local towns are building narratives of fear. Morrison’s simple tale of coal-fired salvation is made more complicated as the months go on, both for the government and the residents of the Isaac community.
When we first arrive in the Middlemount township, the town is on edge. With a population of only a thousand, rumours spread quickly. The town’s dependent on one mine, and a hundred locals are set to lose their jobs within a few days, but no one’s sure who’s going. The mine is shifting to a fly-in-fly-out workforce. The FIFOs are the subject of powerful resentment by those who’ve chosen to move their families to Middlemount. A small band of unionists are protesting at the town’s entrance, erecting a temporary village out of canvas gazebos and tents. The strike has lasted six weeks when we arrive, and no one’s budging.
The town square is quiet. The local ANZ branch closed last week. The cafe owner is looking to sell up. The IGA remains bustling on a Wednesday: that’s when the fresh grocery shipment comes from Emerald.
Karen has lived here longer than most. The family spans three generations and runs a cattle property on the outskirts of town. She’s raised her kids in Middlemount, and her grandkids are in the school. She runs the post office. She peers at us over gold-rimmed spectacles. Her mouth twists into a smirk when we tell her about the musical. Showtime is in six months.
Her voice is flat. ‘Middlemount may not exist in six months.’
A hundred workers losing their jobs takes a hundred families out of the town. The population would be devastated. Even more local businesses would disappear. Most of the houses in town are owned by the mining companies and rented out to families at fifty bucks a week. With no one to occupy them, entire streets would be flattened. The few farming families like Karen’s brood would be the small handful of residents left to settle the ghost town.
‘One way or another, that’ll happen,’ Karen says, ‘whether it’s now or in another ten or twenty years. These towns were only designed to last a generation, twenty-five years or so.’
‘And how old is Middlemount now?’ I ask.
‘Thirty,’ she sighs.
On my first trip to the region, the Adani Carmichael coal mine seemed inevitable. Over the ensuing seven months, however, progress stalls. Traditional owner representatives withdraw their support of the project. In April, Prime Minister Turnbull meets with Mr Adani in India and declares the Carmichael mine has ‘huge economic benefits’ for Australia. He promises Mr Adani that Native Title issues will soon be resolved but the all-important $900 million federal loan, however, is outside of the Prime Minister’s control. Indeed, a month later, the Queensland Government said it would no longer facilitate the loan. By July, nineteen banks had refused to fund the project. Construction is set to begin in October, but the project continues to be plagued by substantial environmental concerns. At time of writing, the Adani group is currently the subject of litigation in India, the result of a massive fraud investigation. They stand accused of inflating the cost of electricity equipment with fraudulent invoices. The alleged scam is worth almost AUD 300 million.
In the meantime, Isaac locals stand at the edge of an existential precipice. Without the project, many of the towns will shrink and possibly die. It’s a depressing thought for residents, who already feel like they’re at the bottom of a low tide. Just six years ago, Moranbah was the most expensive place to live in Queensland. As the price of coal plummeted, so did house values. Land and house packages can now be purchased under $50 thousand in Dysart. The cheap price draws a diverse population.
We run a youth dance rehearsal where a hefty fraction of the kids are part of the foster system. Others are the children of single mothers who have fled more expensive cities to get out of sight of their abusive partners.
Mental health and medical support are low on the ground. We schedule an interview with a counsellor who runs a women’s shelter in town. The streets are empty, but inside the cool and cosy building, there’s a bustling crowd. A couple of tanned women are cradling infants and talking in a corner. They’re intrigued by the concept of a musical. I ask my usual round of questions.
‘The community is strong here,’ one reports. ‘The women look out for each other.’ I try not to glance down at the dark bruises on her arms.
Our counsellor is held up, so we talk with the two women in the waiting room. One of them is gleeful. She’s returning to her partner, who’s ‘a bit of a dickhead sometimes’ but is ‘a pretty good guy’. When I glance over to her friend, her thin-lipped doubt is unmistakable.
The counsellor finally appears but is interrupted by a phone call. She’s being called out to an emergency. She’s competent and calm, but as she hangs up the phone, she sighs in frustration. She’s exhausted.
‘It’s been a busy week,’ she explains. She pauses at the door as she shrugs on her jacket. ‘But actually, you know, it’s like this all the time.’
I search for local legends that might provide interesting fodder for the show. UFOs? Ghost stories? Larrikins and heroes from generations past?
There are none. These places are too young and too transient to have a sustainable mythology. Instead, all chatter comes back to mining.
The locals that have been here for more than a handful of years have seen the boom come and go. Their complaints about the mining companies are so unified they could almost join in the chorus. As the companies push more towards an entirely FIFO workforce, the value of local businesses and real estate plummets. On the ground, it’s as though the companies don’t care about local communities. They’re here to pillage the landscape as efficiently as possible. They don’t particularly care what they leave behind.
The complaints mirror the environmental concerns that graduated to mainstream news in the first months of 2017. Queenslanders now face the almost certain loss of their most brilliant natural beauty: the Great Barrier Reef. When the death of the reef from bleaching is de-coupled from climate change and instead paired with a decreasing international tourist dollar, even the hard-nosed conservatives pause to take a breath on the future of projects like Adani.
I end every interview with the same question. So, with the socio-economic upheaval, the environmental cost, and the apathetic mining companies, what do locals hope for the future of their region?
The community answers in unison:
‘Another boom.’
It takes me back. It’s a feat of emotional acrobatics. They’re both tired of being ‘just another mining town’, but simultaneously cling to the industry for their salvation. They don’t see any other way out. I’m reminded of the young woman fleeing back to her abusive partner. He’s a good guy. This time, it’ll work out.
When I return to the counsellor a few months later, I ask after her. She was hurt again, of course. Enough to get her transported to a city hospital. Her future is uncertain.
We stage the musical at the end of July. 250 locals are featured. There are horses, belly dancers, and singers galore. The finale features all cast members singing in a mass choir, a singular united voice—the show centres on a fictional town built to mine a precious resource: song. But young people in the town end up searching for something greater. The town floods, characterised in our production by an accomplished classical pianist unleashing Chopin. In the aftermath of the disaster, the residents come together to support each other, rebuild, and find hope. The mining continues, and profit keeps coming in, but the emphasis is placed on the people, not the resources.
It’s an optimistic message that the community rallies around. In the closing night after party, many are weeping. Jake is among them. For so many of the young people in the region, the production is the first sign that their town is worthy of celebration.
One of the most spectacular moments of the show is a massive youth dance: over a hundred primary school children flood the stage and party hard. In the show's narrative, it’s just as the young town is starting to feel the economic benefit of the mines. The sight of a hundred hyper pre-adolescents reminds me vaguely of the House of Representatives debating energy policy.
Australia’s chief scientist recommends a clean energy target. Still, even his recommendation is probably not enough to get emissions levels to where they need to be for the Paris Agreement, which Turnbull signed. But that’s by the by. As I write, the National Party have voted to scrap all government subsidies for renewable energy. Turnbull’s renewable-friendly language has turned to agnostic with pressure from the right. A clean energy target is in doubt. Adani is almost certainly going ahead, much to the mixed relief of the locals of the Isaac region.
I arrived in Moranbah your typical left green-ie arts wanker, but I leave with my righteousness severely bruised. My social media feeds are filled with people arguing over the actual value of the mining industry. For these towns, however, the debate is more profound and more complex than can be imagined.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Scott Morrison cried, lifting the lump of coal into the air.
The chamber erupted into chuckles and shouts. Barnaby Joyce’s face explodes into a cartoonish display of shock as he’s handed the rock. The Speaker attempts to gain control, but it’s no use; the House of Representatives has turned into a comedy club. At the time, Australia was experiencing a catastrophic round of heat waves. Karen, in the Middlemount Post Office, was uncertain whether her town would exist in six months. Jake dodged jeers from his classmates, utterly unaware of the political showboating. The anonymous women of Dysart were doing their best to get through the day. Each of them is desperate to believe Morrison’s message of simple hope. There is no reason to despair, for Australia’s future is inevitable.
Coal will save us all.