Black gold and big girls’ toys
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 22: MoneySexPower
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by David Peetz
Download the complete article PDF
David Peetz's and Georgina Murray's biographies and other articles by these writers
Drive along the Peak Downs Highway from Moranbah in Central Queensland to coastal Mackay, and you will almost certainly come across a train carrying highly prized cargo: lumps of hard, black gold. Each wagon carries at least $12,000 worth. By the time the 2.1 kilometre-long coal train has rumbled by, with its two extra engines at about the one kilometre mark, you will have seen over $1.5 million of exports pass by.
This black gold has brought at least seven thousand people over five years to the Bowen Basin. It stretches from Collinsville in the north – an old coal town with a long history of radicalism – through the relatively new towns of Moranbah, Dysart, Tieri and Middlemount, built in the 1970s and 1980s, through Blackwater and Moura to the mixed industry town of Biloela in the south-east, and westwards to the regional service town of Emerald. The mines exported 155 million tonnes of coal in 2007, and are expected to account for more than 200 million tonnes by 2009. The coal mines of Queensland, like the iron ore mines of the Pilbara in Western Australia, are part of a new folklore. We no longer ride on the sheep's back, but in the coal wagon. Wages of $85,000 a year are common, six figures very attainable.
When people think about mining, they conjure money and men. But the stories of the Bowen Basin coalfields are as much women's as men's. Women play many parts in the coal town tales. Though some were born in the towns, many came with husbands to seek a more prosperous life. In doing so, they had to deal with the physical and sometimes psychological debris created by the working conditions, old and new. Some stayed at home and brought up families. Some went to work and brought up families. They became the backbone of community activities. They fought long battles to make conditions liveable in the coal towns, established women's auxiliaries, distributed food to strikers and their families, and stood on picket lines. And eventually, they went to work in the mines. The Queensland Resources Council estimates that women occupy 7 per cent of traditionally male-dominated jobs in plant operating, trades and professions, and account for 11 per cent and rising of that state's mining employment. Women tell us stories of relationships, power and money.
AT NIGHT, THE BRIGHT LIGHTS you see from the Bowen Basin roads are not small towns, but non-stop mines. Most mineworkers spend half their working days on the night shift under the glare of the white lights instead of the tropical sun. The interference with circadian rhythms, and the duration of the shifts, is critical. Robert, a union delegate and former mine deputy (safety official) from Collinsville, told us, ‘The deputies ... will tell you that ... between that eighth and ninth hour you have to really watch your crew, because they are just drifting off, they are not concentrating the way they should be. It knocks you around, that twelve hours, all right. And it is not twelve hours, because then you have to drive home.' There is substantial research to back up his concerns.
The wages are high not just because the coal is valuable, but also as a result of the working arrangements. The mines dig coal twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Conditions are difficult and the rewards reflect that.
Throughout most of the Bowen Basin, miners work twelve-hour shifts. A common roster is four twelve-hour days, from around 6am to 6pm, then four off, then four twelve-hour nights, then four off, and start again. Whatever the pattern, it means a lot of night and weekend work, a normal week well over the standard thirty-eight hours, and a lot of penalty rates and overtime to be bought out.
Twelve-hour shifts pay well. You can earn more working in the Basin than you could almost anywhere else in Australia with equivalent qualifications. If you live frugally, you will save in a way that you could not possibly do otherwise. This is what some dream of doing, but it does not always happen like that. Wilma from Collinsville described how ‘when the twelve-hour shifts came in, for the first six months we just spent a lot, we had nothing to show for it. We got a block of land because otherwise it was just going to go.' Many have second houses at the coast, for the money certainly creates a lot of spending power. Marjorie, a mineworker, said, ‘We've been in Blackwater four years, we own everything we've got except the house – my partner has got a twenty-one foot boat, I've got a Club Sport, he's got a Nissan, we own a house full of furniture.' In the great Australian tradition, despite the high incomes – or because of the possibility that these incomes provide – you can also accrue otherwise unimaginable levels of debt. As Wilma, a mineworker's wife from Collinsville, put it to us, ‘Most of them are that far in debt now that they are used to the money they get and wouldn't want to change.'
The twelve-hour shifts have other advantages. As Kathleen from Middlemount pointed out, ‘There's just so much you can do and you can choose ... days off, you can get out, if you feel you need to get out of town, when you've got four days off.' Nellie, a mineworker, said, ‘I like the twelve-hour shift because you get it in four and four, and you get it all over and done with.'