Mining may have been one contributing factors to why Australia as one of the few advanced economies did not go into recession following the global financial crisis 10 years ago. While mining is a profitable business in Australia, once the mines are no longer profitable, they are often abandoned leaving a scarred landscape and sometimes dying communities behind. A dataset by the Queensland regional government has records of almost 15,000 abandoned mines in the state. The following map gives an overview of their distribution:
While there are programmes such as the “Abandoned Mine Lands Program (AMLP)” to address health and safety risks of these sites, an increased public awareness of the legacy of mining leads to calls for more political action and corporate responsibility to mitigate impacts of mining on communities and the environment remain.
A modified version of this map was published in the July 2017 edition of Geographical Magazine. The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.