Forward thinking: How Craig’s helping reshape Newlands

Craig Bushell was seemingly destined for a life in mining. The Environment and Community Manager at Newlands Coal, located 190km west of Mackay in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, is one of four generations to grow up in nearby Collinsville, with his dad, uncles and grandfathers all working in the industry.

“My father spent 35 years at Mount Isa Mines, Collinsville and Newlands, ending up as the Environmental Superintendent, but his first trade was as a surveyor,” says Craig. “Both grandfathers worked in mining in Collinsville as well. One was a mining engineer for Bowen Consolidated Coal Mines, and the other was an underground miner at the State Mine in Collinsville.”

While achieving qualifications in environmental science, Craig started his career as a surveyor’s assistant, working underground and in the open cut at Collinsville. He continued moving up the ladder, working at Mount Isa Mines and throughout the Bowen Basin – namely Isaac Plains, Coppabella, Moorvale, Lake Vermont and Foxleigh mines, with some consultancy thrown in as well – before joining Glencore in 2018 in his current role. And it’s easy to see what appealed to him about this position.

“We’re the largest rehabilitation site in Australia,” he says of Newlands, where the last coal was mined in February 2023 and railed in May the same year. “We did 607 hectares last year for rehabilitation, we’ll do similar numbers this year, then it’ll jump up to nearly 1200 hectares. So huge numbers.”

Did you know?

The total land size managed by Newlands Coal is 32,633 hectares.

“We’ve got 15 mining leases, 25 open-cut pits and about 430 people,” says Craig.

In 2023, Glencore spent more than $200 million on rehabilitation work at Newlands – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Rehabilitation is a long process, with many stages involved over a number of years to restore the land.

“The first stage is to do reshaping of the mined overburden and change it into a final landform. Then we bring in topsoil, put in water management features like contour banks and rock chutes, and then we seed it – but that’s not the end of it,” says Craig. “After that, there’s a whole period of monitoring and maintenance that can go for upwards of 15 to 20 years. So closure isn’t closure.”

Currently, there are about 430 people onsite, and Craig says it’s the camaraderie that makes working at Newlands Coal such a great experience. “It’s important that we’ve got a really good culture. Some people have been here from the start – 41 years. And all these people are very passionate about seeing the mine close properly and to be there for the end of it,” says Craig.

No two days are the same for Craig. His role may see him consulting with a tech services manager about what’s required to get areas of rehabilitation signed off for completion, looking at water management, working through compliance expectations, identifying potential habitat for fauna for ground disturbance permits, getting progressive rehabilitation and closure plans approved with the Queensland Government and talking to landholders. “It’s extremely varied and that’s really important to me, but the biggest thrill here is just the scale and size of our rehab project,” says Craig.

Suffice to say, Craig is busy. So what’s he doing on the weekend? “Resting!” he quips.

But he also enjoys spending time with his three boys – a 20-year-old and 18-year-old twins. “My eldest son is in the Army completing his trade as a diesel fitter, and my twin boys play a lot of footy and are both heading down a career path of trades as well. So it’s being there, supporting them and fishing when we can.”