Mine Rehabilitation Site Tours

Organised by the Hunter Environmental Institute in partnership with CRC_CARE.

About 47 people joined us for an exciting and informative day of networking and education as we took a bus through the Lower Hunter Valley to visit mine rehabilitation, reafforestation and coastal rehabilitation work and acid mine drainage sites.

When and Where

Friday 21st June 2019 Departed from NEX in King Street at 08:15 AM sharp and returned to NEX by 4 PM.

First up we visited Glencore’s remarkably well rehabilitated Westside mine. The mine area has been reshaped to remove any high walls and covered with topsoil and seeded with native vegetation. The rehabilitated mine site has second generation flora and seven threatened species of wildlife have been observed.

Westside Mine Pit Lake

AMD at Neath, Hunter Valley

Following this, we traveled to Neath to see the constructed efforts built to attempt rehabilitation of the sulphuric acid-polluted creek downhill from an old spoils pile at the Neath Colliery site. We had lunch and then walked through the bush on Crown Lands near Cessnock to view the Tailings dumped at this site, which have recorded sulphur content as high as 10.5%.

The final stop on the tour was Kooragang/Ash Island near Newcastle where we saw the outstanding reafforestation work of the Kooragang Wetland Rehabilitation Project (KWRP) and viewed offset lands reconstructed for shorebird habitat and amphibian habitat. This is one of the largest active coastal rehabilitation projects in Australia, undertaken to compensate for the loss of fish, shorebird and other wildlife habitat in the Hunter estuary caused by 200 years of draining, filling and clearing. The wetlands feature expanses of mangrove and saltmarsh and in non-tidal areas, riparian woodlands, remnants of lowland floodplain rainforest and ephemeral, freshwater wetlands.

Requirements

For your safety, you are required to wear enclosed shoes, long pants and a long-sleeved shirt. It is recommended you wear sunscreen and a hat. Cameras, phones and photography are allowed. We are hopeful of dry weather but please plan your attire for the contingency for wet weather as the walk at Neath is some 500 metres return. Please bring a water bottle.

Cost: $80 (lunch included)

Mine Site Tour 2018

Photos from the Tour: