Coal Industry

Mining

Located 10 kms east of Moura Township, the Dawson Mine is a leader in the mining industry. Huge draglines, which can be seen for kilometres dot the lunar-landscape of the Dawson (Moura) mine site.

Mining operations have been carried out since the late 1950’s in the Moura-Kianga area. Then known as TPM (Thiess, Peabody & Mitsui), it was the first mine to export coal to Japan in 1961.This Mine was the first to introduce draglines into its operations in 1963 and more recently was the first mine to commercially gather and sell methane gas (1996).

It also developed Highwall Mining techniques unique to steep seam mining.

Most of the coal produced at the Dawson Mine is destined for overseas.

This mine produces mainly coking and thermal coals.

Recently huge machinery has been introduced on site. The Dawson project was a $1.1billion expansion of Dawson Mine by Joint Venture Partners Anglo Coal and Mitsui. The expansion included the development of two greenfields operations to be known as Dawson North and Dawson South. Former operations became Dawson Central. When the Dawson Project was completed in 2007 it followed a corridor approximately 120km long.

The three Dawson mines combined produced over 12million tonnes of coal each year. Approximately 1000 contractors were engaged in the new construction activities and were housed at two barracks sites – Kotti Doon and Moura Town Village.

Disasters

Moura has experienced three tragic underground mining disasters which brought great sadness to the town.

Thirteen men were killed at Kianga on September 20 1975 and Kianga Memorial Centre was build in memory of those lost in the explosion.

The bronze miner statue in Bicentenary Park on the Dawson Highway is a memorial to the 12 men who died on July 16 1986 in number 4 underground.

On August 7 1994, 11 men were lost in an explosion at the No 2 pit. The 50m Moura Miners Memorial Pool was built to remember these men. The Moura Memorial Pool opened its gates to the Public in 1998 and was officially opened in 1999 by Premier Peter Beattie.

All underground mining ceased after this last disaster.