Incident Reporting
An underground mining contractor has been fined $540,000 after a rock fall at the Hamlet Underground Gold Mine near Kambalda killed a driller and injured a probationary offsider.
When Bengalla Mining Company lost tyre fitter Quinten Moore in 2018, the tragedy forced a deep reckoning: could leadership and supervision be strengthened to ensure safer outcomes? For Bengalla, the answer was not only yes, but essential.
It’s not every day you hear about two massive shafts being sunk side by side in Australian coal country, each with its own design, equipment, and risks.
A failed park brake piston seal was all it took to reduce a Whitehaven EH5000 dump truck to ashes – and the lesson, as Greg Fenton told the Mechanical Engineering Safety Seminar (MESS 2025), is one that should alarm every mining professional running large electric-drive fleets.
Even with control plans, take-fives, and risk assessments stacked high, mining engineers admit incidents still happen because the real world never plays out as neatly as the documents.
When a digger operator says a new system lets them “see trucks in blind spots you don’t see,” you know it’s more than just another safety add-on – it’s changing how mining crews work.
When Whitehaven Coal acquired BMA’s Daunia and Blackwater mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, it wasn’t just the company’s biggest purchase to date.
At the NSW Resources Regulator’s 33rd Mechanical Engineering Safety Seminar, Chief Inspector of Mines Anthony Margetts and Principal Inspector – Technical Russell Wood delivered a clear message: the industry must move beyond box-ticking and adopt smarter, outcomes-focused approaches to its most persistent hazards.
What do Formula 1 racing and tailings storage have in common? More than you’d think - especially when AI joins the engineering crew.
Contractor safety in Queensland’s coal sector isn’t just flawed—it’s dangerously broken, and one veteran risk expert is calling time on the whole system.
