This term my
Year 3 students are learning about different aspects of their local community
and environment. They have interviewed their parents to discuss aspects of their
job and are soon to be interviewing Indigenous community members to find out
about their family background, working life and their opinion on manganese
mining.
Most white
people who live on the island work for the mining company GEMCO. It has been
really interesting to unpack the makeup of the company and learn about the
variety of skills and responsibilities necessary for the operation of a
multi-billion dollar corporation that never sleeps. Many of my students’
parents are the heart and organs of GEMCO; they are the planners, the problem
solvers and the people in charge. Despite this, up until we started this unit
of work, most of my students had no idea what their parent/s actually do or had
even given their unique living situation a first, let alone second thought. I’m
really enjoying exposing them to the ethical and
environmental issues associated with the mining process.
I thought I’d
share with you some of the information I’ve been presenting and discussing with
my students. It will give you a basic insight into manganese mining.
GEMCO has been
mining since 1964. As they are mining on Aboriginal land, they had to get
permission from the traditional land owners as well as the Australian
government. They are only leasing the land, which means they are paying to use
it for a period of time. GEMCO must ask for a new mining lease every 21 years
but they have secured a lease for workers to live in Alyangula for 99 years. If
the government or the traditional owners decide they don’t want to renew the
lease when it ends, the business must shut down completely.
Manganese is a
mineral sourced from an open cut mine. It lies horizontally within layers of
sand and clay. It is used to make steel harder and is also used in the
production of batteries. Once the manganese has been blasted and pulled from
the ground, it gets crushed into small pieces and shipped all over the world.
Most of the manganese is exported to Japan, South Korea, the United States and
China.
GEMCO is owned
by a world-wide corporation called BHP Billiton. BHP must pay royalties to the
Groote Eylandt Aboriginal Trust Fund because they are making billions of dollars
by selling the manganese that’s unearthed from the Warnandilyakwan people’s
land. This money is used for Aboriginal community purposes on the island. E.g. funding
the Anindilyakwa Land Council.
Manganese was
first discovered on Groote Eylandt in 1907 by a geologist named H. Brown. A
geologist is a scientist who studies what’s in the ground.
When they first
started mining the manganese, they had only planned to take enough for
Australians to use. Only six months after they started to remove the ore from
the ground, other countries such as Japan wanted the manganese too. They were
willing to pay a lot of money for it, so the mine started operating day and
night to keep up with the great demand.
There are six
main processes the ore must go through before it can be sold and shipped out.
These are:
- - Crushing
large bits of ore into smaller pieces
- - Washing
& checking the size of the ore
- - Tumbling
the ore with water to remove any clay
- - Removing
and discarding floating non-manganese materials (manganese sinks which makes it
easy to separate)
- - Checking
the ore’s density and sorting it into piles to be crushed
- - Crushing
the ore into fine pieces. The size will depend on what it’s going to be made
into.
As large
machines do most of the manual work, people who are employed by GEMCO have lots
of different skills and work together to ensure everyone’s safety while making
the most money they possibly can. GEMCO employ people who specialise in
science, engineering, business, technology and environmental control.
The job of a
GEMCO engineer is to plan new towns, dams, roads, tunnels and underground
electrical work. They also look for new ways to speed up the mining process
while trying to reduce its impact on the environment.
People who work
for GEMCO may be in charge of operating big machinery. Just some of the
machines people operate are drills, shovels, bulldozers, haulage trucks and
crushers at ore processing plant.
Part of GEMCO’s
mining agreement with the land owners is to rehabilitate the land once they
have dug up the manganese. This means they return it to how it looked before by
planting seedlings for new trees to grow. This job is often done by Indigenous
workers. About 6% of GEMCO’s work force are Indigenous*.
*statistics based on figures from 1972-1986
Year
|
Indigenous
workers
|
Total work
force
|
1972
|
31
|
357
|
1973
|
42
|
399
|
1974
|
40
|
403
|
1975
|
33
|
487
|
1976
|
40
|
584
|
1977
|
44
|
610
|
1978
|
51
|
567
|
1979
|
49
|
624
|
1980
|
47
|
671
|
1981
|
24
|
569
|
1982
|
20
|
476
|
1983
|
14
|
475
|
1984
|
23
|
551
|
1985
|
19
|
584
|
1986
|
20
|
578
|
1987
|
18
|
541
|
1991
|
?
|
Approx. 750
|
1994
|
?
|
330
|
2014
|
Approx. 25
|
Approx.. 1000
|
GEMCO currently has a workforce of
approximately 1,000 people. Many of the workers live in either Darwin or Cairns
and fly onto the island to work for seven days straight. They are known as FIFO
because they fly in and fly out to work. The FIFO workers must work both day
and night shifts to make sure the plant is running 24 hours a day, seven days a
week. There are more FIFO workers employed during the dry season, however the
plant still operates during the wet and some people are even expected to work
on Christmas Day! Most of the GEMCO workers who live on island hold very
important jobs and without them the mine could not function as well as it does.
Here is a map of the mining operation. We live in Alyangula; about a 15-minute drive to the main GEMCO facility. On weekends we can often hear and feel the mine blasts which are occurring close to the airport.
