The final voids: the ambiguity of emptiness in Australian coal mine rehabilitation

Abstract

In the Australian coal mining region of the Hunter Valley, a political contest is taking shape around the mine final voids, the large holes that are left in the ground after mining has finished. This article describes an effort led by the coal lobby to fill the voids with imaginative and hopeful futures, described as a process of techno‐speculative deferral. In contrast, local environmentalists (Indigenous and non‐Indigenous) are drawing on dispossession and ongoing extractivism to craft an affective politics of loss around these spaces. The article considers the particular issues around the mine final voids as metonyms of the Anthropocene in order to caution against approaches which celebrate the hopefulness of ruins. Instead, the void's negativity presents an alternative analytical starting point for a politics of the Anthropocene, one which derives from Indigenous dispossession and expands to counter ongoing ruination.

Stability-Level Evaluation of the Construction Site above the Goaf Based on Combination Weighting and Cloud Model

“…If the land resources above a goaf can be reasonably developed and utilized, it can not only reduce the waste of resources and turn waste into treasure but also help to promote the transformation and development of resource-based cities [5,6]. For example, the InterContinental Shimao Wonderland Hotel in Shanghai is the first natural ecological hotel built on an abandoned goaf site in China [7], the Dawang Mountain Mine Pit in Changsha has been turned into an ice and snow theme park and a water park according to its geological conditions and regional development characteristics [8], and the Jiaozuo Seam Mountain National Mine Park is a comprehensive mine park that focuses on displaying the landscape of coal mining relics [9]. When a building is built over a goaf, the internal rock strata will produce secondary deformation under the action of building load stress, which will lead to residual deformation on the surface and damage to the building [10,11], including road damage and house cracking, as shown in Figure 1.…”

Bio+Mine Project: Empowering the Community to Develop a Site-Specific System for the Rehabilitation of a Legacy Mine

“…With such issues associated with legacy mines, government bodies have increased interest for rehabilitation to return them to safe and stable conditions consistent with the surrounding landscape. The ultimate aim of rehabilitation initiatives is to make the land productive to support the economic activity of the host community (Dahlgren, 2022). Previous research on rehabilitating legacy mines focused mostly on technical and environmental aspects with low participation of the local community (Keenan, et al, 2016).…”