Australia boasts some of the world’s largest mineral deposits, including 21.9 billion tonnes of iron ore and 3,550 tonnes of gold, stretched over one of the largest and most sparsely populated islands in the world. With just 3.1 people per square kilometre, Australia has the seventh-lowest population density of any country on Earth, and there is considerable space for large-scale mining.
With surface operations at Fimiston covering more than five square kilometres, and expansion work at the Boddington operation involving three times as much steel as was used to build the Eiffel Tower, these giant projects have been the cornerstone of the Australian mining sector, which contributed over $35bn to the country’s GDP in 2018.
However, uncertainty over the sustainability of mining, both from an environmental and financial perspective, has forced operators to consider their mines’ futures, encouraging them to make significant investments in already well-developed projects, or move towards closure and land rehabilitation. Here, we take a closer look at five of the country’s biggest mining projects.