Wednesday, August 15

Coal belt tightens around land and accommodation

Mining in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales region is placing pressure on both land use and the availability of accommodation.


Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: There's no doubt mining is driving the Australian economy, but it's strangling communities at the heart of the boom.

Across Australia there's a growing divide between those who benefitted from the growing bonanza and those who have been left behind.

In some towns the rents and food have sky-rocketed, and there's such a desperate lack of accommodation that families are forced to live in tents. Adam Harvey reports on one such community in NSW.

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: The NSW Hunter Valley. Its rich soil and sheltered river flats are ideal for breeding and raising some very fast horses.

TOM MAGNIER, THOROUGHBRED BREEDER: We've raised a lot of champions on this land, we have Makybe Diva up here at the moment and we have So You Think coming up here in a couple of days. It's housing a lot of champions and raising a lot of champions at the same time.

ADAM HARVEY: This part of the valley is home to two of Australia's famous thoroughbred studs, Dali and Coolmore. There's one problem: they sit above an extremely valuable coal seam, and the miners are coming.

TOM MAGNIER: They want to come 500 metres there. They want to build a pond over there and a place where we're raising our young stock. They want to go underneath that.

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ABC 7.30 Report

1 comment:

  1. Would your heart not bleed for that beautifull Irish Man. He thought he had brought his family to the land of milk and honey. Well our bees are in trouble and our milk farmers squeezed out of business by the big corporations and now CSG and mining.
    Welcome instead to the land of coal and no conscience. Rememeber our politicians are letting this happen!

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