South Walker Creek is an open cut 100% pulverised coal injection (“PCI”) metallurgical coal mine, with coal marketed as ‘best in class’ low volatile PCI.
South Walker Creek has been operating since 1996 as an opencut operation and now has two fully owned Marion 8050 draglines operating, a contracted fleet of excavators, dozers and haul trucks, as well as fully owned fleet to support the dragline.
General activities undertaken in the mining process at the South Walker Creek include:
• Land clearing and topsoil removal.
• Overburden / inter burden drilling and blasting.
• Excavator and truck stripping.
• Dozer stripping.
• Excavator and truck parting removal and post stripping.
• Dragline stripping.
• Coal ripping and pushing.
• Coal loading and hauling.
• Pit preparation and dewatering, and
• Reclamation.
Geology and topography of the South Walker Creek mine area is such that the strip-mining technique has been adopted as the mining method. Initial mining operations commenced on the sub-crop of the Main seam in 1996 and 2006 respectively using fleets of excavators and trucks as the primary overburden removal tools to uncover coal in strips orientated along the strike of seam.
Mining then progresses along strike and down-dip to the lease boundary or to a depth of maximum economic strip ratio, at which point a transition to underground mining may commence. Mining strips and blocks a ........
