GUEST COLUMN — Industry must promote its image

My time in the mining industry is approaching half a century. There have been many changes, mostly for the better.

When I started underground, the pick and shovel were still widely used tools. On smaller mines ore trucks were pushed by men from the loading point to the hoisting shaft, and horses were used in some coal mines. Ventilation in remote working places was often ragged. Drilling was done with hardened steel using bar-mounted machines. In hard rock this meant transporting a large quantity of drill steels to the working place, and back for sharpening every shift. Lighting was by carbide lamps, for which we had to buy our own carbide; the water for the lamps was free.

Soon thereafter tungsten carbide-tipped drill steels and airleg-mounted machines revolutionized rock drilling. Electric cap lamps became standard, and electric locomotives commonplace. Then came drilling jumbos, mechanical loaders, and the use of electric and diesel equipment underground.

A mining Rip van Winkle, waking after a sleep of 50 years, would not believe his eyes observing at work underground fully computerized drilling jumbos, fully automated crushing and hoisting systems, laser survey instruments, and miners travelling to and from underground in jeeps or trucks along inclined roadways. He may be even more surprised to see visitors taken underground in suits and ties in an air-conditioned Mercedes Benz tourist bus. I often think that I belong to the last generation of miners who got a sweat up working underground. Today, it is mostly a matter of pushing buttons and pulling levers. The emergence of women working in mines and metallurgical plants has psychologically something to do with women’s liberation, but it has been made possible by the disappearance of the heavy physical content of the work which was the norm 50 years ago.

Even the practical use of geology in the mineral industry is not much more than 50 years old. Today, geology is indispensable in ore finding and production. The marvelous technical advances in geochemistry and geophysics have made them into powerful everyday tools.

The growing ability to look deeper into the earth’s crust is absolutely necessary for the future. When such a search has located suitable targets, the greatly improved technology of drilling has enhanced the testing process. The living conditions of people in the industry have also improved out of sight. Modern mining towns in remote areas, where the vast majority of orebodies occur in countries such as Australia, have virtually all the services and comforts of large cities.

The cost of minerals and metals in real terms to the consumers has steadily decreased, while proven reserves of minerals and metals have increased substantially despite higher production. And while it is true that the reserves of minerals and metals are ultimately finite, they are vast in relation to the needs of humanity if increasingly lower-grade occurrences can be made economically available. The adequacy is helped by the growing re-cycling and re-use of these materials.

We in the industry not only support the need for environmental care but are in the forefront of devising ways for doing so. In Australia the technology and methods developed by mineral operations are now increasingly used in, for example, restoring degraded agricultural land that is the major environmental problem in that country. The real concern about the environment is not what industry does, but the effect of the growing population on the earth. Regrettably, environmental and other important community issues have become politicized. The mineral industry is one of their favorite targets, largely because people in large cities, where most of the population in developed countries now lives, know very little about it.

It is not sufficient for mining professionals to do a first-class job. It is at least equally important to demonstrate to the community how the industry is working in their best interests.

The future leaders and professionals in the industry must become as proficient and superior in these skills as we have been in technical developments in the past. We must attract the very best and brightest of our young people to the industry; the future literally depends on it. — Arvi Parbo is the chairman of Australia-based Western Mining. This is an excerpt from his acceptance speech at the award ceremony of the Georg Agricola-Medaille given in Salzburg, Germany.