http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12220980%5E3122,00.html
Small towns strike it rich in coal boom
A modern-day mining rush is gripping central Queensland but it's black gold, or coal, that has hearts racing, as James McCullough reports
12feb05
SOARING coal prices are fuelling an economic resurgence in Queensland's Bowen Basin, where a surge in personal wealth is changing the face of once-struggling communities.
House prices have increased up to eightfold, from $25,000 to $200,000, in barely two years while luxury cars are no longer such an oddity on the dusty main streets.
A coal miner is driving an impressive white 911 Carrera Porsche around Emerald while real estate agents salivate as house prices climb as high as $600,000.
Just 2½ hours north at the booming mining town of Moranbah, miner Peter Sharpe is the face of the coal boom stimulating the previously impoverished Bowen Basin towns.
Mr Sharpe and his wife Stacey have just purchased 20ha of land in Tasmania, a nice complement to their holiday home at Emu Park on the tropical Capricorn Coast.
"I came here five years ago from the Hunter Valley and I have lived in a number of towns," Mr Sharpe, an engineer who once worked in France, said on the family's front veranda.
"I have got to say this is the best place I have ever lived. They even have a Santa who goes around giving children presents every Christmas."
The couple, along with three-year-old Jacob and Emma, 6, enjoy a busy sporting and social life. Football, cricket, league, hockey and soccer are all available, although Mrs Sharpe concedes it would be nice if the racetrack staged more than one or two meetings a year.
Back in Emerald, Greg O'Sullivan is another of the new breed. He and his family live on acreage in an expansive rambling Queenslander a few minutes' drive from the centre of Emerald.
Mr O'Sullivan, the safety manager for BHP Billiton's Gregory Crinum Mine, parks his 911 Porsche Carerra at the back of the home alongside the mandatory new four-wheel-drive.
Coal mining has never looked better. Record prices paid by the Japanese steel producers, coupled with huge demand from voracious industries in China, India and South America, have ignited prices.
Hard coking coal, the most common variety in the Basin, last year commanded $US56 ($71) a tonne – today the price is $US125 a tonne. Higher grade PCI coal was fetching $US46 a tonne last year whereas today's price is $US100 with some forecasters anticipating $US105.
Coal kings are springing up throughout the state. Brisbane-based Ken Talbot of Macarthur Coal watched his personal wealth touch just under $400 million on paper two weeks ago while contract miner Peter Champion is also doing nicely. He is a businessman whose passion is collecting old Peter Brock race cars.
Previously depressed Queensland coal towns have been the beneficiaries, with house prices booming as populations increase, dwelling approvals surge, construction escalates and coal mines expand.
Towns peppered throughout the Bowen Basin from Nebo – with Peggy Michelmore's recently restored historic Nebo Hotel – through to Moranbah , Dysart, Emerald, Blackwater and Moura all tell similar stories of economic prosperity.
A glance in the window of Ray White's rural office at Nebo, population 500, reveals a block of four two-bedroom apartments on the market for $600,000.
"We expect that will go pretty soon," Leo Moloney said from under the brim of his large Akubra.
Average house prices in Nebo have jumped from about $120,000 two years ago to $220,000 currently. Several are advertised in the $250,000 to $350,000 range.
The scenario is repeated further south at Dysart, where accountant Jennifer Pocock, of Pocock Real Estate, bemoans the lack of stock for sale.
"We just can't get property. Two years ago we had four houses for sale at $25,000 each and I could not give them away. One woman bought the lot and they are now worth about $160,000 each," she said.
The smile on the face of Emerald real estate consultant Mal Turner, of C.D. Adams & Co, couldn't be broader.
"Look down the main street. Have you ever seen so many new cars? There is a lot of money in this town now," Mr Turner said, revealing that average four-bedroom house prices in Emerald now exceeded $300,000 with several on the market in the $500,000 to $600,00 range.
"There are Mustangs and BMWs running around and that many Harley Davidsons you would think that everyone owned one."
Moranbah is the town which has benefited most from the current coal boom.
The giant BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Goonyella Riverside Mine is the heart fuelling the growth. At more than 50km in length, Goonyella is huge. The mine moves 1.3 million tonnes of material a day, making it the largest earth-moving operation in Australia and the third largest on the planet.
Just next door kicking the dirt at Macarthur Coal's Coppabella Coal Mine, operations manager Mark Turner recalls being handed about 20 sets of house keys two years ago as part of his hunt for a home.
He paid $165,000 for a local home and was recently knocking back offers for the property of over $300,000.
"If you want a house here you certainly won't be given sets of keys any more," he said.
Moranbah will have a permanent population of about 8000 by the end of 2005. Mayor Peter Freeleagus said you would have been "able to fire a bullet through the caravan park without hitting anyone about 18 months ago".
"Mate, if you want accommodation at any of the motels you almost have to book six months in advance," he said.
To rent a four-bedroom home costs up to $450 a week.
BHP sold several staff houses back to employees about two years ago for $24,000. Today the same properties are worth nearly $200,000 each.
A spin through the new Grosvenor Estate at Moranbah, a stone's through from the Happy Land Chinese restaurant, reveals 25 new homes with boats and caravans in every second or third driveway and new Holdens and Fords parked alongside. The estate is expanding with plans for another 105 houses while Cr Freeleagus said council staff were working six days a week just to keep up with demand. "We are going hell for leather to keep up with demand," he said.
John Morris, a resident since 1980, said he had "never seen the town look better".
The boom has not been without its downside. The towns cry out for staff and tradesmen while the mines offer large sums to attract skilled workers, particularly engineers.
Propelling the growth is the mines themselves where production is universally accelerating as companies seek out ways of revitalising old and previously uneconomical deposits to satisfy demand.
Three new coal mines have sprouted around Nebo in the past six years including Coppabella, Morevale and South Walker.
At the Coppabella mine site, Mark Turner and production vice-president Brett Garland explained the company had increased coal production from about two million tonnes of product coal a year after its opening in 1998 to 4.5 million tonnes currently.
Mr Turner said the company was also reviewing reopening Creek Pit, which was placed under care and maintenance about nine months ago.
Mr Garland agreed that life is good.
Small towns strike it rich in coal boom
A modern-day mining rush is gripping central Queensland but it's black gold, or coal, that has hearts racing, as James McCullough reports
12feb05
SOARING coal prices are fuelling an economic resurgence in Queensland's Bowen Basin, where a surge in personal wealth is changing the face of once-struggling communities.
House prices have increased up to eightfold, from $25,000 to $200,000, in barely two years while luxury cars are no longer such an oddity on the dusty main streets.
A coal miner is driving an impressive white 911 Carrera Porsche around Emerald while real estate agents salivate as house prices climb as high as $600,000.
Just 2½ hours north at the booming mining town of Moranbah, miner Peter Sharpe is the face of the coal boom stimulating the previously impoverished Bowen Basin towns.
Mr Sharpe and his wife Stacey have just purchased 20ha of land in Tasmania, a nice complement to their holiday home at Emu Park on the tropical Capricorn Coast.
"I came here five years ago from the Hunter Valley and I have lived in a number of towns," Mr Sharpe, an engineer who once worked in France, said on the family's front veranda.
"I have got to say this is the best place I have ever lived. They even have a Santa who goes around giving children presents every Christmas."
The couple, along with three-year-old Jacob and Emma, 6, enjoy a busy sporting and social life. Football, cricket, league, hockey and soccer are all available, although Mrs Sharpe concedes it would be nice if the racetrack staged more than one or two meetings a year.
Back in Emerald, Greg O'Sullivan is another of the new breed. He and his family live on acreage in an expansive rambling Queenslander a few minutes' drive from the centre of Emerald.
Mr O'Sullivan, the safety manager for BHP Billiton's Gregory Crinum Mine, parks his 911 Porsche Carerra at the back of the home alongside the mandatory new four-wheel-drive.
Coal mining has never looked better. Record prices paid by the Japanese steel producers, coupled with huge demand from voracious industries in China, India and South America, have ignited prices.
Hard coking coal, the most common variety in the Basin, last year commanded $US56 ($71) a tonne – today the price is $US125 a tonne. Higher grade PCI coal was fetching $US46 a tonne last year whereas today's price is $US100 with some forecasters anticipating $US105.
Coal kings are springing up throughout the state. Brisbane-based Ken Talbot of Macarthur Coal watched his personal wealth touch just under $400 million on paper two weeks ago while contract miner Peter Champion is also doing nicely. He is a businessman whose passion is collecting old Peter Brock race cars.
Previously depressed Queensland coal towns have been the beneficiaries, with house prices booming as populations increase, dwelling approvals surge, construction escalates and coal mines expand.
Towns peppered throughout the Bowen Basin from Nebo – with Peggy Michelmore's recently restored historic Nebo Hotel – through to Moranbah , Dysart, Emerald, Blackwater and Moura all tell similar stories of economic prosperity.
A glance in the window of Ray White's rural office at Nebo, population 500, reveals a block of four two-bedroom apartments on the market for $600,000.
"We expect that will go pretty soon," Leo Moloney said from under the brim of his large Akubra.
Average house prices in Nebo have jumped from about $120,000 two years ago to $220,000 currently. Several are advertised in the $250,000 to $350,000 range.
The scenario is repeated further south at Dysart, where accountant Jennifer Pocock, of Pocock Real Estate, bemoans the lack of stock for sale.
"We just can't get property. Two years ago we had four houses for sale at $25,000 each and I could not give them away. One woman bought the lot and they are now worth about $160,000 each," she said.
The smile on the face of Emerald real estate consultant Mal Turner, of C.D. Adams & Co, couldn't be broader.
"Look down the main street. Have you ever seen so many new cars? There is a lot of money in this town now," Mr Turner said, revealing that average four-bedroom house prices in Emerald now exceeded $300,000 with several on the market in the $500,000 to $600,00 range.
"There are Mustangs and BMWs running around and that many Harley Davidsons you would think that everyone owned one."
Moranbah is the town which has benefited most from the current coal boom.
The giant BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Goonyella Riverside Mine is the heart fuelling the growth. At more than 50km in length, Goonyella is huge. The mine moves 1.3 million tonnes of material a day, making it the largest earth-moving operation in Australia and the third largest on the planet.
Just next door kicking the dirt at Macarthur Coal's Coppabella Coal Mine, operations manager Mark Turner recalls being handed about 20 sets of house keys two years ago as part of his hunt for a home.
He paid $165,000 for a local home and was recently knocking back offers for the property of over $300,000.
"If you want a house here you certainly won't be given sets of keys any more," he said.
Moranbah will have a permanent population of about 8000 by the end of 2005. Mayor Peter Freeleagus said you would have been "able to fire a bullet through the caravan park without hitting anyone about 18 months ago".
"Mate, if you want accommodation at any of the motels you almost have to book six months in advance," he said.
To rent a four-bedroom home costs up to $450 a week.
BHP sold several staff houses back to employees about two years ago for $24,000. Today the same properties are worth nearly $200,000 each.
A spin through the new Grosvenor Estate at Moranbah, a stone's through from the Happy Land Chinese restaurant, reveals 25 new homes with boats and caravans in every second or third driveway and new Holdens and Fords parked alongside. The estate is expanding with plans for another 105 houses while Cr Freeleagus said council staff were working six days a week just to keep up with demand. "We are going hell for leather to keep up with demand," he said.
John Morris, a resident since 1980, said he had "never seen the town look better".
The boom has not been without its downside. The towns cry out for staff and tradesmen while the mines offer large sums to attract skilled workers, particularly engineers.
Propelling the growth is the mines themselves where production is universally accelerating as companies seek out ways of revitalising old and previously uneconomical deposits to satisfy demand.
Three new coal mines have sprouted around Nebo in the past six years including Coppabella, Morevale and South Walker.
At the Coppabella mine site, Mark Turner and production vice-president Brett Garland explained the company had increased coal production from about two million tonnes of product coal a year after its opening in 1998 to 4.5 million tonnes currently.
Mr Turner said the company was also reviewing reopening Creek Pit, which was placed under care and maintenance about nine months ago.
Mr Garland agreed that life is good.
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