A Queensland cattlewoman says she is living in a state of ridiculous isolation, forced to use a farm buggy to leave her property after the only access road was rendered impassable by recent floodwaters.
Stuck in a hole after the rain
Trish Goodwin, 62, should be celebrating the nearly 200mm of "very good soaking rain" that fell on her parched property near Bluff in central Queensland last week. Instead, she is stranded and alone in the tin and timber homestead where she was raised, carefully rationing her instant coffee and milk.
Her predicament stems from an access road built to compensate her when a coalmine lease was established on her land. The original road was blasted away for the Bluff open cut coalmine. The new gravel road that skirts the mine's slag heaps has now been severely damaged by the downpour from ex-Tropical Cyclone Koji, with sections washed away.
"I'm stuck in a hole," Goodwin says. The road is now only negotiable by her UTV (utility task vehicle) buggy. On Tuesday, she used it to reach the Capricorn Highway where a friend met her with a bottle of milk.
A decade of uncertainty and broken promises
Goodwin's isolation is the latest chapter in a more than decade-long saga of uncertainty and dispute with mining companies. Her family has run cattle on the land for 120 years.
The Bluff mine has been mothballed twice, most recently in late 2023. Its current owner, Bowen Coking Coal, went into receivership in July. The mine's first owner, Carabella Resources, was liquidated.
Goodwin says the years of negotiations have destroyed her infrastructure, degraded her land, and worsened her health. She now lives with the fear of a medical emergency, believing paramedics would need a helicopter to reach her. She has previously suffered a gallbladder attack and anaphylactic shock on the property.
"Yesterday I got this instant headache and I thought, oh not again, it's all starting again," she says.
Calls for action and a road to repair
Claire Gronow, central Queensland coordinator for the Lock the Gate alliance, says the Bluff mine has little prospect of operating profitably and should be permanently closed. This would allow access to the rehabilitation bond to start returning the land to grazing condition—a task not officially due until 2060.
"Trish has health problems and – even without that – she ought to be able to drive to Blackwater to get her groceries," Gronow said.
Queensland's Land Access Code mandates that mining lease holders must keep access roads in good repair. However, with the mine in receivership, responsibility is unclear. Bowen Coking Coal did not respond to requests for comment, and receivers FTI Consulting declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Queensland's Department of Natural Resources and Mines said it was "in regular contact with the administrators" of the mine, which remains in care and maintenance.
Meanwhile, Goodwin estimates it will be "a good month" before machinery can get onto the boggy track to make repairs, and only if the rain stops. For now, her UTV remains her lifeline to the outside world.
"I should not have to do that," she says. "It's just ridiculous."
